Chapter Text
Sophie might’ve thought it was her wedding day.
Except for her face, she’d been mummified in acicular gemstone prisms; splitting light and color as she floated in the mirror like an optical illusion. Rings, bangles, and bracelets straitjacketed her acrobatic physique, already on her way to be placed in a casket.
It had been fitted for Tedros by his modeling agency, but Agatha had swiped the blueprint on the last day. She’d equipped her with every piece of artillery the mines could fashion.
Exactly the attire she wanted for the engagement party, and tartly declined by Rhian who said she was dressed too much like his liege.
“We are equals,” he had affirmed. “Don’t you want the world to know that?”
They were anything but.
Her phone hammered with messages from Rhian, growing relentless.
Then the last one: ‘Open the door.’
She obeyed.
His disposition was so calm, his kiss so noble on her lips.
How was he able to slide the uneasiness off so effortlessly? Like he had the universe in his hands. Sophie forgot all about the wickedness she intended to hate.
“How are you feeling, love?” Rhian said.
“What do you think,” said Sophie. “You said you’d never leave me. You promised me.”
“The promise continues to hold.”
Sophie remembered the criminal who had started it all.
“Have you found him? You can make Japeth change his mind.”
Rhian tucked a strand behind her ear. She shivered. “At this stage the search will hardly be necessary. We shouldn’t dwell on it. If you truly love me, you will know the course to take.”
Why did he invest the answer to such a horrific predicament in her? A stupid, primadonna extra with a streak of viciousness. Even the crown on her head was a fake.
Rhian would understand. Rhian couldn’t let her have a say in his own destruction.
“But I don’t know,” Sophie said. “I don’t know!”
Rhian seized her by the nape of her neck and sunk his gaze into hers.
“Do you love me?”
Sophie surrendered. “Yes.”
“Well,” he said. “There will be no hesitation.”
He led her out of the dressing room into the elevator.
“I wish you luck, Sophie. You will need it.”
Again she was taken up into the blinding brilliance.
There were no blaring alarms. No crowds. A translucent, computerized bubble separated Rhian and Japeth’s viewing booth from the stillness of the ring.
The show was for them.
“Back for a rematch?” said Hester, much more self-assured than her.
“It was never much of one in the first place,” Sophie responded.
Suddenly, Hester dropped to the ground.
“Do you feel that?” she said. “Like an earthquake.”
Sophie shook her head.
With a ghastly creak, the titanium floor fractured beneath Hester’s feet.
Slowly it opened up, the sawtoothed crack lurching and groaning into a deep, deep ravine.
Hester scrambled to the side.
What emerged was a creature that weakened Sophie to her core.
It seemed to crawl from a grotesque middling of history books and some perverted experiment; a sabertooth the size of an elephant, coarsed over in spiny alligator leather and endowed with horns and tusks. Its cat-like mechanics were made up of mangled metal, its paws enormous slabs of iron. All around this wretched freak Sophie could taste the mist of magic sewing its parts together.
A toxic, malnourishing, bestial magic. Something subhuman.
The creature sniffed at Hester, and lifted a claw as if to skewer her.
She held her ground. “Sophie, get back. I remember him, from school.”
Its mouth stretched into a predatory grin. It was well informed of its might.
“That,” said Sophie. “Was a student?”
“A chimera. It was used to discipline us. Now it’s going to discipline you.”
The chimera let out a warped cry of anguish and plowed into Sophie.
She vaulted onto the tip of his tusk.
“Is this thing a part of the competition?” she said as it tried to rattle her off.
Hester dashed in front, trying to distract it.
Using a bow, she aimed arrows into the chimera’s gnarled eyes.
“Must be, to give you a disadvantage”
Sophie, still standing on the see-saw of the creature’s ivory, plucked an emerald choker from her neck. It unfurled into a thick, notched emerald rod. With it she bludgeoned the tusk, its clefts fitting precisely like puzzle pieces. A single rotation of her arm and the tusk splintered to slivers. Sophie sprang to the next one and did the same.
