Page 13

Amias

I can't move.

I'm curled up in a ball, lying on the ground. Bleeding from my chest and arms. My vision is covered in colorful dots as nausea creeps up my throat.

Too much magic. Too much energy.

My brain is too weak to focus on anything other than the inability to get my body back up. I hear footsteps coming towards me and a voice, but I can't focus on them enough to know who it is.

If a dreamscreecher were to attack me now, I'd be dead.

“Amias!”

I snap my head up with the dots disappearing in a few blinks. There's shiny deep ocean eyes like my father's scanning over me, golden blonde hair getting in the way of his face.

“Erasmus?” I whisper.

“Shit! I knew this would happen when I saw tutela flowers! You could've died!” He kneels down as I push my body upright.

Oh yeah. I’d started to use the flowers to save that girl.

“I'm okay. Just exhausted.” I quickly look for any wounds on him. He doesn't even have a scratch.

Well, he's considered a military hero for a reason. He's a pro shooter.

Erasmus takes a deep breath, squeezing his eyes shut before looking back at me. “Why didn't you use the gun?” He scrunches his nose. “You had bullets on you, didn't you?”

“I used most of them at the gun range.” I only shot five times before I was out. I didn't expect to battle fifty dreamscreechers.

“Then you should've ran.” Erasmus shakes his head. “Mother's gonna kill me.”

“I'm no coward, Erasmus! I would've never ran!” Again, with the babying! “I'd rather my body get split in half than to run knowing there's innocent civilians in here. I'm the prince of Love, just like you. It's our duty!”

“I know.”

“Sometimes I don't think you do.”

“Well at least now I don't have to think about that.” He stands up again and I let him pull me to my feet.

If that one dreamscreecher didn't attack my opponent, I would've been dead.

I glance down. Why would a dreamscreecher save me? It couldn't have been on purpose right?

I furrow my brows, my heart searing with disgust. No. The dreamscreecher probably just wanted to get revenge on the one attacking me and found the perfect moment to do so.

Dreamscreechers never show mercy. There's no way it wanted to save me.

“We gotta get home,” Erasmus grunts, making his way towards the door. “Dr. Kurt has to stitch you up and I'll have to deal with Mother.”

My lips twist. That girl! Clara! I have to make sure she's alright. She's still out there, homeless with untreated wounds. “Wait!”

“What?” Erasmus snaps his head over his shoulder, his eyes bugged like I had said I lost an arm.

“I have to find this girl I saved.” She better have made it out.

His expression doesn't change for a second, only for him to lower his brows and slouch his shoulders. “I’m sure if you've saved her, that means she's fine.” Erasmus rolls his eyes.

“It's more than this incident. She's homeless with deep wounds and doesn't want to go to the hospital.” I glance around, only to witness victims and face the bodies of dreamscreechers and Amarians as medics come to take them to the hospital.

My heart stops beating at the sight of these victims. Some are children, some are my age, and I even spot an elderly woman lying on the floor.

There's a chilling stillness that fills the air. There's no sense of life from any of them. No noise. No movement.

I inhale but it shakes to the point I can barely call it a breath. My tiny neck hairs stand. My body stays rigid.

These victims are dead. I don't have to see the gory details to sense it.

And the worst part is, there's nothing I can do about it.

Even as a prince and the descendant of a gift, I have no power to heal or stop death. All I can do is gawk at them. All of these innocent people…

I jolt at the grip on my shoulder and snap my head over to Erasmus. He looks at the scene before us. “It’s terrible. I know.” His grasp on my shoulder gets stronger, his eyes shining with tears. Only then do I realize my vision is blurred with the same droplets.

“These are children…” I murmur, each word threatening a sob. “Loved ones…” The last time their families will see them is this mangled up version of what they once were.

“The best we can do is walk away and let the medics help,” Erasmus whispers, tugging on my shoulder and turning his attention to me. “You need a doctor anyways, and I'm not letting you go after some girl in this kind of condition.”

My body tightens again but there's a new found blaze in my soul. She's not just some girl. “This is why I should look for her. She's not safe until I help her.”

“She’ll be less safe if you get in the way of medics trying to save her. If she was a dead corpse anyways, you would've spotted her already.”

I pause. He's right. I should stay out of the way. I already know how useless I'd be in this situation. It's impossible to heal her but it's possible to prevent her from being saved.

I reluctantly follow him out the mall. As we walk, paramedics in all white rush up the steps into the mall. Other people jump out of cars and scan the crowds of people.

I see those weeping. All of them. Some of them are lucky enough to spot their loved ones through the crowd, and they race into tight embraces.

Others rush past me, wailing their loved one’s names with no response. They shove past everyone and burst through the mall doors.

Shrieks of shock and heartbreak come from the entrance of the mall.

I swallow weeps of my own, my own lips throbbing. Erasmus comes by my side and pushes my back forward.

That could've been me. That could've been my mother screeching after my death. It could've been me that never came home.

We make it out of the crowd and towards the car down the street. How could dreamscreechers be so cruel to innocent people? How could they just break in and make someone's loved ones go through a tortured death?

What did our people do to deserve this tragedy?