Page 22 of Swords of Soul and Shadow (Gate Chronicles #3)
NOT IDEAL
Niels
NIELS METZINGER HAD ALWAYS BEEN the strong one.
He never crumbled under pressure. The flashpistol graze in his shoulder and the bullet lodged in his lower thigh didn’t come close to the time he’d taken a pickax to the leg while training Guy’s youngest son in the mines.
Or that day in late July when Hallie had walked out of his life without saying goodbye.
She’d been hurting; he knew that. But he’d been hurting, too; he’d lost his best friend in that accident. It’d been a stars-reckless ridiculous thing to do, exploring the mines for no good reason. Stupid. They should’ve known better than that.
Niels should’ve known better than that.
He’d gone over those last moments a million times in the last three years.
The quaking rumble of stone was one he knew all too well.
He’d been warned to either run for the exit or say his own final rites depending on where he stood in the mountain tunnels.
Not even the Fogs could keep survival instincts like that at bay.
But survival instincts or not, if he could go back, he’d save Jack and sacrifice himself.
Jack had always been one for adventure. His plan had been to head off to the University of Jayde that coming summer and become a medic: the first small step on Jack’s grandiose path to fame and fortune.
He’d been certain the tunnel held the answers to the universe…
or at least to how they could all strike it rich and dine on fine food and drink in the capital.
If you asked Niels, he would have said it was Jack’s well-meaning way of trying to take them with him when he left.
To not to feel guilty that he was leaving in the first place.
Niels had never wanted all that. Once Jack had left, Niels would’ve asked Hallie to marry him.
Eighteen would’ve been rather young if they’d grown up anywhere besides Stoneset, but what else could Niels do?
With his job in the mines, he didn’t have the luxury of growing old with someone.
His mother had been endlessly angry that he’d doomed himself to the Fogs, but she’d also known they didn’t have a choice.
His older brother’s trapping business had flopped, landing him with a pickaxe in hand himself, and his father’s farm had barely sustained them through the winter.
They’d been poor…too poor to save enough money to send him to University with Jack. Few families in Stoneset could.
How ironic that none of it mattered in the end. Not one bit.
Jack had died. Hallie had taken his place in Kyvena. The Cerls had killed Niels’ family. Being in the mines had saved his life that day; his mother hadn’t lived to appreciate the irony in that.
And now, as he sat in the shadows of some ancient temple and stared at the King of Cerulene’s rubble-strewn body, all he could think was that he’d give anything to be back in those mines.
He’d give anything for the girl standing beside him to look at him with anything other than distrust. He played with the ring in his pocket to calm his nerves.
Hallie fell to her knees beside the prone Cerl King. His golden hair splayed on the cracked stone and metal bricks. A beam had fallen, pinning his lower body in place. Hallie clutched her stomach as if she was going to be sick.
The sun was only beginning to peek over the horizon, casting a shroud of ethereal beauty across the ruined temple. It contrasted mightily with the grotesque sight before him.
Niels dropped his pack and lowered himself next to the man who’d ordered his family’s deaths. Pain lanced through his arm and leg, nearly dropping him on his seat, but he gritted his teeth and lowered himself slowly instead, his bad leg outstretched.
Fingers shaking, Niels searched the king’s wrist for a pulse. His skin was like ice, but whether that was due to shock, blood loss, or simply the chilly morning, Niels didn’t know. The king’s pulse fluttered weakly. Soft, struggling breaths whistled through the man’s open mouth.
“We gotta help him,” he muttered, unsure why he’d said it, or why he believed it. The man deserved to die a thousand times over. The Cerls hated them; had it been Niels under that beam, the King would have almost definitely left him to his fate.
But Niels was not a Cerl. He was a man of the Nardens, and he wouldn’t leave someone to die if there was a chance he could save them, no matter who they might be.
Hallie didn’t speak. He inched himself closer, breathing carefully through the pain. Hallie might’ve been the one who’d let the errant bullet loose, but the only one Niels could truly blame was himself. He knew better than to toss a pistol like that.
In the heat of the moment, all he’d thought to do was keep firing, and worry about the consequences later.
He hadn’t thought a half-functioning leg would be the consequence.
Still quite a sight better than the Cerl King’s situation. At least the bullet had only gone in one leg.
