Poison

Sweat clung to her brow, soaking into her hair. Muscles stretched as she bowed her head, circling her arms around her. She twisted, bending forward as her foot lifted in the air, perfect balance as she lifted herself onto the balls of her other foot. She swung her leg around, twisting twice before dropping her foot and stopping. She breathed in through her nose, letting the breath flow out from her mouth. Step, one, two, three, spin, kick, drop. Step one, two, two, one, three. One, two, three, four. Sweat flung off of her as she spun again, kicking her foot up and touching her forehead with her bowed foot. Spinning back around, she leapt across the wood floor, the mirror reflecting back at her.

Red hair pinned carelessly upon her skull, green eyes narrowed in concentration. She stopped, folding herself down on the floor. She concentrated on breathing, letting her heart beat calm.

“I never knew you could dance.”

“That just shows how little you pay attention to your surroundings,” Sol replied, opening her eyes in a fierce glare. “What do you want, Fraser?”

“I want you to consider my offer.”

“I have nothing to gain by helping you. Defeating the rebels, what a crock of shit. You know that so long as the evil exists in the Protectors as well as the good that there will always be rebels.” She stood, seeing her position on the ground as a weakness. “That you can change, but you refuse to.”

“You know the legend—,”

“Yes, yes,” she mocked. “Balance is necessary. So that must mean the raped women, tortured children, and justice deprived people of this land must deal with this monstrosities because of some twisted sense of balance? Listen to yourself,” she spat, turning to back him into a wall, “listen to the words that fall from your mouth. You preach peace, but this world has never known peace. Not before rebels, not before the Protectors.”

“Your father believed in this peace.”

“My father was a fool, who loved and lost!” Sol cried in fury, pain ebbing into her heart again. The guilty squeeze of her father's death. “He loved the people of this world, and he lost what sense of truth of evil that hides within every single one of us.”

“You believe in the truest sense of evil.” Fraser stared her down, his eyes black as they probed her mind. “So why won't you join the rebels either?”

“Because they kill as you kill,” she said softly. “Because both try so hard for the right thing, reaching and reaching, but they cannot touch it.”

“Your mother killed him.”

“Yes, my mother,” Sol said, turning away. “My mother, a rebel, my father a Protector. She drew the blade, stabbed it through his beating heart. He begged her before she did it, promised her that they'd figure something out. She hadn't known he was a Protector when they married, he'd kept it a secret. She didn't tell him she was a rebel. They never spoke of the Protectors and the rebels until I was around eight years old. That was when my father started to fill my mind with the Protectors and my mother left.”

“Don't you want revenge for your father?”

“No.”

“He was murdered!”

She closed her eyes, remembering blood. “I'm not involved.”

Fraser grabbed her when she went to turn away. “Sol, your mother has to be stopped.”

Sol glanced up at him, a chilly forewarning chilling her skin. “What did she do?”

Fraser's lips settled deep in his face. “She was the one, Sol.”

Sol's heart started to tremble in her chest. “Spit it out.”

He rolled his shoulders, averting his eyes. “Your mother killed Regan, Sol. Your mother killed the God.”


People surrounded the three of them, the guy that had gripped Fraser had been thrown out the window just minutes before. The group of misfit rebels watched them all. No one moved, the stillness keeping the fight at bay. Sol tried to disentangle herself from Fraser's grip, but he refused, moving her closer to him. Her back was pressed against him, his arm now branded across her waist. Silence hung in the air, and several women abandoned the bar, leaving through the doors behind the small clump of three. The cold air entered through the dark bar from outside. The lights flickered a bit, weak and high off of the ground. Shadows were thrown across the ground, and the faces of the rebels.

They were lowly rebels, from the looks of them. Probably not even actually recruited. Well, a few of them were. Like the man who spoke of killing Jack, the man who spoke of the Mole. Sol strained against his hold, trying to wiggle her way free. He felt a slight irritation towards her. She was causing a scene. Coming into a bar and asking about a Protector. She'd get herself killed doing stupid shit like that.

“You're more trouble than your worth,” he murmured in her ear.

“Why don't you let them have their way with me then?” she hissed back, reigning in the childish urge to throw her foot back and stomp on his toes.

He chuckled lightly, the breath moving her hair. “Don't tempt me.”

“How are we going to get out of this?”

Fraser's eyes traveled around the crowd. “Probably fighting. I hope you remember your training.”

Raven grinned. “This is going to get interesting really fast, isn't it?”

“Stop talking,” said a voice from the center of the crowd. A man stepped forward, his blond hair cut short. “Fraser, you beast, you escaped last time, but you won't this time.”

“You killed Jack,” Fraser said between his teeth, his eyes narrowed.

The man grinned, holding his hands out. “I know, I know. He was like a father to you, wasn't he? After your parents died and your little sister was murdered, he took you in. Let you join his clan. The symbol of the dragon.”

Involuntarily, Sol's eyes went to Fraser's covered hands. The gloves he wore were to disguise him. Jack. Who was Jack? Pain came along with the name, this sharp pain that filled her chest. A playful grin. He trained her...didn't he? Honed her skills that would allow her to join her mother at the rebels, to trick them. To retrieve the stone. He'd loved that stone, did everything to protect the world for the sake of the stone. Like her father...

She didn't want to become a Protector...but the stone. What happened to the stone?

“You killed Jack?”

Fraser was startled by the quiet, broken question. Sol uncurled his fingers, forcing him to release her from his grip. Her hair tickled his chin as she moved away from him, advancing upon the man who had stepped forward.

“You killed him?” she demanded in fury, jabbing her finger into his chest. They all just watched her. She seemed harmless. “How could you kill one of the only good men left in this world?”

The man laughed. “That man was a murderer.”

“Yes, a killer. I know, I've heard of all of his stories.” The rage built inside of her. “How he killed the rapist that were torturing woman down in Kalkar. That was my favorite.” Her voice escalated, into this raging tower of fury. “Or how he killed the man who was capturing children and burning them at stakes over in Lublin. That was another good tale.” He leaned back away from her as she stepped forward again. “Come on, tell me, how do you feel killing one of the only decent Protectors that still exist in this world?”

He stared at her, blinking at her rage. “Who do you think you are?”

“A Protector,” Fraser said. “She's the unwilling Guardian of a stone she hates, the unwilling warrior of the Protectors.”

“A slip of the hand,” Sol murmured.

“Death or Protector.”

Sol turned, staring at Fraser as the silence descended again upon the group. “I wish I died.”

His eyes were sad. “I know.”


“Dad, who is the Guardian of Hearts now?”

Her father looked up towards the sky, where the sun poured down on them. This wasn't Zaire. This was thousands of miles away from Zaire. Across a country of hatred and fire. Where reason stood strong and never failed then. Kindness and compassion came and went, but reason stayed. Sol gripped her father's hand.

“The last one's name was Tara, and she served us well. However, she died over ten years ago. Another Guardian hasn't been found, yet.” He kneeled, sitting upon the ground. She joined him. “The Guardian is extremely powerful and must be able to control that power. She and the God are the only ones that gain actual power from the gem...power that must be controlled.”

“What if it isn't controlled?”

“The Guardian of Hearts is the only one that can destroy the gem, Sol. The only one that could destroy everything we'd built.”