Strange, robotic words seeped through its howling.
A monotone chant.
Die.
Die.
Die.
“Come on!” she said to Hester, and pulled her up on the chimera’s barbed back. In a manic frenzy it flung them from side to side. Sophie kept Hester’s balance steady.
“Pretend we’re sparring. On three.”
Both withdrew swords; Sophie’s modified from her tanzanite belt, Hester’s from the sheath of her forearm.
“1. 2. 3”
Swords clashed, their figures entangled and intertwined.
They were nose to nose.
“If you wanted to kiss me, you could have asked” said Hester, eyebrows furrowing.
“You said it, not me,” Sophie said smugly. Gradually she closed the gap, inch by inch, until her lips scarcely skimmed hers.
There was no sweet release.
Sophie shoved the girl. Frustrated, Hester interrupted her fall with a sword, plunged into the chimera’s crooked spinal column.
“What was that for?” she carped.
The creature arched in pain.
Its vertebrae disgorged from the tissue, rolling like a tide.
“To make you chase it,” Sophie teased.
She ran down the chimera’s back, pitched into a somersault, and lifted off midair from the flick of the tail.
Her sash of amethyst sculpted into a grappling hook; its flukes gouging into the milky white of the barrier.
She swayed from the rope with a gleeful laugh. “Come and get me!”
Hester, on the other hand, was attempting to harness the brute.
She stood on the top of its head, wielding a yoke as it writhed and thrashed. In every movement a piece of the creature started to decompose.
The very anatomy was disarranging.
And it wasn’t Hester’s doing.
Sophie’s awareness shifted to Japeth on his pedestal.
His posture draped lazily in his chair. In his glove he twiddled a pair of marionette strings, trailing down to some oversized puppet. It was vaguely human, limp and waxen with scraggly hair.
Japeth splayed the reins of his ragdoll.
Another strangled wail uttered from the beast, no longer mechanical, as if it were a mouthpiece.
“I will survive. Sophie will die.”
Yet it continued to decay.
Sophie said, “Something’s wrong”
“What?” Hester panted. Her footholds shook.
“Think. Why is the chimera here? Why is it in our way? It’s a distraction. It must be. So get up here. A bigger enemy is coming.”
“Tell me, then. What other enemy would they bring?”
“It won’t be anything new. It’s what that creature will become,” Sophie said. Right on time, its skeleton caved in and collapsed.
She hurled a lasso at Hester, reeling her in. The warrior ended up in her arms.
“I had him,” she protested.
“That’s the goal,” said Sophie softly. “ The faster you defeat him, the faster he will be reborn. And whether or not you pursue me, I’m their quarry. The one way to end this is to defeat its maker.”
“You have a death wish?” Hester’s countenance darkened. “Japeth might as well be immortal.”
The chimera’s scream shattered all sense of time and space.
Sophie’s ears rang.
Its transformation was complete.
Aric arose from the chimera’s carcass, his brawn reinforced with that of both animal and machine.
He was still a corpse in every way; his outer shell bleach-white, his veins glowed, his organs bulged out. But he was fueled by magic like a drug. The scent throttled the air.
He pounced on the end of Sophie’s rope and clambered up.
“Alright, alright, we have to go,” Hester admitted. She flexed her bicep and her arm transmuted into a steel androidian demon. It spread its wings and whisked the two across the safeguard. Sophie let her feet kick and dip into its coding. Glass digits detonated at her touch.
“Since when did you have this?”
“Since now,” boasted Hester. She directed her demon skyward. Straight to Japeth’s box.
Sophie looked back.
Aric was scrabbling sideways after them. Scraps of software eroded in his wake.
She dug her heels in. “Go! Go!”
The demon picked up speed, now at a 90 degree angle.
With a crash they burst through the barrier.
“Your charade is over,” Hester said, brandishing her swords.
Sophie snatched away the marionette strings and burned them to ash in her hand.
