Severing Sanguine: A Companion Book to The Fallocaust Series Book 2 (82 page)

“We will all come and bring you two presents for Skyday.”

The boys hollered and celebrated, then the king gave them each a pat on the head. “Take care of yourselves and eat well. If anyone picks on you – tell the precinct.”

The twins laughed at this. “We do the pickin’, King Silas,” Siris said.

No one spoke when they got back in the black car. Felix was in a foul mood and he did nothing to hide it. He was staring out the window with an angry expression on his face, wedged against the window with only Ceph keeping him from the death glares of Nero.

“Home then, love?” Elish asked as they pulled onto the main road, the one that would lead them through the concrete fence that separated Moros from Nyx.

To everyone’s surprise Silas shook his head, his dead eyes downcast.

“Where would you like to go then?” Elish asked in a kind voice.

Elish’s words lingered on the air before becoming lost in the steady rumbling of the car motor. Abandoned buildings passing them by, and the occasional surprised face of a Morosian. No doubt wondering why a car, let alone a royal car, was soiling itself being driven around their slums.

And in this time Silas didn’t speak; he continued to stare out the window his face blank and his body slouched. The sadness that had taken hold of him ever since the night Sanguine came home, almost visible in front of the five.

“We’re going to the Dead Islands,” Silas said finally, in a dark, eerily cold tone. “We’re going to see Jasper.”

Elish’s hand tightened on the wheel. It wasn’t his place to tell Silas no, especially when Felix was in the car with him. The brute had already smelled Silas’s weakness and for Elish to question Silas’s decision in front of him would only accentuate it. Silas would deal with Felix’s attitude when he was feeling better and not until then.

“Silas… let me come in with you,” Nero said in the back seat. “I… I need to come with you.”

No,
Elish said to himself.
I need to come with him. I need to be there when he talks to Jasper. I need to be there when he can no longer run from the truth. And when his world crumbles and the guilt brings him to his knees… it will be my arms that will shelter him.

Not Sanguine’s.

Mine.

“I will be speaking with him alone, but everyone in this vehicle will be accompanying me to the island,” Silas responded, and though Nero’s jaw clenched he said nothing back.

Elish looked into the rear-view mirror and made eye contact with Nero. He nodded slowly at his youngest brother. “Call us a Falconer. We’ll leave for the Dead Islands immediately.”

Silas’s lost expression didn’t change even when all five of them boarded the Falconer. With Ceph flying the plane and Felix in the co-pilot’s seat, it was just Silas, Elish, and Nero in the back.

“Please, let me go in there with you,” Nero said slowly, sitting beside Silas and putting his arm around his king. Elish was on Silas’s other side, being silent support. Nero’s approach had always been direct, Elish preferred being a rock rather than the reassuring friend.

Silas glared at Nero as the brute chimera squeezed his body, small in comparison to Nero’s, against his side. “I must do this alone, and though I know you think you have some say considering you’ve been a part of this since the beginning – I assure you, you do not.”

Nero sighed and let Silas go. He wiped his face with his hands before shaking his head. “Yeah, I know. I know, Silas,” Nero said in frustration. He got up and walked towards the window.

Taking the opportunity Elish put his own arm around Silas and drew him close, even going as far as to wrap his cloak partially around his king’s body.

“Well, I hope you get what you need out of him,” Nero said acidly. “So we can solve this, get Sanguine home and move on.”

“I want no further talk of Sanguine.” Silas’s face turned stormy; Nero had no idea how much his words had contaminated that raw wound. “Are you not leaving tomorrow for Cardinalhall anyways? Is there not an invasion the day after tomorrow?”

“There is,” Nero’s tone dropped. “A great fucking inconvenience. I’ve been waiting years for you to let me invade Irontowers and now I want nothing more than to stay home so I can be there when Sanguine comes home.”

“You’ll be far away from it,” Silas said. “I think you’ve gotten too close to the boy anyways. You have an unhealthy attachment to him, one I haven’t seen even in your fiancé.”

