Chapter 226 - 226: The Last Eye

The wolf's howl had Ezekiel turn, staring at the dark trees with his one good eye narrowed.

Ruelle's crushed wrist throbbed in time with her pulse, and for a moment that pain was the only thing she could think about. She lay there crumpled in the snow.

For a moment there was nothing, but the next moment a silver-black wolf shot out of the treeline.

When the wolf pounced square on Ezekiel's chest, he finally let go of Ruelle's crushed wrist. The impact of the creature was enough to drive the halfling away from her, and the wolf's jaw opened, closing on his shoulder. It was enough to have him scream while he used one hand to push its jaw and the other moved to its chest, his fingers digging in deep.

Blinking back the tears Ruelle noticed the blood on the ground, not knowing if it belonged to Ezekiel or the wolf, she placed her good hand on the ground.

For a second, nothing happened and she exerted more force. It was as if her ability had begun to fade along with the strength of her body.

But she pushed harder and the next moment, vines moved underneath the frozen ground before they shot out of the surface. The vines curled around his ankles, dragging him in a swoop away from the wolf and hanging him in mid-air.

Ruelle scrambled to her feet, making her way to where Zhenya whimpered on the ground.

"I am not going to let you die...!" Ruelle whispered as she tried to cover the bleeding of the wolf.

Unable to reach the closest tree from where she sat, she looked back and forth, as her one hand was useless and she would have to push a wolf half her size. She looked from the wounded wolf to Ezekiel. An idea struck her.

Her fingers dug into the snow, and the vines obeyed, swinging the halfling towards them until his body dropped within reach.

"I knew you would understand eventually, Ruelle," Ezekiel said, almost pleased. "I knew you would come to your senses. You finally understand, don't you? I am the only one who can protect you."

For one traitorous second, Ruelle wanted to stop. The physical and mental pain drowning her. But she immediately caught hold of his ankle with her good hand and said,

"It is only right that you pay for the damage."

Before Ezekiel could understand what she meant, a bright light appeared around them. She began to transfer the halfling's life force into the wounded wolf, hearing the wolf whimper.

Just a little more, she thought with her eyes closed as she concentrated on tying the thread of light tighter.

"What—What are you doing—?!"

Ezekiel's hand found her head and without hesitation, he slammed it into the ground.

"Ugh!" Ruelle groaned as the impact was harsh enough that for a moment she only saw white.

The snow pressing against her head softened the pain but she tasted the metal in her mouth. Her ears rang and her vision turned white. For one awful moment, Ruelle wondered whether it was possible to die from nothing more than having one's head struck too many times.

"Fuck, it looks like you aren't going to learn," Ruelle heard Ezekiel say. She felt him grab her ankle, where his fingers dug above her heel, pressing against the bone as she felt him pull her body across the ground and they moved past the wolf, who hadn't moved.

Why wasn't Zhenya healed? Came the dull question as Ezekiel continued to drag her out of there. Was it because her other hand had turned useless? But when her eyes moved to her hand, she noticed it was half healed. Instead of healing Zhenya, her ability had tried to fix her first, as if not a single drop of life force had touched the creature.

Having tried this only twice, and only once on Lucian, she was unaware of the rules of healing. She wished she had more time to learn and understand her abilities.

As desperation struck her, Ruelle tried to stop him.

Her hands scrabbled at the frozen ground, fingers hooking into grooves of ice and stone, trying to find an anchor for herself against the pull of his grip on her ankle. But the snow gave way beneath her. The dizziness in her head was getting worse, a slow, spinning pressure behind her eyes that turned the world into a tilted, swaying mess of dark and white and the dark shape of the man dragging her through it.

Then Ezekiel stopped. He turned to look in the direction they had come as if he could hear something moving closer. Dropping her leg, his hands found her shoulders and he hauled her up from the ground.

What was he planning next? Probably to flee with her, as that was what he knew best. No, thought Ruelle. She couldn't let him and she had to borrow time.

Before he could throw her over his shoulder, Ruelle let her body sway towards him instead of pulling away. Her face came close to his, so close that her lips nearly brushed his cheek and Ezekiel froze.

For a flicker, Ezekiel looked suspicious, and he was right to do so. But the doubt was slow with her lips close to him.

Ruelle locked her arms around his neck. And she kicked his leg. The impact buckled him forward and they fell on the ground with him on top of her. She felt every part of her body scream with the way it had been battered in the last twelve hours.

"Fine. If you aren't going to be mine…" came Ezekiel's voice through gritted teeth. His hands shot to her neck, wrapping it before he began to squeeze it. "...no one else can have you!"

Ruelle's hands were already on his shoulders.

She felt the faint, flickering strand of life force and she tried to hold on to it. But it wasn't fast enough. She could feel the difference between how quickly life was leaving her and how little she managed to draw back. Her vision began to contract. The moonlight had begun to shrink in a circle as her lungs burned.

She was going to die here…

She didn't want to. She didn't want to leave Lucian behind when she could only imagine his corruption going out of control.

