Chapter 6: Citrine
Was I too late?
The courtyard was empty, the quiet, manicured gardens an abrupt contrast to the screaming, wailing horrors that permeated the air just moments ago.
Ember leaned against the stone arch, pressing her hand against her chest to steady her gasps for air and hold down the sickness rising from her belly.
She squinted through the haze of red light. The garden was not empty. There was a body on the far gravel path- a body in female clothes.
"No," she breathed.
Ember ran across the garden to the dark shape, with no thought of cover. She recognized the flower pattern in the clothes and the bright white hair. She dropped to her knees, half afraid to look at her dead face.
It was a face with dents and ridges she knew so well-
Nai Nai.
Don't Stop.
Ember was on her hands and knees crawling through the undergrowth. She had to see them.
She scrambled up the incline, her chongsam catching under her knees and dragging at her throat. A misjudged handhold pierced the skin of her palm.
One last push through a line of bushes, and Ember saw them. Straight ahead, dark shapes on the ground, grotesquely mutilated. And people- three monks- kneeling beside them wailing for the dead. She steadied herself, her eyes drawn inexorably to the separated heads. One was turned away, surrounded by a glistening dark puddle. The other stared up into the night. It was hard to recognize the features in the weak moonlight but her mind pushed life back into the mask.
Yeye.
Don't Stop.
Ember's teeth tore her lip, it's iron tang souring her mouth. Her wrists were weakening, the change in direction sending trembling fire into her thighs.
Grandfather's study had been ransacked. The low table upended and his scrolls torn from its alcove.
None of the lights had been smashed. Whoever had done this had wanted enough light to do the job.
It was a devastation. The curtains were stripped, the ornaite silk strewn about. The splintered doors hung open, it's heavy body barely hanging on a hinge.
Barely glancing at the ruins, Ember crossed straight into the closet.
It was intact.
Optimism blossomed into Ember's chest. A fool's hope that maybe her sister would be spared.
Ember opened the doors. A yellow glint greeted her from the side of the closet.
Her own reflection beckoned her closer. She didn't know what she was staring into. A circle of light in the midst of the darkness. It was as she moved closer did Ember realize what she had been staring into.
Her sister's iris.
The rest of Jesse had begun to crust up in yellow crystals, their chilling breath suffocating her warm body.
Ember stared, she knew that stilted words and jumbled letters could not possibly convey the grief she felt at the finality of their parting.
So she had stared hoping that a look. Just one look would be able to get through the stone. A silent farewell to the last of her family.
It had only taken seconds for the stone to finish and for Ember to hold a corpse. The brush of cool stone offering no solace in its hollow shell.
Stop.
The world started to spin like a black hole rotating around her, sucking her into its dark mass.
She couldn't breath.
Couldn't yell.
Couldn't scream.
It was that desperation, that overbearing urge to survive, that finally woke her up.
And once again she was staring, into another set of copper irises. It was a different boy. He held a bundle of her hair in his hands wrapped in a piece of red cloth.
"Those are the repurcussions if you don't leave."
Ember pressed a hand through her short tresses and nodded.
She understood.
YOU ARE READING
Stone Cold
Aventura"The stone first started to show on his father's right forearm. Pale onyx veins then spread throughout his body, shining like polished marble." Stone has claimed most of the magical creatures of the world, forcing the rest to go into...
