Wings

15: I've No More Hunger Now To See Where The Road Will Go

WPOV

Track: Blood Upon The Snow, Hozier & Bear McCreary

My parents hold me back because if they don't, they know I'll fight like my life depends on it—and maybe it does, I don't know. That doesn't even matter right now, not when Nico is tied up and dying on my kitchen floor, injured from what feels like a thousand arrows and shattered bones. Yet his expression isn't fear—it's solemn resignation. I watch in horror as he lets out a tired breath and rests his head against the cold wooden floor, relaxing against his binds and giving up.

"He's too young to get caught in the crossfire," Nico murmurs when Austin is sent to find guards, and an awful, humorless laugh escapes my lips. My brother is too young to decide not to condemn someone to death, but Nico doesn't think that maybe he himself is too young for this, too? Death is not for people like him, people who are kind and people who are only just beginning to understand that humanity can be kind and people who have seen so much suffering in their lifetime and people who are too young to have even fallen in love yet.

And for that last point—no, I don't count because Nico isn't in love with me—if he was, he'd be in the sky. Nico is only just starting to love, he can't die now—it would be cruel.

I shut my eyes tight. "Let go of me, and we'll leave and never come back, I swear," I promise, trying to keep the desperation in my voice buried under a tone of false confidence. "Just let me go, I'll take Nico far from here—you'll never have to see either of us ever again—"

"Absolutely not," my father says, and my stomach twists at the cruelty of it all—this is the same father that taught me to have good manners at the dinner table and who held my hand in public when I was a child and who always made sure we had enough to eat even when he didn't. To hear him condemn Nico so surely, as if Nico is a certain evil that can only be stopped with barbaric and overwhelming violence. I tear my gaze from my father's infuriatingly calm expression, his eyes and hair a mirror image of mine but his mind and heart entirely different.

Instinctively, I find myself looking at Nico again, and he looks so tired. I've seen him tired before but not like this. So unprotesting. Even as he must be in unimaginable pain, he's nonresistant. The way he lies there, it looks like the whole house could catch on fire and he would just lie there, unmoving, until he's already let himself burn.

I lurch from my mother's grasp, but my father is immediately there again to grab me and shove me back into her, and this time, he doesn't let go of my arm when my mother gets her grip back. His hand seizes my arm so tightly that it's painful, and when I try again to pull away, he only strengthens his hold until I know my skin will be purple if he ever lets go. I can feel the fury building in the pit of my stomach, spreading like fire through my guts and veins and heart until I'm made of fire. Forget about the house catching fire—I'll set the whole world on fire if I have to watch Nico give up for another second without being able to hold his head in my hands.

The sound of boots storming the house distract me from my rage briefly, replacing it swiftly with fear. I try to twist in my parents' hold to see the soldiers as they come in, and as they flood the kitchen, the fire turns to dreadful magma and then a lonely desolate stone that settles in my stomach and makes me feel sick. I can't fight off this many people—I can hardly even fight off one. Nico is the fighter of the two of us, but not only is he badly injured, but I don't think he'd be fighting right now even if he could.

"Please," I beg them, hating myself for resorting to this but desperate enough to hope I can convince them. "You have to understand that Nico isn't evil—he's just like all of us—he hasn't hurt anyone, I swear—"