“If we can get this beam off…” Niels pulled his hand back. He couldn’t see any blood pooling underneath the body, but it could be hidden by the rubble. He chose to take that as a good sign. “If we can lift this, we might be able to…might be able to…”
Might be able to what? Even if Filip lived, his legs had been crushed to smithereens; he might never walk again. Niels and Hallie weren’t medics, and they were stuck stars-knew-where without any way of getting help.
He looked back at Hallie, who stood, staring at the King with fear in her eyes—fear and something else, something dark as the yawning mouth of a mineshaft. She opened and closed her mouth, but no sound emerged.
Nerves chattered his teeth. “Hallie…”
“No,” Hallie finally managed to croak out.
“You were right; we need to run. He’s good as gone, and Fely’s injured.
It won’t be easy for her to follow us, and even if she does, she’ll stop to help him.
This is our chance.” She inspected the surroundings.
“I think we’re in the old ruins, so we only need to hike the mountain to the city.
It’ll be slow going with your leg, but we can make it. ”
Niels blinked at her. He wasn’t sure he’d heard her correctly. “But he’s still alive.”
Hallie shook her head. “Not for long. I know it sounds bad, but…”
His mouth dropped a little at the shock of her callousness. “I’m only up and walking because he helped you heal me.”
“He only did that because he needs something from me.”
“He already had you. He coulda let me die, and he didn’t. I ain’t paying that back like this!”
He grabbed his pack and looked for anything he thought could help, but he knew it was worthless. Nothing in his pack would fix crushed bone.
Hallie’s pallor contrasted heavily with the freckles across her nose and cheeks. “He allowed Correa to torture me and Kase.”
When she put it that way…maybe Niels was being too kind.
But that didn’t sound like the Hallie he knew.
What had happened to the Hallie who wept when his family’s lamb had died after breaking its leg too badly to be fixed?
What had happened to the Hallie who’d cried over a book with a cracked spine like most folk wept at funerals? What had happened to the Hallie who’d—
“Niels,” she snapped, interrupting his worries. “What are you waiting for?”
He chewed on the edge of his tongue and looked back at the King.
Correa had tortured her, not the King. The King might have ordered Niels’ family killed, but he hadn’t done the deed.
There were always consequences, intended and not, when you had that much power. If the Cerl King had been looking in his family’s faces when he’d ordered them killed, would he have still given the order? A faceless enemy was much easier to harm, to hate, than one you had to look in the eye.
A scream came from the corridor they’d just exited. Fely had caught up quick enough after all; she stumbled forward, face bloodless and pale as a new star. “Heal him! Heal him now!”
Hallie moved out of the way just as Fely fell on her knees at the Cerl King’s head. “I can’t. I don’t…I failed earlier. I don’t have the right—”
“Use this!” She thrust her locket into Hallie’s hands. “He can’t die, he can’t, he…he can’t. Heal him.”
Hallie simply shook her head this time.
“Without him, we all die, do you understand?” Fely looked up, angry now, cheeks wet with tears. “Do it!”
Hallie clutched the locket in her fist. Niels put his fingers to the King’s wrist again. His vision swam; the pain in his head increased with each passing second. He blinked away the darkness at the edge of his vision. He couldn’t succumb to the migraine now. He had to fight it. Blasted Fogs.
The pulse beneath his fingers was erratic, weaker than before. He was no medic, but he guessed they only had minutes, if that. “Hurry, Hal.”
He didn’t know what to expect, seeing as he’d been unconscious at the time, but he had her to thank in part for his leg being mostly whole. She could do it again; he knew it.
After another moment of hesitation, Hallie knelt beside the woman. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”
Only a little relief broke through his dread. They still had a long way to go, even if she was willing to try.
“Use the stored Soul in the locket,” Fely breathed. “Don’t lose your grip on your tether. And feel .”
The instructions were clear as mud. But Hallie seemed to get it. “And if I’m not able to do it?”
“Then we all die.” Fely’s hand glowed a soft yellow in the morning light as she set it on the King’s neck. “We don’t have the sword. We don’t have all the Essences. If he dies now, then Jagamot will never be defeated.”
“But you said I won’t be able to control anything without the watch.” Hallie still clutched the locket. Her hair fluttered in the soft wind swirling around them. Niels shivered.
“Try the goggles, try anything,” Fely pleaded. “Just don’t let him die.”