Villainous [Wattys 2021 Shortlist]

MALEVOLENT 2: Flight

Kaya pulled her through winding stone corridors slick with bloody footprints. Her weak body resisted, and Kaya twisted to snarl at her occasionally.

Kaya was here, alive, real. Delilah had left the cell. It couldn't be true, couldn't be happening.

Kaya. Delilah wanted to moan and collapse, but she forced herself to keep moving. Where were the guards? How were they going to get out alive?

A stone settled in her stomach. Of course they weren't going to get out alive. This must be a suicide mission.

Delilah wished Marko hadn't visited, she hadn't wanted her final day in Avalon to include him.

"Hurry up," Kaya spat. Her grip tightened until it was painful. She was upright, walking... Not the rotted, hacked-apart corpse Delilah had imagined for so long.

Delilah halted when they heard voices ahead, and torchlight flickered on the rough walls. No. Her skin crawled. She couldn't endure more torture, not now she'd crossed the threshold of her cell, not now she was reunited with Kaya, no matter how brief this union would be... Curses streamed from her lips.

Kaya swivelled on the spot and bounded towards the nearest window, a slit in the wall for shooting arrows. She hopped up and started wriggling through it – the wall was thick.

Delilah clambered after her. Of course. Their deaths would be outside of these soldiers' control, if nothing else.

There was no fear left in her as Kaya jumped, dragging Delilah with her. Only emptiness filled her black heart. Air screamed past them and Pelenu's dry, shrub-filled country opened like a murky map around them for a brief moment –

Delilah fell onto a warm, solid thing, with Kaya's hand still vice-like around her wrist.

"Hang on to me!" Kaya shouted.

Delilah clung to her friend like Kaya was the only thing that existed in the world, and Kaya seized the leather straps attached to the giant crow. They soared away from Goriath, away from the shouts she could hear in the corridor they'd just left.

Her chest was locked up as she pressed herself against Kaya's back and peered down at Pelenu. Home. They were too high up to feel the warmth of the breeze. Delilah's rag flapped behind her like a cloak.

"How...?" she began to croak, but acid surged up her throat as the crow shifted and the world tilted beneath them. And kept tilting. Delilah felt dizzy as everything started spinning, but she knew the crow wasn't moving that much. Maybe she really was dying.

She'd spent the past few months resigned to the fact that she would never enter the world again, and yet here she was, pitched into the midst of it. Flying through it. With a friend who was alive.

"Kaya..." she began, but her voice rasped horribly from lack of drink and water and she doubted Kaya heard her.

After what seemed like hours of delirium, the crow landed in a sloping forest and Delilah collapsed from its back. She landed on all fours, sharp rocks and soil scratching her fragile, bare skin. She was about to bring up whatever meagre remains were still in her stomach, but then boots crunched the earth close by.

Delilah leaped to her feet as Kaya dismounted. Shouldn't have done that. Stars popped in front of her eyes.

Delilah was convinced she was hallucinating when a familiar bronze-skinned, shaggy-haired man stepped out from behind a tree, albeit looking more unkempt than she'd ever seen him. Then a woman of shadows detached herself from the darkness of a thicket of thorns.

Delilah's knees went weak. She wanted to embrace Nell and bury her head in the girl's shoulder.

Instead she forced her spine to straighten. "What's happening? How did you get me out? Why aren't we all in prison?" Be strong. Be the ruler they remember you to be – the lieutenant who was always so sure of herself. Act like they haven't broken you.