“You will pay for your folly!” He charged at me, sword aimed at my heart.
I dodged his attack quickly. He kicked the back of my knees, forcing them to give out on me. I fell to the ground, landing hard on a rock. I was aware he braced for the final blow. I grabbed a handful of dirt and thrust it into his face. He staggered back a few steps, crying out in pain and frustration. I stood and went to attack.
Jiren quickly recovered, blocking my approach and each attempt I took. He caught my arm and took his hand in a downward motion across the width. A searing pain shot through my arm. I cried out, dropping my sword. A dagger shone in his other hand, used to cut my sword arm and prevent me from being able to fight. I took in the deep gash and the blood that poured out. The wound started to heal, but I was bleeding too fast to keep it up for long.
He kicked me in the stomach; I fell back onto the ground. My elbows, scraped by the dirt and rock, stung badly. Jiren approached, still in my image and held the point of the sword to my throat, nicking my skin. It made me remember when Marren and I fought, when his sword kissed my neck. The cut stung just as badly, but that one was a sweeter pain to endure.
The lips of my likeness curved up slightly at the corners and stared at me with cold eyes—colder than what could belong to me.
“Having second thoughts, coward?” I said.
“You either have a lot of courage to mouth off, considering I’m the one with the sword or you’re a lot more stupid than I originally thought. Humans have no place in this world and should be killed, not mated with! That abomination within you will suffocate to death as you take your final breath, which will be as soon as you watch all your friends fall.”
“You seem to think that you are winning,” I said and did my best to chuckle believably.
“I know I am.”
“How can you be so sure?” I asked.
“Bah! Enough with this! I tire of your mind games!”
“Why does torturing me give you so much satisfaction?” I stood up slowly with my hands in the air.
“This is why,” he approached me and placed the blade of his sword against my neck, “the fear that plays in your eyes!”
A loud growl filled the air. Jiren was flung to the ground.
Run to the rest of the group, now! Marren’s voice sounded like a miracle in my head.
No! I struggled to breathe through Marren fighting Jiren in my form. I was frozen with fear and filled with incredible joy to hear and see him awake. My heart skipped a few beats, and my head became light. I couldn’t breathe.
Relena, do it, he commanded.
I…can’t…Before I could say, or do, anything else, the world tilted in front of me. When I hit the ground, blackness took over.
Chapter 22
Saying Goodbye
Such a strange sensation, fainting is. Like tumbling through darkness, permanently falling. I couldn’t recall the ground greeting my body in the hard and painful thud my fall ended in, or the painful pricks of the pointed rocks that surely jabbed into my skin. Only a sense of floating on air, drifting weightlessly down.
A loud scream pierced my ears and soul. The only sound that came to me, as though it sounded from a distance. The darkness was too thick to see through, like a blanket covered my head and blotted out all light. Then, the sound faded, echoing listlessly into the dark.
Slowly, things came back to me. Sensations. Things like the sound of the wind blowing through the trees. The scent of dirt and wood. The aroma of grass and the tangy scent of leather. And him…Marren. The woodsy scent of his body.
My eyes were sealed shut. I forced them apart, desperate to set my eyes on him as I remembered my overwhelming fear of him fighting Jiren in my form. At first, things blurred together, as if being viewed from underwater. But then focus came to me with each blink, and the sight of Marren crouching at my side, his eyes full of worry. The baby flipped inside me, my stomach growled a reminder I hadn’t eaten in quite some time, and my head spun with the dizziness that still clung to my body.
“Marren!” I breathed through the dizziness and sat up as quickly as I could, wrapping my arms around his shoulders and tucking my nose into his neck. “You’re alright.”
“Relena,” he whispered into my hair, wrapping his arms tightly around me.
“I thought you would never awake again.” My voice cracked, but I didn’t care.
Shush, uwoduhi. Shush. I’m here. I’m here. His voice spoke to my mind as his body trembled.
Tears spilled down my face as I pulled away from him. I poured out everything inside me that I had bottled up, kept safe until we were together again. “I’m so sorry for everything, for being stubborn, for not listening, for being jealous and selfish, and not—”