The Sun Dwellers (32 page)

“What are you doing, son? Get him!” my father yells. I’m not sure if he’s talking to me or Killen (maybe both of us), but Killen looks up, embarrassment pink on his face for just a second. He’s still just a little boy trying to please his father. The thought makes me sad and want to drop my sword, but then anger kicks in and he scowls, pushing the body armor up and over his head, letting it drop to the floor behind him.

“It slows me down,” he explains. “You don’t stand a chance now.”

“Don’t do this, Killen,” I say.

“Scared to die, brother?” he asks, twirling his sword over his head.

I don’t answer him, don’t want to tell him that I’m scared to kill him. If my mother knew, it would break her heart.

“Time to die, Tristan,” he says, charging me.

I step to the side, letting him run by me, blocking his probing swing with my left sword. He pivots and then launches a barrage of blows, side to side, up and down, slash and parry, jab and block. By the end of it we both have a thin sheen of liquid coating our arms and legs and faces.

“I’m just warming up,” Killen says.

I’m just biding my time, trying to think of a solution that doesn’t involve me killing my brother or him killing me. But there’s just no way around it. It seems that in our world, someone always has to die. And it won’t be me.

I go on the offensive, distracting him with a left, right, left combination so I can sneak a kick into his chest. It works—I was always better at using my skin-and-bone weapons better than him—and he goes down hard, dropping his sword. Surging forward, I jump on him, lean a knee on his chest, hold him down, the tip of my sword against his breast.

“You’re beaten,” I say. “Don’t make me kill you. Mom wouldn’t have wanted this. She wanted us to stand up to Father, to stop him from hurting people.”

Breathing hard, Killen says, “I—I can’t, Tristan. All I want is for him to respect me, to follow in his footsteps. If I surrender to you he’ll always think of me as weak.” His face is pale and red at the same time—blotchy. For a second I just see my younger brother, the one I used to play knights and dragons with, who used to sit on my mom’s left knee while I sat on the right, who shared a room with me when we were little. And then I blink and he’s gone, replaced by a mirror image of my father with one thing on his mind: killing me.

He slips a knife from a hidden scabbard, thrusts it at my face.

Adele

I think it’s over, that Tristan will let Killen get up, that maybe they’ll hug and make up and join forces against the man who raised them. Yeah, right. That’s a happy ending and this isn’t a fairytale.

A glint of steel flashes and at first I think Tristan stabbed his brother. But then both brothers strain against each other, exertion in their arms and faces. Tristan still has his right sword hovering directly over Killen’s heart, but his other hand, now without a weapon, is holding his brother’s wrist, trying to push it away from his face. In Killen’s hand: a dagger, sharp enough to kill.

Kill him
, I think.
Tristan, you have no choice, you have to kill him. For us. For everyone.

But still he fights against the will of his brother, tries to push his weapon away. I can feel the spectators—even the guardsmen—collectively holding their breaths as the life-or-death struggle continues. For a moment it appears that Tristan will fight off Killen’s knife hand, but then, with a stomach-turning quickness, his brother surges with strength, pushes the knife blade within inches of Tristan’s eye. He’s about to be half-blinded at the hand of his own brother! I struggle against my bonds, try to rip my hands free, to do something to help. I scream, in anger and fear and frustration as the ropes cut into my wrists, tearing the top layer of skin away until they’re raw and tender.

The blade’s an inch away, maybe less. One of Tristan’s beautiful night blue eyes is about to be torn to shreds.

Suddenly and unexpectedly, Killen’s hand falls away, the knife clattering to the floor. Tristan slumps on top of him, his head buried in his brother’s neck.
What happened?
I wonder. I’m paralyzed by fear as Tristan’s body lies motionless, my mind repeating the same words over and over and over again, until the words mix and swirl around and confuse themselves:
get up, get up, up get, get get, up up, get up, up, up, up.

He lies still.

