Things That Should Stay Buried - Casey L. Bond Page 0,118
finally managed to pull Aries away and hold him, giving Taurus the break he needed.
He came for me.
There was no way to break free and get the axe, but there was another way I could make myself bleed. If my blood was the way to end him, I’d have to make absolutely sure I didn’t miss.
I found him in the chaos and like Kes suggested, I ran like hell, keeping my eyes locked on him. I found the veins stretching blue beneath my skin and bit into my wrist. Hard. The coppery taste of blood flooded my mouth and spilled down my chin onto my chest, then dribbled onto the floor.
Before Taurus could realize what was happening and dart away, I sprayed him with my blood as it pulsed in time with my heartbeat. My blood spritzed his face, coating it with small, scarlet droplets, no more consequential than beads of sweat. He stopped abruptly, stunned, his mouth ajar.
The fighting went quiet around us as everyone watched Taurus carefully. I clamped my right hand over my left wrist to stop the blood from flowing out too fast and watched just as intently.
Nothing happened.
I stumbled to my right, hoping Aries wasn’t wrong about that one forbidden thing being their downfall.
I needed Kes. My feet slipped in a puddle of my blood.
My blood did not kill Taurus.
My blood is gushing out of me. Fast.
“Larken!” Kes cried, trying to get to me. “Hold it tight! Raise it above your heart!” he shouted. He started toward me, when one of Taurus’s Guardians grabbed the axe, raised it faster than humanly possible, and swung.
Aries disappeared, trying to reach his first in command as I screamed and scrambled toward my brother. The sharp blade lodged in my brother’s heart, breaking through the ribs with a sickening crack. His mouth fell open in shock as his eyes went wide.
I couldn’t breathe.
Aries appeared beside my brother a second too late.
“Kestrel!” I shrieked.
I finally made it to him as he fell to his knees. Aries and I eased him to the ground. “Heal him!” I cried, my blood coating everything I touched. A gurgle bubbled from his throat. “Kes, hold on. Please, hold on for me.” I looked at Aries and pleaded one last time. “Can you heal him?”
One look at his regretful pink eyes, and I knew he couldn’t do anything to save him.
Kes’s eyes went blank, then turned to glass. They fixed on my face, then slid upward to the ceiling, unfocused. That was the moment my heart broke.
I couldn’t save him.
I couldn’t save Kestrel when he died, either.
Now, both were gone.
The sound that tore from me didn’t come from my lungs. It didn’t come from my stomach or tear from my throat. It was ripped from my soul.
I hugged my twin brother to my chest, the axe holding us apart, and sobbed until I was unable to catch my breath, feeling like the axe was lodged in my chest, too.
Taurus, still frozen in place, sucked in a deep breath as if he was inhaling all the air in the room and let out a scream that pebbled my skin and blew my hair sideways.
My blood was acidic, burning holes into his flesh, holes that widened and merged and ate away at him until nothing but a mess of bloody pulp remained. There, resting in the mess that used to comprise Taurus, my ancestor, lay two pale horns.
Aries’s eyes were wide, his mouth gaping from what he’d just witnessed, while I felt nothing but the loss of Kestrel.
Nothing but loss.
I was so tired.
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Everything happened in slow motion for a few minutes after that. Everyone’s voices became muffled and sounded far away.
The Zodia shrank away from the place where Taurus had dissolved.
Aries slowly stood, carefully avoiding the floor, Kestrel’s body, and me – my blood, I realized. Did he think it could kill any of them? Could it?
He stared at what was left of his bullish foe for a long moment, but I couldn’t focus on anything but Kestrel and the axe blade still embedded in his heart. I couldn’t feel anything but a black hole of despair and a numbness I didn’t understand.
His eyes went wide when he looked away from Taurus back to me.
Suddenly, the weakness, tiredness, and numbness were gone. My hearing returned, then became so clear, every shuffling motion startled me. “What’s happening?”
“Larken.” There was fear in his voice. Fear, awe, and a hundred other things I couldn’t understand until the wound on