“I refuse to be traded for Rhian’s pitiful life.”
Japeth tilted his head. “What do you mean? The bargain’s been made.”
Sophie stared. “I’m sorry, what?”
Steadily Japeth’s pallid complexion warmed into Rhian’s.
“Don’t you recognize me, love?” he said. “I knew I could trust you to choose yourself. It’s what you do.”
“What happened to loyalty?” Sophie said.
Rhian flipped a hand at Hester, and her mouth was magically taped shut.
“Loyalty?” He drawled. “Your hypocrisy amazes me. When Aric was tragically murdered-”
“Don’t feign empathy. Don’t act like you care. He was a tyrant, and he was turned that way by people like you.”
Rhian smiled scornfully. “It was because of my empathy and my devotion that you did not become a replaceable bully like Aric. But it seems like all my other concubines, your primitive little seed of humanity has ripened. Sophie, you talk so much of others’ vices but you forget what you are. How many have suffered because of you? How many have died?”
“How many have you bred to be weapons?” Sophie retorted.
“Enough to know I’m doing it right.”
Rhian regarded the rotting Aric behind her. His bright violet eyes simmered to brown, his gauntness filled out and chiseled down.
Kei.
It was Kei the whole time.
His expression was haunted and afraid.
“I didn’t want to. Believe me, Sophie, I didn’t want to. It was Rhian. I couldn’t- I couldn’t not listen.”
Sophie felt sick. She held onto Hester for stability.
“Rhian, please, please forgive me.”
It was useless.
Her prince turned his back. “You’re usually so cute when you beg. But now you’re nothing but a disgrace. Take them to the Reformatory.”
Kei swept them both away.
To their ruin.
———
Her consciousness dim, her vision spiraling at the edges, Sophie awakened in a gloomy prison. The cage was spherical, small, and frozen over. Upon attempting to stand, her feet slipped and she fell, her temple wiping the curvature of the cell wall.
“Ow,” Sophie said. Her voice reverberated throughout.
On her second, third, fourth try to stand up, she fell every time.
“Hmph, fine, I’ll sit.”
Sophie crouched into a ball and crossed her arms to keep warm. Though meagerly dressed in a nightrobe, trapped in a Arctician hamster wheel, and frighteningly lonely, she didn’t question it.
It was meant to be.
There was a reason she was put there, a sensible reason. Somebody had told her long ago, and she hadn’t noticed. She had been looking at the butterflies, tiny wisps of color in that garden.
The floodgates of her gorgeous memory opened. The garden was lush and endless, fauna and flora fluctuating in texture and hue. She reclined on the knit blanket laid out for her, wading in the sunbath.
Who had created this?
Whoever they are, Sophie was happy with her gift.
Everything was good.
And if she could stay with those pretty butterflies forever, then she would be satisfied.
———
It had been many days since her awakening. Maybe it was weeks, Sophie could not tell. She did not starve nor become tired or dirty. Though she was cold, bored, and apathetic all the time. There was not much to react to.
When she had finished her post-nap yoga session and her nail-sharpening routine (her ring was the only item salvaged from the outside), involuntarily she would drift off into her Eden. Not that she resisted. She loved her corner of the earth. It was so perfect, and so beautiful.
This time there was a mirror where her blanket used to be.
She examined her face, incredulous that she looked like that.
A lovely fairy in a lovely place.
Without a past, a future, or a present. Her only belonging was this Eden. Much more pleasant than her coop, but it gave her no remedies. Rather, it resolved her want for them.
Sophie fidgeted with her knife-ring, feeling discontented.
Impulsively she cut her hair, two feet of it, so that it grazed her earlobes.
The absoluteness of the motion was foreign, barbaric, and yet induced such a euphoria that Sophie could not constrain herself. As if in a free-for-all she giddily massacred every flower and plant in sight. Her once verdant garden was a graveyard.
She picked up the mirror. Happiness dissolved into disconcertment.
