Chapter Twenty-six
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Across the Meadow
It was cold, and it was dark. Droplets could be heard, pattering heavily on the city which came into view above, towering and luminous skyscrapers, his face turned up to catch the rain.
After Orphenn’s eyes had opened, New York was instantly recognizable, even at night, in the rain.
His head levered to gaze ahead, his eyes meeting like a collision with the brick and iron marquee that read Kinder Rose.
He was suddenly aware of a weight about him, and once again, as his gaze lowered, his eyes collided with a heart wrenching sight.
He held Cinder across his lap. She was unconscious, and unresponsive when Orphenn shook her and touched her face. “Cinder?”
Her skin was bruised and deathly pale, scraped and badly bleeding. Her unhidden wings flayed across the puddled pavement.
The rain soaked him, and came down in torrents from his forehead and the tip of his nose, splashing on Cinder’s face as he leaned over her.
When she would not awaken, tears mingled with the raindrops.
“Cinder…You’re hurt…Wake up…” He pushed wet strands of hair from her emotionless face. Her eyes were still behind her lids, blank and dreamless.
Drops of red plopped on her cheek, to be dispersed by drops of rain.
Orphenn looked down at himself to see his own injured form. His blood stained his white uniform, and dripped from his face and onto Cinder’s.
“Sam, get the door.”
Orphenn began to shake, and not from the cold.
Light poured over them where they lay on the dripping doorstep.
Orphenn looked, nearly blind from the brightness, up into the doorway.
This is how it started. Orphenn realized. Except that we’ve swapped places.
Instead of Orphenn’s young body in Cinder’s shaking arms before the orphanage as the beginning had been, the tables had been turned.
A shadow passed through the light, but rather than the silhouettes of Sam and Lora, there stood one single figure, petite and robed in slight red linens.
Orphenn seethed, and without another thought he withdrew his silver pistol, the one that never misses, and took aim.
“Ardara!”
He fired.
Ardara was again atop her throne when Wynne found her, carrying a wine bottle and a glass. He was afraid he might be scolded and punished for taking so long to return, but as he approached, the master was unresponsive.
She sat straight and motionless, her eyes closed and breathing heavy, but calm, as if inside a focused dream.
Cautiously, he set down the glass and bottle, mentally praying she would not awake. When she remained undisturbed, he swiftly made his way to the pillared storeroom where Cinder was being kept prisoner.
When he reached the containment unit he dashed immediately to Cinder’s sealed vat. Like a fish in a tank, she felt the shudder vibrate through the vat when his palms met the six inch glass.
Her face slightly brightened. Wynne’s eyes bore into her like two fuchsia flames. She could see how feeble he’d become, only a semblance of what he’d been the first time she laid eyes on him. Nevertheless, his voice was as strong and as certain as ever.
“I always knew you were special.” He intoned deeply. She could hear him clearly, reverberating through the vat much less obscured than Ardara’s had been, as if Wynne’s voice was the only one the plasma would allow to permeate. His words warmed her like a ripple of heat from the sun. It was as if its rays shone from his eyes, and each word was a separate wave of heat. “Since the first moment I saw you, I knew we would meet again.” Then he gave a rueful sigh as he examined the vat. “Once again…We are both prisoners here.”
Cinder would have sighed with him, had she been able. She was overjoyed but also fearful when Wynne began to analyze the sealed vat’s controls.
He’s trying to set me free.
The side of her that feared for him was soon confirmed.
Ardara was there behind him, and advancing quickly. Cinder could do nothing to warn him.
No…She fretted, heart filling with dread. If Ardara is awake, does that mean that Orphenn is…? She could not bear to even think it.
She could only watch in despair as her deranged sister pinned Wynne against the glass and commenced to attack him. She beat at him with her fists and her knees, slamming him on the glass, ramming her knuckles into his ribs. She relented when he keeled over, giving him a last stern kick once he was down.
He began to wonder why no one else ever seemed to get beaten up.
Breathing deeply, Ardara descended the steps off the tier, and lightly picked up her wine glass and sipped, as if cooling down after a workout, and then spoke. “Orphenn has proven himself more resistant than I first thought. On top of that it seems now that I will have to babysit the slave.” Her body swiveled to sneer at Wynne, lying bruised ad bloody atop the tier, as she herself had been only hours prior. “Even so, I expect Squadron Nine has already reached him. By now…It is not unlikely that he is already dead.”
Wynne spat out blood, painfully lifting his head. “No…”
“Though now I have no way to be sure until both of you are under control.” She said this as if chiding a couple of misbehaving kindergarteners as she lifted her palm, and with it, Wynne’s body. He levitated at her will, and she brought him from the tier to floor level, dropping him savagely at her feet. In the next moment, lightning cracked from her fingers and darted straight for him.
He shouted and flinched, but the lightning only flickered around him. It formed a cage of blue bolts to trap him in the small space from which he couldn’t escape.
Then he watched in horror as Ardara stomped back upon the tier and pumped Cinder’s vat full of anesthetic. As the Drifter’s eyes rolled back, Wynne yelled, “What harm is she to you?!” But his objection was cut short when his skin met with the burn of electricity by a misplaced hand, and was out cold at the shock.
When Orphenn’s ears began to function, everything was muffled. He still couldn’t see.
He heard the grass crunch beneath his head and the breeze across the meadow. Then he heard shouting, voices he knew.
“We know everything about Ardara.”
He recognized Dacian’s voice, timid and breathless.
“If you’re planning on an invasion, you’re going to need us.”
“I say we only need one of you.” Came Sven’s unmistakable grumble, accompanied by the click of readied firearms.
Finally, Orphenn could open his eyes.
The first thing he could see was a glint of silver.
“Eynochia…” He breathed.
She stood over him protectively, as did Sven, she with claws and fangs bared, and he wielding numerous summoned weapons in defense.
Eynochia looked down at him in surprise, but was immediately forced to return her focus ahead.
“Need you? Need you?!” Xeila shrieked from a few paces in front of Orphenn. “You’ve done enough! Now I think it’s time to return the favor!”
Scales and spines rose on her skin as she screamed, and her fangs enlarged in a hiss. She charged at Dacian, claws unsheathing with a deafening battle cry.
And then she was upon him.
Nyx screamed.
Xeila hesitated.
Dacian, from his point of the ground, angrily exclaimed, “Do it!”
She raised her claw.
“Xeila, no! Wait!”
She halted at the plea. “Orphenn?”
The boy dizzily stood. It was then that he saw the nine or ten corpses of Ardaran soldiers, strewn lifelessly across the meadow. He pointed shakily. “Who are they? Please…What’s going on?”
Jeremiah came beside him, crystal armor crackling around his hazel and lavender eyes. “Yes, do explain.” He said sourly.
Nyx helped Dacian to his feet and stepped forward. “These are the members of Squad Nine. They were assigned a mission to take the boy’s life.”
Sven put in, “We were fightin’ them off when these two barged in, and helped us. Killed their own men. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it, Dacian?”
“We couldn’t let Orphenn die.” Dacian defended.
“What do you want with him?”
“It was Cinder!” Nyx cried. “Don’t you see? Wynne sent us to protect your Orphenn. He loves the boy, as Cinder does. Because, well, Wynne loves Cinder more than anything.”
Everyone was brought to silence at this statement.
“Wynne…” Orphenn whispered, his voice suddenly dissipating.
“I remember now!” Sven gasped. “The Sandman! My Wynnie boy! My Lord, I swear this memory a mine’s gonna be the death of me….”
Orphenn could catch none after that, for yet again, the Dreamhold swiped dominance.
He fainted.