23

Luc Zelsor and his Last Breath

Being dragged back to the Dark Corner by his ankles would have been better than this. The Shadow Army beat Luc senseless in the air first, hidden away from the sight of humans who hadn't a clue that fairies were passing by overhead, brushing their faces as a wisp of wind, tugging at their clothes in a gale, or slipping through their hair as nothing more than a breeze.

Reval went in and out of Luc's vision. He was a monster in the sky, his hair fluttering, his eyes bright, his black sabers drawn. He hovered, always just a gust away, watching everything. There was only blackness in the Dark Prince's bones—Luc had always known it. Now he got to see it firsthand. In fact, it would be the last thing he ever saw.

When Luc's chest was so full of holes that the wind nearly sailed through him, the Shadows dropped him. He spiralled, being sucked down toward the realm's floor with not a seed of energy left to catch himself. His hands numbly searched the air for purchase, never finding grip, never finding a promise.

As he fell past a spoked roof and into the shadow of a tall building, his fox bead slid over his tongue, reminding him what he was. That where other fairies often failed and died, he had an extra push that had saved him before. He wasn't sure if he could find it, if it was still there after everything in his chest had been ripped out. But he closed his eyes and dug deep into himself, into his gift of the sky deities, into his iron-coated will.

It wasn't much, but he found one last sparkle of vigor. With it, he slipped out of his fall, catching himself on a passing wind.

It was a gong show of a catch. Luc tore off his path and dropped himself again, shooting his precious body sideways and plummeting through a glass window. A chyme-like music filled his ears as glass shattered and shards sprinkled over a long, empty room.

He was dead as soon as he hit the floor.

His rhythms had relocated into his head, loud and deep.

Luc squinted as the pounding filled his ears and overcame his senses. He could smell and taste the sound; it carried the fragrance of blood and the salty flavour of sweat. Tugging sensations birthed over his flesh and deep into his body as his wounds began to close themselves up.

Something at his neck quivered, and Luc's hand soared to his chest. His eyes flew open, and he sat up. He raised his foxtail necklace and watched the glossy threads of his second-last tail evaporate and return to the sky deities.

One left.

Just one spare.

Two more deadly strikes and he would not come back. Then he would be just another fox legend young fairies might read about in old books, and if he was lucky, they might whisper about him before bedtime.

A pale-skinned hand appeared and tugged the necklace from him. Luc almost snatched it back, almost panicked. Reval was crouched down, examining the one thing standing between him having a son and no longer having one.

Would he really do it? Luc no longer knew if his father wanted to keep him alive. Luc was, and perhaps always had been, just another threat to the High Prince. Something that stood in his way, just like Luc's mother had.

Luc did not want to think about his mother, but he could not stop himself now. As he stared into the glimmering, wicked eyes of the male who had sent her away, then kidnapped her, and was likely starving her to death—Luc's energy came back tenfold. He reached for his last spare life, tore it from Reval's grip, and tucked it back beneath his shirt where it belonged .

Behind the Dark Prince was an enormous lobby with tall, cathedral-like ceilings. Long tables were stationed neatly around the room, apart from the one Luc had smashed when he flew in. Books filled shelves at the far end, and button-covered computers lined the walls on separate desks. It appeared to be some sort of human academy or study space.

"You started with nine, and you were down to five when we caught you. How shameful." Reval's voice was cold and detached, and Luc knew now that his suspicion was correct. Reval had already separated himself from his fox child. Reval was going to kill him.

"How many do you have left?" Luc challenged, and he rose from the floor, scanning the room for his fairsabers. But, naturally, his fairsabers were gone. It was the first thing the Shadows had wrestled out of his hands. Reval had stabbed him through the heart after that. It was the first life Luc had lost of the five that he had worked so hard to save. It had been a quick death show after that as he'd been impaled over and over.

At Luc's question, Reval stood, his appearance growing colder. "Oh dear," Luc rasped, cocking his head. "Is that a difficult question to answer?" He glanced down at Reval's collar where a gold chain was tucked safely below his breastplate. "Why, Father?" Luc asked, studying the subtle tightness of the fool's throat, his face, his shoulders. A true study of a fairy if there ever was one.