In her reflection was an intimidatingly tall, muscular girl a distance behind her. Her left arm was a bionic replica, and she was ever so familiar.
“New hair,” the stranger commented. “Suits you.”
“Do I know you?” she called out. A double-check over her shoulder and there was no such girl, though the apparition in the mirror was strikingly real.
“Yeah,” said the girl. “My name’s Hester. You’ll know me once you remember.”
“What don’t I remember?” Sophie said.
“Everything, looks like. We were gladiators. We were rivals. We were…” Hester paused. “Friends. You, rightfully, killed a man named Aric. We wanted to kill the people that corrupted us, and we failed.”
“Who?”
“Japeth and Rhian, the ones who put you here.”
“And you?” Sophie asked. “Who put you here?”
“Your best friend, Agatha, through a spell. She and Tedros are going to rescue you as undercover guards, and Kei’s a prisoner, he’s in on it,” Hester explained. “Point is, don’t trust anyone except us. And try to practice magic while you’re waiting, you haven’t for a month.”
“Right,” swallowed Sophie. Her mind was spinning. She’d never used magic before. “How can I meet you?”
“You can’t,” said Hester. “You can’t be in this garden again, not after what I’ve told you. Look around, it’s been tainted. You don’t want to look like you’re causing a mutiny when you’re not. It was a placeholder for your purification, and now that you know…. well, you’ll remember soon.”
Sophie corrected herself. “Will I ever meet you again?”
“I don’t know,” Her eyes curved in her misery. “But I’ll be around.”
She disappeared away, and soon so did Sophie.
When she came to, a strange, handsome man was fussing the buttons of his jacket, perched upright and cursing to himself. Ruddy bags lined his almond eyes, his hair unkempt.
This was the second stranger she’d seen that day (or immeasurable unit of time) who had come out of nowhere.
“You’re not Hester,” said Sophie, startled.
“I’m Kei,” Kei said. “You know who I am.”
“No. Should I?”
Kei opened his mouth to speak and seemed to think better of it. “Never mind.”
Sophie ran a hand through her choppy pixie cut nervously.
“Rhian evidently favored you, didn’t he,” he said to her. “Your incarceration is tolerable compared to some others’.”
Kei crumpled into a cross-legged position. “Unlike you, I have to learn a lesson. All my memories are about him.”
“Your memories? You have memories? Okay, no. Tell me what’s happening,” ordered Sophie.
Kei realized. “He purified you to the bone. You don’t have anything up there.”
“I have a garden!” said Sophie defensively.
Hastily he told her the plan in more depth.
“And what of my magic?”
“You were a pyro. I don’t know if you’d have much success practicing though.”
“Don’t doubt me!” said Sophie, and on command sparks fluttered from her tongue.
Kei settled into a slouch. “Go ahead and try. I need to sleep.”
———
Kei was, in fact, not sleeping. He was being drowned into his memory, against his will, and he could feel Rhian taunting him as he pulled his red thread of fate tighter.
He was in his designated lounge, where Rhian often locked him away so he could cheat on his fiancee in privacy, while afterward Kei would be left soaked in shame. He was a childish secret, his cheap thrill behind the scenes. A plaything used for his convenience.
His room was forbidden to anyone else.
The door was wide open. It was how he knew he’d been caught.
“I thought you could handle being a Reformatory guard,” said Rhian. His lip curled. “As opposed to… whatever you want to call yourself.”
He was so much more benevolent in this purified dream. It would be easier to love him if he acted this way all the time.
“You know I didn’t want to be employed by Japeth,” said Kei.
Rhian adjusted his lieutenant's jacket. “And you defy my decision by conspiring to give Hester reprieve?”
“What makes you think I’m rebelling? I don’t live always in feedback to you.”
“Don’t you?” Rhian provoked.
The jacket was quickly disposed of.
“I don’t exist to be loved by you.” Kei breathed. As if he was trying to get them all out.