Ruelle started to feel numb as she saw a small dot of light before it turned dark.

Ezekiel looked angry even though he was the one who had been squeezing her neck. But in a blink of an eye, his body flew away from her and crashed right into the bark of the tree. The halfling growled, his head snapping up and catching sight of the pureblooded vampire standing between him and Ruelle.

Ezekiel laughed, blood dripping from the corner of his lips. "You are late, Lucian Slater. I am taking Ruelle with me!"

The corruption diffused out of Lucian like smoke blown from a fire that had been burning for hours.

Dark and thick tendrils rolled from his shoulders and his arms, curling as they reached for the ground where Ruelle lay. It wrapped around her body in layer after layer, settling over her in a shroud that held all the warmth of a winter grave. In the faint, flickering glow of the moonlight, she looked less like a woman lying in the snow and more like something being guarded by the dark itself.

"You will never have her." Lucian's eyes remained on Ruelle, watching the shallow rise of her chest. He finally turned his darkened eyes to where Ezekiel sneered at him.

One moment they were ten feet apart and the next the distance simply ceased to exist.

Ezekiel moved first. He lunged with the wild, graceless charge of something that had stopped caring about strategy and started caring only about destruction. His claws were out and his mouth was open.

Lucian met the halfling with a collision of two stones sparking. His hand came up and closed around Ezekiel's throat before smashing him on the ground, which had the snow-covered ground crack.

Ezekiel's claws raked down Lucian's arm. The fabric of his shirt ripped open, and beneath it the skin split too. Finding the pureblooded vampire's chest, he tried to dig in to pull out the heart. He screamed,

"She was mine! She was mine before you! She said she would—"

Lucian's fist connected with Ezekiel's jaw. The sound of the crack of bone on bone was clean.

Ezekiel tried to swing but Lucian's head rocked sideways. The pureblooded vampire's knee drove up into Ezekiel's stomach and the halfling's body folded around the impact, a thin spray of blood tearing from his lips.

Within a blink of an eye, Lucian moved with speed to attack the halfling, who swung his dagger.

"The only person who needs to die here is you," Lucian responded as he blocked Ezekiel's hand before it could get to him and twisted the halfling's arm.

Lucian headbutted with force, and his skull met Ezekiel's with a crack that echoed. Ezekiel's spine bowed backward and a streak of blood fanned from the halfling's eyebrow. He lost enough of his senses that he didn't see the moment when his hand was gripped—

And then the next second, Lucian tore his arm, which had been holding the dagger, removing it from its socket with a violence so full it seemed unhurried. The joint gave way with a wet, grinding tear, and the pureblooded vampire tossed it aside.

"Arghhhh!" Ezekiel's scream tore through the trees, raw and long, his own choking sounds on the blood filling his throat. He placed his good hand to stop the bleeding.

Rage answered pain the way it always had for him and without hesitation, he clambered for the fallen dagger.

But Lucian reached it first. His fingers curled around the hilt the same moment the halfling almost reached it. He drove the blade into Ezekiel's other arm, buried it at first before he pulled it downwards, like the first cut of a man gutting a fish from collar to tail.

Ezekiel screamed again, his knees folding, his body convulsing around the wound.

Lucian stood over him, his chest barely rising, watching Ezekiel try to drag himself away. "You could have had a happy life. Away from Ruelle. Treated her with the respect of a—"

Ezekiel spat, "Ruelle is my woman. I know how she feels under me—AHH!"

Lucian tore the second arm from Ezekiel's body, the joint giving way with a wet, grinding tear, and the halfling collapsed forward into the snow, armless, bleeding separate wounds, his breath coming in short gasps. And still he laughed.

"Kill me," Ezekiel gasped, the words slurring together as blood ran from the corner of his mouth. "Kill me now, and then—Ruelle and I will be together!"

He cackled, the sound scraping out of him like something breaking loose. "You don't know but we are fated to be together..." He heaved a breath, his ruined body shuddering with the effort of speaking.

Lucian's fist came down. It connected with Ezekiel's jaw, each blow landing with the same mechanical precision as the last, his knuckles splitting open and coating themselves in blood that wasn't entirely his own. When he finally released the halfling, Ezekiel dropped face-first into the snow.

But the anger did not recede. The corruption had found its opening, and now that it was loose, nothing seemed enough to satisfy it.

"With our death together," Ezekiel wheezed into the snow, "we will—"

"You come from a witch bloodline," Lucian murmured in realisation while noticing the other damaged eye.

Ezekiel groaned, trying to lift his head, his body no longer answering the commands he gave it. While Lucian crouched beside him. A smile with the particular joy of a man who believed he had finally won something began to spread across his ruined face.

"You tried to tie yourself to Ruelle?" Lucian spoke, which had Ezekiel's smile falter. "But do you know it can be broken? And Ruelle clearly didn't want to meet you in the next life. Seeing how she removed your sight from one eye?"

