Anomaly ━━ Matt vs Chris Sturniolo¹

𝖝𝖝𝖝. Let Them Die

[ tw: death ]

𝖝𝖝𝖝. Let Them Die

IN THE STORIES, the old fairy tales, a hero comes. But all of Maeve's heroes are gone or dead. No one is coming to save her.

It must be the next morning when the Sentinels arrive, led by Salem himself. With the suffocating walls, his presence makes it difficult to stand, but they force Maeve up.

"Sentinel Turner, Sentinel Viper." Matt nods at the Sentinels when they open his cell. They pull him roughly to his feet. Even now, facing death right in the eye, Matt is calm.

He greets every guard they pass, addressing them by name. They stare back, angry or bewildered or both. A king killer should not be so kind. The soldiers are even worse. He wants to stop to say goodbye to them properly, but his own men grow hard and cold at the sight of him. And Maeve thinks that hurts him almost as much as everything else. After a while, he goes quiet, losing the last bit of will he has left. As they climb out of the darkness, the noise of a crowd grows steadily nearer. Faint at first, but then a dull roar right above them. The arena is full, and they're ready for a show.

This started when Maeve fell into the Spiral Garden, a body made of sparks, and now it ends at the Bowl of Bones. She knows she'll leave as nothing more than a corpse.

Arena attendants, all dull-eyed Silvers, descend on them like a flock of pigeons. They pull Maeve behind a curtain, preparing her for what's to come with brisk movements and hard hands. She barely feels them, pushing and pulling, shoving her into a cheaper version of a training suit. This is meant to be an insult, making her wear something so simple to die in, but she prefers the scratch of fabric to the whisper of silk. Dimly, she thinks of her maids. They painted her every day; they knew she had something to hide. And they died for it. No one paints her now or even bothers to brush away the dirt from a night spent in a cell. More pageantry, typical. Once, she wore silk and jewels and pretty smiles, but that doesn't fit Chris' lie. A Red girl in rags is easier for them to understand, and to kill.

When they pull her back out again, she can see they've don't the same for Matt. There will be no medals, no armor for him. But he has his flame-maker bracelet again. The fire burns still, smoldering in the broken soldier. He has resigned himself to die, but not before taking someone with him.

They hold each other's gaze, simply because there's nowhere else to look.

"What are we walking into?" Matt finally says, tearing his eyes away from Maeve's to face Salem.

The old man, white as paper, looks back on his former students without a flicker of remorse. Maeve wonders what they promised him, for his help. But she can already see. The badge over his heart, the crown made of jet, diamond, and ruby, was Matt's once. Maeve doesn't doubt he was given much more.