“Hollow words. You can do better. What do you have to say to me?”
Kei knew this routine well. He knew the desperation, the rhythm he used to charm his lover out of anger.
“I’m sorry. I want to make it up to you,” Kei said. Naturally he pressed his lips to Rhian’s, straddling him down to the sofa.
Kei internally recoiled at how daring he was. Rhian had invented this, did he want him to be more forward?
He kissed him harder.
A hand on his chest, pushing him back.
“Not this time,” Rhian said, sighing. “You can’t distract me.”
“I wasn’t-” Kei objected.
Rhian became inscrutable. “You knew what you were doing. Take your punishment.”
That’s when he’d been hit over the head.
Kei remembered it so heartbreakingly well.
———
As soon as he was able, Sophie asked Kei about Hester.
What was she like, how they had met, what interests did she have.
He seemed unsettled after his dream-memory and he smoothly latched onto an entire narrative of Hester. Sophie could tell most of it he was making up, but she was happy to hear his stories anyways.
“Hester sounds important to you,” said Kei.
“I don’t know why. I simply had a feeling,” Sophie said. “Should I go back to Eden and see if she’s there? She said not to-”
“How about you secure your magic back like she asked. Think of something that makes your emotions go mad.”
What with her brain being wholly drained, she couldn’t. She couldn’t even conjure her imagination.
She slammed her foot down in resentment. “I’m useless, aren’t I?”
“You’re not,” Kei said, resolute. “You’re not. Do you know why you’re purified and I’m not? It’s because you disabled his dominance and he couldn’t handle it. Rhian governs my own thoughts everyday, forcing me to feel guilty, planting fantasies of crawling back to him when my sentence is done. It’s the only option I have, and he knows it. You’re not useless. You’re just starting from scratch and you haven’t found your purpose yet.”
Oddly, Sophie ached in subconscious understanding. More than sympathy. More than sensitivity. It was identification.
She patted Kei to comfort him.
A shock traveled from her body to his.
“I didn’t mean to,” she apologized. “Were you hurt?”
“It’s good,” he coughed. “It ought to hurt.”
A low voice shouted from outside.
“Let’s go! Subdue the prisoner! You know how much trouble we’d be in if Hester was on the loose? To the main station!”
It shrank to a whisper. “Agatha, they’re right here, I think.”
Sophie scrambled to its source, ears pricked.
Another voice, only gravelly and more feminine.
“Shut up, Tedros,” she chastised. “You’re having way too much fun for a high security jail.”
The cell extended into a square platform.
Sophie gaped at the pair of guards, one lanky and sporting a black fringed mullet, the other the spitting image of Apollo.
“You’re the people Hester mentioned,” Sophie deduced. “Right?”
“Came earlier than expected,” Kei said.
Agatha appeared on the verge of crying. “You’re safe!” she said. “You’re safe.”
“You don’t say,” said Sophie, not knowing how to be around her so-called best friend.
“Hester can’t hold them off too long, we have to find Reaper,” Tedros urged.
They scurried down several tunnels that seemed to go in loops and coils. Sophie gave up on comprehending.
Distantly she could pick up on the gunfights ensuing in some juncture of the institution.
Hester could protect herself, couldn’t she.
———
Sophie studied her ride up and down.
They had arrived in a military car port, cleaned out of any vehicles — except for a massive, vaguely reptilian automaton, furnished with batlike battle wings and ridges of iron scales.
“Reaper, we’re ready,” said Agatha.
Curled into a circle like a cat, the slumbering dragon brightened up and adjusted to let its riders mount.
A ping from Tedros’ transmitter snapped her out of awe.
“Agatha and I have to leave.”
His tan skin paled. “Japeth is demanding every guard in this wing. He intends to obliterate her. If we’re there first, we could coordinate the team Hester wanted.”
“I can’t operate Reaper myself!” Sophie balked. “I don’t know anything about anything.”