Ezekiel's remaining eye finally revealed the first true fear.

"You see," Lucian said, almost gently, "I lived with a witch who liked to talk nonsense. That's how I know." He leaned closer until his face was the only thing filling Ezekiel's narrowing vision. "When you remove both eyes, the link breaks and removes a parasite like you who tries to attach itself where it has no business."

Lucian's hand found Ezekiel's jaw and held it. The halfling thrashed beneath his grip, like a fish that was pulled out of water. But his armless body offered no resistance beyond the useless jerking of his shoulders.

"I will fucking kill you!" Ezekiel hissed, the words more breath than sound, his fury the last thing keeping him conscious.

Lucian's grip tightened around Ezekiel's jaw, forcing his head still. His other hand rose, fingers curling toward the last good eye.

"You will not follow her," Lucian said as his fingers dug in. "Not into this life. Not into the next."

Ezekiel's scream echoed through the clearing. But it wasn't the pain that broke him. It was the knowledge that the link between him and Ruelle had been severed. A link he had created while she was unconscious.

Lucian watched Ezekiel thrash on the ground.

The halfling's body convulsed in the snow. Armless, eyeless, a ruin of torn flesh and shattered delusion. Blood pooled beneath him, dark and spreading, soaking into the snow.

The fingers found the skin of the bones beneath. The ribs made ridges under them. Close enough. He pressed at the ribs' edge, the pulse of the heart reverberated up his palm, fluttering.

The corruption curled around his wrist, dark and eager, a tongue tasting the blood. And his fingers drew up the first layer of flesh, slipping neatly between the ribs too, like the same way they could have done their work in his brother's chest. His fingers began to dig deeper.

"Don't..." came a feeble voice. "...Don't kill him."

Lucian's hand stopped at Ruelle's voice. His fingers itched to rip out the heart. To crush it until he felt the warmth of it coat around his hand.

"He can be of use..." Ruelle said, who had regained consciousness right before he had ripped out Ezekiel's eye.

She saw him close his eyes to rein in the corruption that pulsed before he finally pulled his hand away.

The corruption didn't leave him easily. It receded the way smoke pulls back into a dying fire, reluctant and still hungry. His shoulders stayed tensed for a moment longer before his fingers slowly uncurled. The black at the edge of his eyes dimmed until only his own dark gaze remained.

He pulled out a handkerchief before stuffing it into Ezekiel's mouth.

But he didn't leave until he busted both the halfling's kneecaps before reaching where Ruelle lay and he kneeled beside her in the snow.

Lucian brought his knuckles to brush against her cheek.

The touch was light as a whisper of air, as if he were terrified that if he pressed too hard, she would shatter into pieces too small to gather back up.

His eyes took in the ruin of her face. The bruises that had spread across the skin like watercolours left out in the rain, darkening along the jaw and climbing up toward the ear. Her one eye was swollen and nearly shut. The lid thick, and the skin of it split where the impact had torn it. Lips cracked, crusted with dried blood at the corners. And her hair that he liked to run his fingers through was matted dark with blood, revealing the unmistakable wound she had received.

Lucian did not move for a long moment.

His fingertips, so very gently, traced the edge of the split at Ruelle's brow, as if her skin might tell him everything that had happened through the touch alone.

"Lucian," Ruelle breathed his name.

She reached up, without opening her eyes, and found Lucian's hand with her own, pressing the palm more securely against the unbruised side of her face.

"What's your...favourite fruit?" she asked.

"You," Lucian answered, and for a moment her stomach dropped. Her eyes opened and she heard him say, "The one you gave me as a gift. An apple."

It was really him. She had known it even through the fog of pain but Ezekiel had worn Lucian's face far more than once for her to question.

Lucian had come for her. She was alive and in Lucian's arms.

But Dane wasn't, nor was Lachlan. And now it looked like even Zhenya… The thought hurt worse now that she was safe.

Ruelle's lips trembled first before her eyes teared. These weren't from relief but from the pain she had held since the last few hours. A broken sob escaped from her lips before tears began to spill from her eyes on her bruised cheek.

"I'm sorry. I am sorry," she whispered, her voice cracked on the second word. "I—They—"

"Shh," Lucian's voice was low as he gathered her in his arms. His arms tightened around her protectively. "You didn't do anything that needs apologising for."

But that only made something inside her hurt more.

"Hate me… Why don't you hate me?" Ruelle asked as hot tears continued to fall and slide down her face.

Lucian's jaw tightened, though his voice remained even as he consoled her,

"Because I know the difference between grief and blame. I am not indifferent to his loss, Ruelle. But hurting does not give me reason to blame the wrong person. It was not your fault, Ruelle."

In some corner of her mind, Ruelle had prepared herself for his anger. But she had no defence against his kindness. She buried her face against him, fingers curling weakly into his clothes. The sob came from somewhere below her chest. It tore upward through her body and she cried.

"You must have been frightened. You held on well," he murmured, running his hand on the back of her head. "I've got you now."