Unrequested, a gurgle rises up from my throat, my body’s natural reaction to having witnessed what appears to be the death of my boyfriend and his brother.
It can’t be
, I deny, trying to will away the inevitable. Not another loss. Not like this.

Tristan moves, just a shudder, as his shoulders begin to quake: he’s crying. Sobbing into the neck of his dead brother. Now I know what happened. Tristan listened to the voices in my head, realized the same thing that I did. That he had no choice. Kill or be killed. Killen wasn’t going to stop, so he had to plunge his hovering sword into his brother’s breast. And yet, upon doing it he’s wracked with a profound sadness and sense of loss, perhaps not for the person his brother has become, but the boy his brother used to be. And now he’s crying, expressing that sadness in tears that drip onto Killen’s skin, mingle with the blood that’s surely flowing from the hidden wound in his chest. My eyes well up with tears, but mine are for Tristan, not for his brother.

“Tristan!” the President roars, and I flinch; having been so focused on Tristan and his pain, it was as if everything else fell away.

Tristan stops shaking, his body tense as he slowly turns to face us. Even from a distance, his face glistens with a mixture of sweat and tears. Killen’s blood stains his front. I’m glad he’s looking at his father and not me, because on his face is only anger, a building rage I’ve never seen in him before. His dark blue eyes are as black as his father’s. “How dare you do this?” he spits out. “He was your son!”

“He was weak,” the President says, not a shred of remorse or sadness in his voice. “This was always the way it was supposed to be. You were the strong one, the son to succeed me, to follow in my footsteps. You’ve just proven your strength. Now I give you one last chance: come back to me, be my son again, take up your role as the future president of the Tri-Realms.”

“Or what?” Tristan scoffs.

His father’s words are a snarl. “Face the consequences.”

“I’ll never join you,” Tristan says without hesitation.

“Then you and your friends die.”

“Then we’ll die with honor.”

“So be it.”

Tristan

The gate opens and Roc is led back into the pit by three guards, who mostly ignore me. One of them unshackles Roc and gives him a sword. The other two carry Killen’s body and sword out through a door, closing it behind them, leaving only the blood on the ground and on my shirt as a reminder of what transpired here—of what I did.

I’m numb as I stare at my best friend through blurred vision. When I glance at my father, who stares down with such hatred at me, his last remaining son, the hot rage flares up again, but as soon as my gaze drifts to Adele, it dissipates. I take in her lovely pale skin, her moist, emerald eyes, her forlorn but strong expression. I let the vision linger in my mind long after my eyes move on, back to Roc.

“I won’t fight him,” I say to my father, still looking at my best friend.

“You don’t have to,” he says, surprising my eyes back to him. He wears a cat-and-mouse expression that screams
I’m better than you!
“But if you don’t fight, the moon dweller dies.” Once more, a guard pulls Adele’s head back by grabbing her hair and slides a knife to her throat. My breath catches in my throat. An impossible choice. Fight Roc, potentially killing him, or refuse to fight and watch the girl I—I—I now know that I love, without a doubt in my mind, die in the most horrific manner. Perhaps there are some that have the moral compass to make such a decision, but alas, I am not such a person. I flounder, breathing raggedly, my mind spinning.

Even to the end, Roc is there for me. He says, “Fight me, Tristan. You have no choice.” In his eyes is a plan, perhaps to buy time with a little “safe” swordplay, until an opportunity presents itself. Perhaps something else, I’m not entirely sure.

But it’s a sliver of a chance at saving them both, so I grab it. “We’ll fight,” I say.

“Delicious,” my father says. Although I don’t look at him, he’s licking his lips in my peripheral vision. “But remember, if I so much as get a whiff that you’re not really going at each other, that you’re holding anything back, she dies anyway.”

My heart sinks at his words. Whatever Roc is planning, such a decree surely destroys any chance we have at buying some time. Roc’s face, however, doesn’t show any concern. In fact, it’s quite the opposite: almost shining with peace, his lips closed but slightly curled up in an unexpected smile.
What’s he so happy about?
I wonder silently.