Agatha bit her lip, deciding. At last she handed her friend a small flask sloshing with what looked like liquid fireflies. “I stole it from the memory cooler. I really should be monitoring you… no one should intake their entire lives in one sitting. But everything will be back to normal.”
Hesitantly she matched Tedros in his race down the hall.
“That’s over. Let’s go, Reaper,” Kei instructed. Dutifully and chaotically Reaper crashed through the port gate, diving into the cold-blooded blue and ascending into the clouds. They coasted soundlessly along the tradewinds for awhile until Sophie felt grounded enough to drink.
She gagged the potion down. Once it pooled in her stomach did Sophie’s perspective start to plummet.
Dizzy, she staggered into her garden.
The divine Eden she adored so much had crumbled.
It had become a colorless wasteland, the horizon nonexistent, the flowers recessed into a desert.
This isn’t what she wanted.
Only thing she could feel was the saturated swamp of friction in the sky, the negatives and positives whirring.
Thunder rumbled. Wind swirled. Anticipating.
Lightning rained down. Storms terrorized the plain, gleaming cascades of it, fountains of her youth pouring in craggy cuts and wounding the earth.
Memories filled her psyche, rawed and roughened and hard.
Her father wrestling with her brothers in the heat, the incessant dinner-table talk of the martyrdom they’d grow up in; the disapproving aftermath she came home to after her first duel, the mountain of illegal fight club trophies she couldn’t explain; her joy of when Rhian had proposed to her in the last natural forest in the continent, the way her radiance withered whenever Rhian tossed her aside.
Hester, the shine in her eyes, her silent willfulness, the fluid violence of everything she was.
Where was she? Sophie needed her. Now.
Shifting from her dream state to reality, she rushed at Kei, barely making him trip.
“Why aren’t we coming for Hester?”
“The plans changed.”
“What are you hiding from me?” Sophie asked again.
Kei averted his attention to his shoes.
“You’re scared of going back,” she accused. “You’d let Hester be crucified so you can find refuge for yourself.”
“Rhian claims me, more so than you,” Kei flared. “It’s like none of my actions are my own. It’s too risky.”
“We’re taking that risk.” Sophie grabbed Kei’s collar and dangled him midair.
She ignored his yelling and let him hang on the dragon's side.
“Reaper. Back to the Reformatory.”
———
They stood equidistant between Japeth and Rhian. Guards bordered their generals.
Hester was on the other side, tied up and muzzled.
Nobody dared attack.
Rhian focused on the weak link. “Kei, please,” he said. “You wouldn’t be so reckless if I had simply been truthful with my affections. That’s my fault. I don’t want to ever make you feel unwanted.”
“But you did,” said Kei.
“We can start over,” Rhian persuaded. “I’ll drop my job. Forget everyone else.”
“Don’t go,” Sophie said, coming to terms that Kei had been correct. He was helpless, just like her when she was younger. “There’s nothing for you. Trust me.”
Kei’s eyes watered. “Didn’t I warn you, Sophie?”
He joined Rhian’s side, and reeled him into a treacherous, passionate kiss.
It was lost. All lost. Sophie wanted to draw into a concave, blank slated and blissful like she was in her prison domain of isolation.
Then she saw the glint of a ring on his hand behind his back.
Her wedding finger was barren. Impossible.
Kei pulled away, only for a split-second, an inch of space between him and his prince. With his dagger he slit Rhian’s throat. A neat waterfall of blood flowed.
In his last breath he captured Kei’s mouth once more.
“Get away from him!” Sophie snarled.
Like a bullet, lightning cannoned into Rhian’s chest. His body hit the wall in a resounding thump.
“How mortifyingly inadequate,” Japeth remarked. A single scim flayed off his thigh and pierced Kei in the ribs. He folded in half and fell. “You won’t find me as easy.”
His coat of scims jittered with expectation of humans to eat.
Each of those slimy black eels pivoted to the side. Facing Hester.
A blast of clarity knocked into Sophie’s head.
