All's Fair in Revenge

Present

Five hours until execution.

It's almost midnight. Rain falls. I press myself against the bars to reach Cian's cup while he sleeps. Its rough bottom scraps the floor. It topples and rolls. He wakes with a start. I blink at him and tug it through the iron. Rain pelts the cups as I hang them out the window. They fill in less than a minute.

We drink until our stomachs are swollen. There's even enough to scrub my face somewhat clean.

Cian readjusts on the floor. I lay my head down on an elbow and I pick at the dirt packed around the pavers until I've created a tiny ravine where the rainwater gathers. My nail is a black line of dirt, but the blue stain on my fingertips hides it well. They darken by the day with every stupid impulse I give into.

Cian stares at them. "Are you ill?" The color spreads past my cuticles, moving toward my knuckles, looking as though I've been picking berries for years. I suppose that means the dark magic is getting stronger as I get weaker. I used to care about that. I used to worry about where it came from and what it meant. But none of that matters when you're five hours and a toppled stool away from death.

"In a sense. It's not contagious, if that's what worries you." At least I hope not.

"Rope scares me more at the moment."

I push up from the ground with one hand, wipe the murk on my stringy overdress. "You're scared about tomorrow?"

"Who wouldn't be?"

"Well don't. They can't kill you like that. It won't work."

He lifts onto his elbows. "They can if it's made of obsidian thread and if not," he mimics his neck snapping, "it'll still hurt."

I wince at the gesture, my hand absentmindedly going to my neck. "It's rather barbaric, dying like that."

"Torturous death, really. The amount of time it takes you to die, the way you feel every bit of pain. The jerking. The suffocating." He shivers. "I'd much rather a beheading; one clean swipe, then plop. An arrow to the heart isn't so bad, either."

"You say that as though you've experienced it."

Cian opens his shirt revealing defined muscles and the lightest scattering of dark hair. He points to three puckered scars to the right of a black tattoo: one close to his collarbone but more on his shoulder, another cut across to what I assume is his nipple since I cannot see it's beginning nor end, and a star-shaped one where his heart ought to be. He points to the first, "arrow—I don't remember which—sword from sparring with my eldest brother, and this one," he runs his finger over the raised skin of his heart, "would you believe me if I told you I think I remember getting it sledding as a child?"

"A child?" That image of Cian as an infant with wild hair and q play sword in each hand nearly sends me into stitches. I keep the image close to my heart and out of my mouth.

"Yes, I was once a child. Druvix don't show up in the world fully matured and ready to assassinate from day one." He means it as a joke, but it is its own sobering arrow to the heart. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean—"

"I would really love it if you'd stop with your incessant, meaningless apologies. You're sorry, but for what? Do you know? You cannot grasp the wrongness of what you're apologizing for. It's meaningless without the memory of it."

"Do you think this is part of the punishment?"

"What punishment?"

"The humans are all about making people pay for their sins, but what if hanging us isn't enough? What if they took my memories to punish us both?"

I look him over. "That'd be cruel. Even for them."

"They certainly put the human in inhumane." Despite every effort to contain it, I snort a laugh, a smile cracking my face into shards. Cian coyly grins back at me. "I remember that," he says.

"Remember what?"

"Your smile."

I suck it back in. "Well don't."