Royal's Way

Chapter 19

I couldn't help my feelings; I went back to the house. I wanted to see if Lily was okay.

I watched her struggle to get to her knees, coughing and holding her injured, blood stained stomach. I cringed, resisting the urge to help her.

Her gaze suddenly met mine, and I flinched, suddenly remembering why I had abandoned her in the first place.

Another cough escaped her throat as she leaned back on her legs. "Why... Why did you leave?"
Her voice sent shivers down my spine, the tone something I had never heard. It was like she was pretending this entire time.

She wasn't expressing her emotions to me, I realized.

She was expressing her absolute hatred towards me. Wondering why her servant rebelled.

"Why did you just leave me to get pummeled into the ground?"
I scowled, my grip on the lantern tightening. "I didn't know that would happen. But I'm not sorry for what I did. It was a lesson you had to learn, even if it was in the most brutal way possible."

She narrowed her tired, dead eyes at me. "What lesson is there to learn?" she snarled through her teeth, "That I'm going to die, no matter what I do? Is that what you wanted me to learn?" "I wanted you to learn that what you were doing was wrong," I argued, trying to sound as calm as possible, "You never told me the plan. You treated me as an annoying pest that was along for the ride, or just to calculate how the mission was going to go. I didn't want more people to get hurt. I didn't want it to turn out like this."

She groaned, cupping her injury as she slowly pushed herself to her feet with shaking knees. "You think you're so smart?" Her voice barely came out on a breath, the words falling apart. "I'm going to die, whether I finish this or not. They won't need me anymore after this. It doesn't matter what you try to teach me." "I need you!"

I paused, swallowing heavily as I glanced at the wet grass below me. "I needed you. I thought you were... not like them."

Her expression softened a bit, like she didn't expect to hear the words. But it quickly hardened again. "Do you want me to die?" "No!" I argued, pulling the lantern closer. The cold air felt like it was crushing me. "But I thought this job was going to be easy, we drop in, drop out. That's what I was told. But we've hurt so many people, killed so many. Why can't you understand that this could've been so much easier?" "Because it couldn't have been," she replied, "That's the whole point of the mission, you idiot."

I frowned, pulling the lantern close. She was practically falling apart, not out of sadness, but out of pure anger.
I had such a hard time talking to her like this. I missed the fake Lily. "Look, Lily. I never wanted you to get hurt, but... b-but all of this, it's wrong. We've terrified the people of this city. Or have you not noticed?"

Lily sighed. I hated seeing her this way, I hated seeing her so... empty. But I had to remind myself she was faking it. The emptiness was real, and nothing else she said was.

She slowly lifted her hand, taking mine and holding it tight. I felt her skin rub against mine, and the coldness of her fingers. They were lifeless, an empty shell filled with only ideas that people had of what she was really like. I frowned; she wasn't the same. "I'm sorry, Percy. We can't do this without hurting people. It's not possible."

Her hand suddenly tightened it's grip on mine, to a painful degree. "And I can't die yet."

I yelped, both in surprise, and pain, looking to Lily.

White streaks of light leaked from my veins and conjoined with Lily's hand.
She didn't flinch, she didn't do anything. She just held my hand, watching her own veins begin to glow red.