The drift pulled me in hard and fast.
I saw a dusty road. It was narrow, with high, slanting rock rising up on either side like a threat.
The three figures were not supposed to be there.
The one with red lips was leading, her fingertips brushing against the stone as she walked. The man with the scar on his neck and the girl with the green eyes walked behind her, talking. Their words were muffled, but it felt like I could hear them with something other than my ears. I could sense them, like they were a vibration my blood understood.
The Adrenian Pass was for royalty. Only those with permission from the emperor were ever to set foot on it.
The man with the scar stopped at the mouth of the road and looked up at the carved warning on the overpass. It was written in Latin, and the pale one with red lips dismissed it with a coy roll of her shoulder.
“We are royalty,” she had said.
“That’s not how this works,” the scar said.
“And how would you know how it works? We’ve taken the same amount of breath, last time I checked. We are born of the emperor, right? Then we’re royalty.”
“Humans are born. We are something else,” the scar said tensely.
“Exactly. We’re more than human,” she said, looking over her shoulder at him. “So we shouldn’t have to think twice about taking this road.”
“Do you feel that strange weight in your chest? That pain? We’re not more. We’re just different.”
“We are consequence. Retribution,” Red Lips added, turning back forward. She said it like she’d said it before. She said it like she didn’t expect to be questioned.
His shoulders were tight, his fingers twitching until he just rolled them into a ball. The girl with the green eyes reached over, her slender fingers wrapping over his fist.
“Stop it, both of you. You’re missing the best part,” she whispered.
He looked over at her as she looked up, squinting against the stream of bright sunlight that broke through the heavy clouds and hit the side of the ravine at an angle. She closed her eyes against the strong wind that whipped past them, smiling and lifting her arms. Dead leaves swirled around them, scratching against the rock and whipping her dark hair around her face. The roar of it was deafening.
She laughed, and the man with the scar let his head fall back. Even the girl with the red lips smiled and lifted her hand, twirling her wrist against the breeze.
They were alive. The air was sweet, filled with patches and gusts of the last warm breaths of summer. That’s what the girl with the green eyes wanted them to feel. They were alive.
Two men turned the corner. Imperial guards, with their bedrolls tucked under the rucksacks they had over their shoulders. They stopped at the sight of the three, and the shorter of the two guards drew his sword.
The scar pulled the girl with the green eyes behind him and reached for the other, but Red Lips stepped forward, just out of his reach.
“This is the emperor’s road,” the guard said, his voice deep and slow.
The girl with the red lips smiled, pulling a curved dagger out of her long sleeve.
They didn’t even have time to raise their own swords. The girl moved fast, like a snake striking an outstretched hand. Her blade flashed in the sunlight. Both guards were on the ground before the scarred man could utter a sound.
The green-eyed girl looked up, her mouth open and horrified.
“They would have told someone,” Red Lips explained, wiping her blade on the black fabric that clung to her slender frame.
“You killed them,” the scarred man said, rushing to her side and kneeling down to check if there was anything he could do. There wasn’t. He touched the gashes in their throats, raw and open like silent screams. The girl with the green eyes knelt next to him. The scarred man’s hands shook.
“That’s what the emperor did. He murdered thousands when he bid with the darkness to create us. Throats like this . . . women and children alike. You tell me that we aren’t evil but look how easy it was for you to do the same thing.” He looked up at the girl with the red lips.
She didn’t move her sandaled foot as the blood coiled through the dust and brushed up against her toes.
“If I’m so bad, where are my other nine hundred and ninety-eight victims? You talk of this unspeakable evil, but you forget that a human did it. The bloodshed was born in his heart. Carried out by human hands. I just dispatched a threat to us. Nothing more.”
Red Lips looked at the girl with the green eyes.
“You going to swoon, bright eyes?”
The green-eyed girl shook her head and closed her mouth.
The scarred man ran a hand over his face as he stood, and the girl with the green eyes met his gaze.
“She is right. They would have killed us,” the girl with the green eyes said carefully, looking at the bodies as she stepped around them.
“You’re not as naive as you look.” Red Lips smirked, pulling another knife from under her black dress. “Compassion just ends in sorrow, and you have to stamp it out before you can survive.” She handed the knife to the green-eyed girl. “Next time, you can help.”
The girl with the green eyes took the knife as the girl with the red lips strode past her, leading the way down the pass without a backward glance at the carnage.
The scarred man met the girl’s eyes, and she looked down at the knife in her hands.
The wind blew, then, leaves sticking in the blood, skittering through the puddle and dragging the mess against the stone. The guards looked up, their eyes wide and blank.
The scarred man would have stared at the bodies for hours, but the girl with the green eyes reached out, turning her wrist and extending her hand. He wrapped his fingers around hers and stepped over the unmoving forms.
* * *
I woke up with a gasp and looked around my dark bedroom. Rory slept soundly in her bed, her hand dangling near the floor. I thought about waking her up and telling her that I’d seen more. I looked at the clock.
It was 5:56.
She had to wake up in half an hour, anyway. It could wait. It was just more weirdness I didn’t understand, anyway.
I lay back down. My head hurt from crying.
I fell back asleep to the thought of the blood smearing on the rock.