“Now fight!” my father commands.

Roc comes at me immediately, not holding back, attacking with a vehemence I rarely even saw in some of our more heated training matches. With precise movements I block his blows easily, noticing his improvement in the few short weeks since we left the Sun Realm. However, even improved, his skills fall well short of my years of training and experience. With each successful defense I spot several holes in his approach, each of which I could use to disarm him. Of course, I ignore such opportunities, because to disarm him would mean the release of the final grains of sand in our already diminishing hourglass. To cover up the fact that I’m holding back, I pretend to stumble, to trip over my own feet, allowing Roc to continue his barrage of fierce and somewhat awkward attacks.
What is he doing?
I still can’t get a bead on why Roc seemed so happy before we started fighting and what he could possibly have up his sleeve that will help us in our current situation.

I leap back again, block another powerfully clumsy sword strike, ignore a chance to slip under his arm and kick him, punch him, head butt him, and altogether end the fight. Breathing heavily, we back away for a few seconds, staring at each other. There’s a fire in Roc’s eyes, but it’s not anger or violence toward me, although that’s what he’s expressing outwardly, it’s something else I’ve never seen in him before.
A plan.

“Tristan!” my father yells. “You’re not trying hard enough. You could have killed your servant eight times already. Don’t be so arrogant to think I didn’t notice. If the next round is the same, I’ll order my guard to slit her throat.”

Before this started, I was beaten. My father holds all the stones, and all I have is an ignorant child’s hope that perhaps we can get out of this alive. If I don’t fight, she dies. If I do fight, Roc dies. Either way, he’ll probably kill us all eventually anyway. So why am I fighting my best friend? The answer finally comes to me and I almost bang my head with my fist for being so stupid.
I shouldn’t be fighting Roc.
My father is going to win no matter what, but I can at least deny him the pleasure of pulling his puppet strings and making us all dance for him. I have two choices: kill myself or let one of Roc’s blows sneak through my defenses to kill me. Maybe it won’t save them, but it will at least give them a chance. And I can’t let Roc kill me—he’ll never forgive himself. So that means falling on my own sword.

A sense of peace washes over me as I know I’ve made my decision. My lips curl into a slight smile. That’s when I realize: Roc felt the same peace, had the same content expression just before we started to fight. He came to the same conclusion, except for himself. To kill himself.

I look at him. He’s watching me curiously, but then something changes in his expression. I could never hide anything from him, and I can’t now. He knows what I’m thinking.

A flash of concern narrows his eyebrows, and before I know what’s happening, he raises his sword—there’s a sharp shout from the seats—turns it back on himself—another meaningless shout—and plunges it into his gut.

Adele

Tristan and Roc are just watching each other, perhaps waiting for the other to make a move, when Tawni’s voice enters my ears. It sounds different than usual, all sweetness and caring sucked out of it, leaving only a black grit that is still somehow recognizable as her voice. “Stop this or you die,” she says.

I turn sharply, hearing one of the guards shout an alarm, but it’s too late for anyone to do anything. Tawni’s on her feet, which are still shackled together, her arms outstretched, holding a gun. No, not
a
gun.
My
gun. The one my mother gave me, shiny and new and deadly. The one I used to kill my father’s murderer, the gun that should be used to kill my father’s real murderer: President Nailin. The gun I gave her because I couldn’t bear to have it near me. From her wrists dangle the ropes, now unknotted, that once bound her hands together. She’s managed to get them undone. But how’d she get the gun off the guard?

I remember: the guard getting frisky with her, groping her instead of properly searching her, not worried about her because she was throwing metal balls—clearly weaponless. Wrong. She bore his roving hands, not fighting back, not crying out, hoping he wouldn’t find it. The gun. Tucked safely under her dress in the small of her back, held hidden in the holster I gave her. She could have used it when we were fighting before but didn’t, either because she’s not used to having a gun at all, or because she was scared of the killing. Either way, I don’t blame her. She has it out now and looks ready to use it.