The Dragon's Kiss
Chapter 54 - FIFTY FOUR: Never Again

Barclay's body went limp immediately after he licked up the poisonous powder.

His hand fell with a thud against his knee, the swatch from Kel's dress floating gently down beside it.Â

The rippling white cloth almost resembled a butterfly as it fell, dancing gracefully through the air.

Kel hated it.

Angrily, she snatched the cloth up and began ripping it to shreds.

"How dare you act so carefree when you were the one who caused this!" she screamed.

The material slowly turned crimson from tiny scratches on her hands left by her fingernails during her frenzied shredding.

"You did this!" she yelled again, throwing the bits of bloody cloth onto the ground.

Panting, she turned back to Barclay.

"He doesn't look asleep," she mumbled, gently pushing his eyelids over his darkened pupils.

Kel wondered where the term 'eternal slumber' had come from anyway. The deceased, no matter how amiable their death, never looked like they were resting peacefully.

They looked hollow.

"It's empty." Kel whispered, laying her hand on top of Barclay's. "He's gone and left this empty shell behind."

Wherever he is, she thought, I hope he can live free now.

***

Kel had no memory of how she returned to her room, but she woke up in her bed the next morning.

She peered at the soft sunlight filtering into the room and wondered how many days had already passed. Or was everything a dream to begin with?

"Good morning, Miss!" Lucy's usual cheerful voice greeted her.Â

She glanced over and saw the maid smiling at her from the foot of her bed, a silver tray piled with food in her hands.

It must have been a dream, Kel confirmed. Or else why would the world around her still be moving as if everything was fine.

"I'm sorry about the trial." Lucy's voice suddenly took on a serious note. "You would have been able to prove Sir Barclay's innocence if only I.. I.."

She trailed off, swallowing hard and dropping her gaze to her feet.

"Anyway, Princess," she continued quietly, "I have bad news.. about Sir Barclay."

".. No." Kel whispered, clutching her blanket tightly.

"You see, last night.. He was, well," Lucy's entire body shook as she spoke. "He didn't make it. He's gone I'm afraid, My-"

"I said no!" Kel shouted, bolting up. She grabbed the pillow behind her and threw it at the maid's head.Â

It hit Lucy squarely in the nose, bouncing onto the tray in her hands.

"Oh no! I'll get you some new foo-"

"GET OUT!" Kel bellowed, grabbing the other pillow from the bed.

The maid studied her pitifully for a few moments before nodding and briskly exiting the room.

Kel spent the rest of the day in bed, trying to make sense of the events that had occured over the last forty eight hours.

When had things started spiraling into such a mess?

She thought back to the evening the emperor had taken her to the furthest outskirts of the palace grounds, to that strange clearing.

After hearing a scream, she'd dropped everything and started running toward it. The place she ended up was east of the clearing and somewhat deeper in the forest. It would have been the ideal location for someone wanting to sneak the long way around the clearing without being detected.

Barclay had mentioned he followed Kel because he was worried for her. Did he intend to stealthily approach the clearing from that location to spy on them?

Regardless of his intentions, however, he had been detected. He was found by guards who just happened to be wandering through the trees, and they stabbed him immediately.

Something about the situation didn't add up.

Why were the guards there? Why did they have such dangerous poison on their weapons? And why would they stab someone without cause?

The fact that the soldier who survived the first round of the Dragon Emperor's fury was put on trial meant that they had indeed acted criminally. Kel racked her brain trying to remember what the man had said to defend himself at the trial.

'It's our job to neutralize threats, no questions asked.'

"It doesn't make sense," Kel muttered, "for guards to be stationed in an obscure location with such deadly orders and poison added to ensure nobody who met their blades would survive."

It was like they weren't guards at all, but rather'¦

"Assassins," Kel breathed.

Barclay had followed Kel and the emperor into the forest under the guise of worrying for his comrade and somehow ended up stabbed in the back by two assassins.

It would have been a plausible explanation, except true assassins wouldn't have been so careless as to leave their target alive. It was too amatuer of a job to be done by trained killers.

Maybe the reason the emperor executed both of them of his own volition then, was not because they were in the wrong for stabbing Barclay, but because they did their task so sloppily.

Her blood ran cold as the pieces suddenly fell together.Â

The emperor wanted to kill Barclay.Â

And when his own men failed, he sent Kel in to finish the job.Â

He'd even held a big fancy trial to make her believe he was on her side. In front of the crowds of nobles, he declared he would discover if Barclay was innocent, and then convinced Kel to kill him with her own hands before it could be done.

"I played right into his trap," she shuddered, clinging to her bedsheets as the world began to spin uncontrollably. "Barclay was right."

How could this have happened?

From the beginning, the emperor had cleverly tricked her into thinking he needed her help. He had declared adamantly that she was the only one who could help sabotage the Pantheon Masquerades. In the end, however, she contributed nothing.Â

He didn't need her at all.

The manipulative man had earned her trust with his convincing con, but was that really all it took to make her one of his pawns?

No. There was one more thing she'd forgotten.

In her moment of vulnerability, when she needed somewhere to go to practice her fire, it was then he placed the final link in the chain.

Whether he knew her secret or not, he pretended to be compassionate of the fact she needed somewhere secluded. He'd made it sound like he'd brought her to a special place--his place, and while she was blinded by her misplaced faith, he took advantage of her weakness.

She remembered Uncle Itzae's many lectures to keep her powers hidden. He always said that people would be too willing to take advantage of such a gift, and keeping it locked away from the world was the only way to protect herself.

What he didn't teach her, however, was that even without knowing her power, people would still take advantage of the fact she had something to hide.

"Never again."Â

Kel gritted her teeth until they ached.

"This power isn't a gift; it's a curse. And nobody will ever be able to use it against me again."