Luc found his wickedly broad smile. It had been a bit since he'd used his smile. He'd missed the feeling, even if it did put a sting in his cracked lips.

"Could it be that your father stole all your fox lives on that shadowy mountain twenty-five years ago?" Luc asked. The sky darkened outside; an icy breeze skittered past the windows of the building. The floor seemed to shake below Luc's legs, the desks all rattling a little. Luc huffed in disbelief. "My dear mother told me that story. And now that I'm thinking about it, a female that clever couldn't have been captured by the likes of you. She's not really starving in a pit somewhere, is she? Be honest." Luc watched his father's face very carefully—more carefully than he ever had.

The Dark Prince drew his right fairsaber, ending the conversation, and Luc knew it was all over now. So, he decided to go out with a laugh.

It started as just a chuckle, but the more he thought about it, the more real his cackling became. All this time… if he had simply struck first, perhaps he might have spared himself, and his mother, and the Dark Corner, all this dread. And now Reval would rule the Dark Corner as the hollow-chested male who had destroyed every fairy who had ever been close to him. He was a monster; a poison to the fair folk. He would turn the Dark Corner to ash and let the villages starve to death. He would probably assassinate the Dark Queene with his bloodthirsty Army. Luc had seen it coming, yet he had not moved quickly enough. If by some miracle the sky deities would give him more lives to spare, Luc would not make the sa me mistake twice.

Reval's blade plunged into his chest, and Luc gasped. Torrents of wind raked through his hair, reaching into his soul and ripping out the last spare life he'd been gifted at birth. He fell back, meeting the blackness once again.

There was shouting somewhere deep in the folds of space around him. It sounded as nothing more than a watery echo. Luc didn't want to wake. He didn't want to open his eyes, lest his last life be taken. But perhaps it was time. Perhaps he had fought long enough. Perhaps this was his destiny after all, to be cursed as a nine tailed fox. Given nine extra lives. Nine chances that ultimately were his ruin and the very cause of his death in the end, like so many of the legendary foxes before him.

But when he peeled his tired eyes open, he saw the brightest orange he'd ever gazed upon. Melted gold, tearing across the air, blanketing everything in sight. He didn't recognize what it was at first, but then he knew. He knew it was a sign. A miracle; perhaps the one he had been waiting for. The sky deities' answer to the call of a dying fox.

He dragged his gaze slowly to the Dark Prince standing above him. Reval turned in circles, shouting orders that got lost and muffled in Luc's ears. Luc could not quite see clearly; he couldn't hear most things yet, either. It was too soon, but he did not waste his one chance. The golden gift from the sky.

Luc rose, rolling to his feet in one swift motion. He ripped the fairsaber from Reval's hand, and he plunged it into the Dark Prince's chest. Right into the place where a heart was supposed to be, if a fairy like him were capable of possessing one.

Roaring thunder from outside became sharper in Luc's ears as he stared at Reval's gasping face.

The rest of the room slithered into Luc's consciousness—the shouting Shadow Fairies, the assembling Army, all the pointing at some fire-wielding creature leaping from desk to desk in the corner of Luc's vision. But he kept his gaze on Reval Zelsor. A male who was not, by any means, his father. Nor had he ever been a single day in his life.

When Luc tore the blade back out, he grabbed the gold chain at Reval's throat and held onto it as the Prince fell. The chain snapped and slid from its hiding place, detaching from its owner, raised in Luc's hand. Luc looked at it for a long time, even after Reval's body went still on the floor.

On the end of the Dark Prince's chain were no tails. The gold clasp meant to hold many lives, empty.

Luc lowered the chain to his side, staring out at nothing. All this time, his father was just one fight away from death, from Luc being free forever. All this time, the Prince's arrogance was a mask for his fear. He let everyone believe he was invincible with nine lives to spare.

Yet, he was no different from any other single-life fairy whose blood ran purple.

It became the poetry Luc got lost in for the next few moments. Then, he became aware that he stood in the very centre of chaos. He felt warm. Burning , in fact.

He looked around to find the ceiling on fire, the windows scorched black, desks strewn and smashed… Shadow Fairies were either dead, falling to the floor trying desperately to breathe, or fleeing into the air.