“I was the first family member who gave a shit about his wellbeing,” Nero said coolly, and though he didn’t turn around from the window of the Falconer, Silas could see his eyes glaring at him in the window’s reflection. “It’s always been me and him. And in the end, years from now, I bet it will still fucking be me and him. Because I trust that little shit and he trusts me. We have a bond and you can’t–” Nero’s eyes shifted to the cockpit, where Ceph was, and as if remembering what he had to lose by the words he was about to speak, he shifted uncomfortably before mumbling an apology.

Silas continued to glare at him. “It seems giving you a fiancé has worked. Even the remedial chimera is starting to learn to shut his mouth.”

Elish smirked; Nero could see it, Silas could not.

“Yeah, I’m sorry,” Nero mumbled. “Forgive me.”

“You’re forgiven, lovely boy,” Silas said back and let out a tense breath. “Are we close?”

“Yeah,” Nero said back. “We’re almost there. Did you just want me to wait in the plane or something?”

“No.” Silas leaned a head on Elish’s shoulder. “Why don’t you go take Felix and Ceph to the lion pens and see if there are any cubs we can take home for a couple days. Drake’s birthday is next week and he can show it off to his friends.”

“Jorvik was mentioning he’s put the carracats into the lions’ pens as well. They get along great,” Nero said, he was gazing out the window with a troubled look on his face. There was no doubt that lions and carracats were the last thing on his mind. “The island is getting full though, we’re going to have to budget another facility or start releasing more breeding pairs into the greywastes.”

“Perish has been on me for that for quite awhile,” Silas responded. There was a slight jolt before the engine motor switched to a lower octave, then everyone felt the odd nauseas pull as the plane started to descend onto the island below. This island was called Cortes, but the entire string of islands that littered the west coast of the greywastes were referred to as the Dead Islands.

Some islands were for military bases, some for scientific research and experiments, more than several held large animal sanctuaries that were open to the public for elite vacations. One was even kept in pristine condition because Silas had lived there as a child.

The one they were landing on was one of the islands used for scientific research, but it also was used during the rare times that King Silas wanted to keep a prisoner alive for an extended period of time. Something that almost never happened considering most lawbreakers went to Stadium, or were executed on the spot. Skyfall had no jails because Silas didn’t believe in lawbreakers taking resources out of the mouths of those in need. Those who committed serious crimes like rape, murder, or arson were sent to Stadium and those who had been caught for lesser crimes were sentenced to hard labour where they had to pay back their debt with sweat and blood. And if you were a repeat offender, three strikes to be exact, you were labelled a genetic dead-end and you were sterilized, petty crime or not.

And after that? There was no fourth strike, it was as simple as that.

The plane touched down. Nero pulled the Falconer door open and stepped out. He raised a hand for Silas to grab and helped his king down from the plane.

“I don’t need an escort,” Silas said to Nero. “Elish, you may wait outside the facility for me. The others can go and see the lions.”

“Yes, Master,” Elish and Nero said at the same time. Without another word the king walked ahead, a large single-storey base painted grey and surrounded by a large concrete fence in front of him. It looked like a military base, with guard towers stationed on all four corners but oddly the grass was brilliant green and there were grazing animals surrounding the cold, sterile building. It was a strange sight for anyone seeing it for the first time, but to King Silas it was just another place to be.

“Nero?” Elish said under his breath. He was looking ahead at Silas, watching his king who had his shoulders slumped over and his fists clenched. Unlike his usual stealthy movements, ones that always reminded Elish of a spectre or a ghost, Silas was stalking towards the entrance of the building.

“What?” Nero said. He turned towards the plane as the sound of boots scraping metal was heard. Ceph and Nero undoubtedly getting some food for the lions.

“The motor on the plane sounded off when we were descending,” Elish replied just as Nero and Ceph hopped out; Felix was carrying a white grocery bag that smelled of dried meat. “I think Ceph should stay behind and check it out.”

