Page 119 of Fallen Thorns
Lucy cocked her head. “Well, hello all,” she greeted us.
None of us dared open our mouths, instead, we waited for Marianne’s next signal.
Marianne’s sigh was dramatic and impatient, and she folded her arms firmly. “I don’t want a fight.”
Lucy laughed as an insult then threw her arms out wide. “Do I look armed to you?”
The woods shifted around us.We are not alone.
“Look at you all. All rallied up for war. You would think I hadkilledhim!”
Ben’s alive?
Casper took advantage of the loss of grip, slackened from shock, and charged. Shoving past Marianne, he caught Lucy by the throat, and practically lifted her from the ground.
“Where is he?” Casper’s voice was icy, fingers pressing in hard around Lucy’s delicate neck. It was not enough to rattle her though. The rest of us tried to pull him back, but Lucy’s wide eyed grin grew into something more sinister. Even in Casper’s grip, she found room to laugh.
“Calm yourself, boy,” she coughed, then glanced behind herself. “Ben dear, do come out. You’ve got company.”
Casper’s grip loosened as he and the rest of us looked over to the church where movement began.
Two figures appeared, the one in front was significantly shorter than the other. The figure in the back rammed its clumpy foot into the back of the smaller one in front, sending him to his hands and knees.
Ben.
In an instant, perhaps even before the rest of us even realised what was going on, Casper was running over to the figures and dove straight for the fallen one, pulling him into a deep and protective hug.He’s alive.
“Come,” Lucy waved her arm. “See your precious pianist.”
We ignored her patronising tone, but slowly and hesitantly made our way over to them while Lucy followed casually behind so that, as she clearly planned, she could block us off from the back.
As we approached, I heard Casper’s tears. In his arms lay a frail, black-haired boy. A few fingers bound in fraying bandage cloth, clothes torn and skin exposed, with a bloody blindfold pulled tightly over his eyes.Eye?
But he was alive. Battered, but alive.
Behind the two men stood a monster of a man: a muscular face and arms of steel.Lucy’s guard?I couldn’t help but notice the blood and scratches up his bare forearms — ones that corresponded with the remaining exposed, bloody fingertips on Ben’s trembling hands that now gripped so tightly to his fiancé’s coat.
Some of his fingersweren’t there.
What did they do to him? Why Ben? Why? Why? Why?
“You’re safe now. You’re safe now. I’ve got you. I’ve got you,” Casper chanted into Bens curls.
Marianne moved over to them now, joining Casper on her knees and reaching her arm around to pat Ben’s battered back, his clothes barely covering it. I observed the deep gash wounds that had badly scarred over his exposed abdomen and chest. His breaths were shallow and fast.
Casper tried to remove Ben’s blindfold, but Ben’s cracked hands frantically gripped on tightly to Casper’s in protest.
“No. Please,” he croaked. “You can’t look.”
He can’t see. She took them both.
Bile rose to my throat.
Ben reacted to one of us moving, his startled head turning in my direction.Does he know I’m here?
“You brought them. They’re not safe,” Ben panicked. “I’m… I’ll hurt them.”
Carmen and Rani.I looked to them both, and they looked back at me, the two of them stepping back and hiding amongst the group.