“That’s your medal-winner,” she said, treading water. “You won’t do it.”
Japeth smirked. “Maybe I will, maybe I won’t. Do you feel lucky?”
No, she didn’t. But she was the offering. She was the sacrifice.
Scims shot out.
She threw herself over Hester.
Savage pain blossomed in her breast. Blood spilled and stained the floor.
Hester wriggled out of her bonds and took Sophie gently in her embrace.
“You weren’t supposed to save me,” she sobbed. “I wanted you alive, and free.”
“I’m alive,” Sophie maintained her gasping in slow intervals. “I’m alive.”
Hester gritted her teeth and let out a whistle.
The guards discarded their helmets.
Surrounding them was Beatrix, Reena, Anadil, Dot, Tedros, and Agatha. All of their allies in one place.
They charged Japeth; Beatrix and Reena with bayonets, Anadil riding on her rabid, 20 feet tall rats, Dot with a trident, Tedros flying with Excalibur (covered in pixie dust). Agatha on a levitation board.
Japeth scattered his scims in every direction like darts.
Once he let go, another sheet of scims enveloped him to make a shield.
“Coward,” Agatha rasped.
She skated around him in cyclical circuits, her magic expertly dismantling his cover piece by piece; arms linked with Tedros, who hauled Dot along, until her full guard was in orbit. At every glimpse of sallow skin they struck.
“Quit nursing me,” Sophie entreated Hester. “Shoot that vermin down.”
“You’d better not die on me,” she retaliated.
Hester strode forward. Her arm transformed into a demon. Immaturely it stuck out its tongue, remodeling into a broadsword as she took the hilt.
She ripped open a hole in Japeth’s brittle fortress, leaving him an incacipitated madman. Scims wilted and dried up, the harsh ice in his eyes dulling. Hester felt no pity. This was the man who’d belittled her and bullied her at every turn, the evil who couldn’t bear to let her live.
Sophie lurched to her feet, still hurting.
“You won’t ever control us again.”
Knots of electricity unraveled from her wrists into silky cords, digging beneath Japeth’s flesh and weaving him into a web.
He was the paralyzed prey in his hunter’s net.
Sophie nodded. “Hester, you may have the honor.”
“I know,” she reprised. “It’s just that Japeth could never earn the privilege of being killed by me.”
Her oppressor right where she wanted him, Hester brought down her sword, splitting him through the heart.
He died in fear of the monsters he ruled.
in the same vein, Sophie’s time had run out.
Hester caught her as she fainted. The blood loss had become too much.
Agatha and the guard piling onto Reaper, Tedros carrying an injured Kei, and Hester holding Sophie close.
They flew into the dusky evening.
“We won!” said Sophie, exhausted and crying.
“We won.” Hester brushed the tears off her girlfriend’s cheek.
“And now you can rest.”
———
The dawn light cast a glow over them, the glint of Hester’s metal arm blinding Sophie awake. It must have been intentional, or else that girl wouldn’t be laughing at her expense.
“Can you stop,” she said.
“Don’t make fun of it, come on now,” Hester goaded, blinding her again. “We’re on an equal playing field.”
She helped Sophie up on Reaper’s wobbly saddle and poked her in the chest. It gave a heavy clang.
“God, no,” denied Sophie. “No, that’s a ruse.”
She scrubbed the dust off Hester’s forearm and looked. Replacing her heart was a large, clear steel diamond. Sunbeams streamed through it.
“I’m- I’m-”
“Like me?” Hester said. “You’ll get used to the feeling.”
“It’s not bad,” she confessed.
“You look beautiful with it.”
Sophie thought she didn’t hear right. “What did you say?”
Hester answered her with a kiss. She closed her eyes, her hands got lost in her hair, and above all they were free. Like they had always dreamed of.
“I didn’t think I’d ever get that kiss,” said Sophie.
“I know you just want another one.”
Holding hands, the couple looked out at the sunrise.
For once in their lives, they had hope.
And they weren’t alone.