“Aww, come on!” Ceph said annoyed, but when he looked to Nero he saw that his fiancé’s eyes were locked with Elish’s. “You’re not going to make me stay, are you? I want to see the fucking lions!”

Nero and Elish continued their silent conversation, before Nero nodded. “No, he’s right, Cephy. Stay behind and check the oil and all of that bullshit. I can’t imagine Silas being long with Jasper. I don’t think he has much to say to him anyways.” He looked at Felix who had a piece of the rat jerky in his mouth. “Alright, let’s go guys.”

“Bullshit,” Ceph mumbled, and there was a clank from him kicking the metal side of the Falconer, but he knew better than to raise too much of a fuss. Ceph jumped back into the storage area of the plane and started opening up crates.

Everyone who Silas passed bowed to him, some of them even getting on one knee when they saw the expression on King Silas’s face. A king without his smirking grace was a strange and terrifying sight. The men and women who worked underneath the iron fist of the Monarchy knew Silas as only the assured, confident deity that he was; to see him with such a blank, staring look on his face was enough to set even the higher-ranking military officials off-balance.

And since saying anything about it was far out of the realm of reality, they only bowed before slipping out of the staring gaze of their king. Wondering to themselves, as they had been for months, just who this bedraggled man being kept in such maximum security was, and why he had been allowed to live unlike the hundreds of men and women each year who fell onto the sword of Stadium Night.

Silas approached two young men standing guard near a single metal door, both holding carbines against their chest. They were dressed in identical legionary uniforms and combat armour, newly pressed and clean without a hint of dust or wear. There was no mistaking the difference between the legionaries in the greywastes and the ones who worked in the military facilities on the Dead Islands, you only had to go as far as the condition of their uniforms.

The two stepped away from the metal door, their eyes were fixed forward in a confident stare, but their heartbeats sold out their true emotions.

“Leave,” Silas said to them and, like their boots had been coated in soap, the two immediately slid away from the doors and disappeared into an adjacent room.

Silas allowed himself a single breath, and as he held it in his lungs he craned his ears to listen for any electronics that could be recording around him. Almost every Dekker-controlled facility had cameras inside of them but this was not one of them. Silas didn’t want what was going to happen to be recorded; he wanted it lost in the flow of time and perhaps one day – forgotten.

With a slow exhale the king put a hand on the metal lever imbedded in the door, and pushed it open. He walked in and immediately saw the man in his fifties sitting on a plastic chair in front of a plain grey table, the kind you would see in a school.

He looked better than when Silas had first lay eyes on him, which was more of a testament to how he had been living in the greywastes than how he had been treated here. When they found him his hair was greasy and knotted, his face that of a walking skeleton, with most of his teeth missing and his skin so dirty it was dyed brown and grey.

And though he was only allowed a cold shower once a week and a once-a-day meal of rice and corn, it seemed to have been a step up from his previous living conditions. His skin was back to being white, his long dark hair now pulled back in a pony tail, and his gaunt face healthier.

Silas felt a burst of anger go through him, because though the man held bruises on his face, and on closer inspection, he was missing all but a single finger and thumb on both of his hands, he had obviously been taken care of too well. Not nearly a big enough punishment for a man who had tortured a chimera for eleven years.

But as Jasper looked up at him, Silas realized the healthy appearance wasn’t because of his guards taking too good of care of him, it was because he had been off of meth for the better part of a year now.

“And how different is life now that you’re no longer poisoning your brain with meth?” Silas asked in a low voice. He sat down on the other end of the table in a plastic chair that had been brought in for him.

Jasper kept looking at him, his body full of tension but his breathing was steadier than Silas had expected. He wasn’t a terrified shell like Silas had assumed he would be, though obviously beaten down he hadn’t slipped into any sort of terrorized psychosis. Silas wanted to be disappointed at this but it would make things easier in the long run.