Luc coughed as smoke filled his lungs.

His lungs … His precious, last set of lungs.

He slammed his arm over his mouth to shield himself from the toxic fumes, and he spun, trying to gather what was happening, why everything was on fire, and…

Luc dropped his arm when he beheld a fairy with messy auburn hair marching over the desktops with a satchel on his back, breathing fire from a large black snout like an ancient beast. The three-legged guard dog blasted Shadow Fairies with little mercy, rendering them too weak to airslip and filling the room with the most repulsive-smelling fumes of melting fae flesh Luc had ever inhaled.

Luc coughed again, then he trotted over and hopped onto the desk.

Dranian nearly blasted him with fire, but Luc raised his hands quickly. "Oh dear… Can we call a truce?" he asked.

Dranian lowered the fire beast's snout, and—to Luc's true wonder—the side of the fool's mouth tugged up, just a smidgen. Enough that it might have been considered by some to be a smile. It was a strange, pleasant moment until Luc grabbed him by the shoulder and hurtled him off the desk.

Dranian tumbled to the floor with his fire beast as Luc stabbed his father's fairsaber into a Shadow Fairy in the wind. The fool's blade was swinging precisely where Dranian had been standing. The fairy buckled into a heap, and Luc kicked him off the desk. He hopped down to Dranian's side.

"What do you say, North Fairy? Should we slip out of here, or should we take them all down so they don't come back again?" he asked, facing away from Dranian and moving into a defensive stance as the Shadows who were left raced in to close the gap.

"Do you feel up to it?" Dranian's words were almost too quiet to hear.

"No. I'm hot and I feel like eating ice cream. But we don't always get ice cream when we want it, do we?" Luc reassessed his blade then crouched to steal one off a Shadow body on the floor. He twisted both in his grip, getting a feel for them.

"Let's fight," Dranian decided. He raised the fire beast and hit a button. A wave of orange-gold splashed through the room, beautifully devouring everything in its path and leaving a trail of black ash.

Luc struck the first Shadow Fairy, locking blades then twisting to strike at another at the same time. He took them both down just as the roaring of the fire beast ceased. He spun back to Dranian.

The fool's green eyes went round. Dranian shook the beast a little, then hit the button again. Nothing happened. "Queensbane," he cursed, ripping the satchel off and drawing his spear instead.

"Is this a joke?" Luc complained. He slashed a Shadow Fairy's arm who came too close. "Did you feed it before you came?"

"I didn't know it would run out of faeborn fire!" Dranian said, hurtling his spear into a fairy. Then he whirled to Luc. "Let's not fight," he said, changing his mind. "Let's do the running away thing."

Luc kicked back a Shadow and rubbed his temples as he followed Dranian. The North Fairy leapt over bleeding fairies to fetch his spear. "Fine. I'll hunt them down later or something," Luc sighed. He grabbed Dranian's shoulder when a loud, booming crack sounded through the building, and Luc spun.

A familiar young human female marched in through the wide double doors at the end of the room. She held a gun, and she fired it at anything Shadowy that moved. Twenty humans in uniforms trailed in behind her. Their weapons were unusual and strangely accurate, bullets bending around corners and swerving in arcs. Luc thought of his last life and had the overwhelming urge to escape. But Dranian appeared at his side, seeming less worried as the police officers waged war upon the Shadow Army division.

Though humans were a far lesser species to fairies, Luc had to admit, he was slightly impressed. There wasn't a single tremor of fear in Lily Baker's rhythms. She aimed. She fired. She destroyed.

"Lily Baker," Luc mused, studying the ink paintings over her outstretched arms beyond her rolled-up sleeves. When she turned, Luc spotted a sewn inscription across her back that read: TRUE NORTH STRONG. The other officers wore the badge, too. "Is that truly her real name?" Luc asked Dranian curiously. Dranian seemed to choose not to answer.

Shadow Fairies lost their balance one after another, and Dranian nudged Luc toward the side of the room. "Their shots will find you, too," he warned, and Luc's mouth twisted into a scowl. He'd wanted to watch the show. But he reluctantly reached for Dranian's shoulder.

They vanished to the sound of thunderous cracks and a falling Shadow Army division.