The aim was bad.
Ruff bounced off the head of a Thulian, driving the soldier backward, arms flailing. The bunny ricocheted, twisted, realigned in mid-air. The next thing Ruff landed on was the Storyteller’s throat. His scream was abrupt and piercing as Ruff whirled like a child’s windmill toy, about his neck.
There were wet fleshy sounds.
Blood flew, spattering the warriors. Panicking, they raised their bows aiming here and there at the bunny and at Shades, Po, Ruth, or Xander. Her friends woke and threw themselves aside as strings were loosed from taut fingers, and arrows zipped about.
They all missed Ruff, a few went past the Storyteller and skewered fellow soldiers. Itwas difficult for them to shoot their master, accurately, when they really were aiming to hit the thing eating his neck.
Po had jumped sideways. She digested the horror of flying blood and gnawing floof machine, of screaming Thulians and toppling Storyteller, of John unholstering pistols and firing as he sprang to his feet. Of more arrows nocked. Of some of those being aimed at Xander.
Xander was sprawled on the stone and the only one unable to duck and run. Two Thulian bows swung his way, several more aimed at John, but the owners of the latter died in bursts of gun-flame and thudding bullet.
Po… not about to lose the man she had only just found, dived toward Xander, sliding across the stone and curling herself about him.
Something hard thudded into her back. Then another, and another, entered her back—arrows, three of, she catalogued.
Going to die then. Soon.
Yes. She coughed at the exuberant pain rampaging in. The shock and numbness came, but not all was numb.
Gods, it hurt.
PO
Her arms stayed about Xander for a few seconds before she simply had to cry out and let go.
Blood was creeping under her, wetting her clothes. The laundry girl was going to hate her.
“Oh, no. No. Pollianna, my princess. No,” Xander was saying soft, sobbing words, the wimp.
She frowned at him. “Shhh.”
He moved to wrap arms around her but seemed confused as to where to touch her. Oh, the arrows, of course. Instead he cradled her head. “Somebody fix her! Po is shot!”
“Have to… close my… eyes.”
“John!! Hey. You can’t die. Not now. Look, I have the locket still. Po?”
JOHN
The enemy were all dead.
This is not how it should end, he thought.
Turning, torn by future sorrow, knowing what he would see for he’d heard Xander’s cries, he saw his brother cradling Po and heard him scream again. Typical Po, trying to die now. Blood was a sea under her.
Red, even in the shadows beneath. Dark, horrible red.
Until that moment he had been doubtful as to his feelings for her. She called it lust. So had he. No longer.
Everyone has a time, once in their life, a time of revelation.
Love, not lust. Or was it potential love? He wasn’t sure anymore, if the lies had truly removed his heart. Maybe he didn’t need a heart to love. He wiped away the wetness on his face and remembered the door with the soft blue light that Xander lay before with Po. His eyes rose to the lintel, and there were human words, somehow penned as he read them, chiseled in the frame.
“Only the innocent or the pure of purpose should enter me. Your greatest strength shall be your weakness. Your greatest weakness, your strength.”
Verily, I am pure of purpose. John decided. Though he was definitely not innocent.
Even his boots were stained with the crimes of killing.
John left footsteps of red as he walked through the door. And as he did so he felt something kick to life in his chest. His heart returned.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
opened her eyes for what she thought likely the last time. Her breaths were weak and ragged, her heart seemed likely to stop. Nothing was easy, with her eyelids heavy and threatening to close. She should’ve said goodbye.
This was not in the Princess Guide—what to do when dying.
Her voice was gone, the light around her dimming, the pain going away also, and she had a hunch that was a bad sign.
Death came and she was too young and had so much left to do.
John walked to her, and his eyes were purple. How many people around her had weird eyes now. Two? Three? Was this the latest trend? Did she count the Storyteller? Not a friend, her mind insisted. She was rambling, wasn’t she?
No. He was not a—
John had gone behind her, laid hands on her, and was trying to tear her lungs out through her back. She could feel him ripping at her flesh, hear the crunch. Her body rocked as he pulled. Her mouth gaped open. She’d scream if she could recall how to.
Blue flared bright, turning Xander’s face into ravines and ridges. Brighter. Brighter.
Pain, monstrous pain, roared back in and gobbled at her, eating up her flesh.
“Breathe,” John said. “Breath, damn you, Po!”
She inhaled, hard and long and rough.
Xander, paling and up on an elbow, stared at her.
“Stop that! It fucking hurts!”
Oops. Bad etiquette.
She rolled and punched John, once, shakily. That hurt too.
Where were the arrows?
Her gaze dropped to his hands where he held three long, barbed, and bloody arrows.
“What did you do—”
Blackness crashed in and obliterated, everything.
* * * * *
Xander was not certain what John had just done, how he had done it… all that blue light flaring, but his bro had purple eyes now and Po was breathing easily.
Her face
