“I did what I had to do to survive,” Sway said, drawing on Grace’s words.
It was, apparently, the wrong answer. The crowd muttered and murmured at his back, shifting uneasily as the haunting melody of their whistles shook like tattered reeds in the air.
“Better that you would have died,” Veesway sang harshly.
His chest hurt so much.
But Sway just kept smiling. “You cannot judge me for what I had to do. You weren’t there. You didn’t have to live it.”
“BetterIshould die than do even half the things you’re accused of! We are pacifists! It is always better to die with honor, free of any blood but your own, than to harm another. And yet you… The charges laid against you…”
The memories. They were there. Rushing up into his brain.
The screaming. The begging. The blood. The pain. The many people he’d tortured and maimed and killed. The countless lives he’d watched drain through the filthy grates of the lab roomfloor. People that had pleaded with him for deaths that he refused to give.
They would live. If he had to survive in that place, then so did they. Why should they be offered any sort of way out while he remained trapped there in their stead?
They called him a pacifist. And maybe he truly believed in trying to do anything to save their lives at first. But resentment and envy of their ability to escape into death’s embrace had stripped even that away from him.
Eventually, he stopped caring. He kept them alive because the Master demanded it. Because his own warped and twisted sense of fairness demanded it.
When he first arrived here, the others had welcomed him back, praising him for returning whole. And that had always sat uncomfortably with him.
And now he knew why.
Because he wasn’t whole. He hadn’t returned with his honor intact. He’d traded his life for theirs. So many souls that he deemed worth less than his own. He’d crawled out of Rik-Vane, his feathers slick and stained with their lives.
The weight of that place hadn’t lifted at all. Rik-Vane was still a chain around his neck, pulling him down. Drowning him under the blood he’d spilled to save his own life.
Veesway took in a long breath, his crest starting to lower. A hint of sadness crossed his face as he focused back on Sway. When he spoke again, he sounded old and tired. Like he was feeling the weight of his own chains.
“You are no son of mine,” he said, the heavy words striking against Sway’s aching chest. “You are not a farasie.”
Sway continued to smile. “I regret nothing I did.”
Veesway recoiled. Visible shock on his face. “You…”
“I did what I did to survive,” Sway repeated. “I hurt who I needed to, I killed who I needed to, in order to survive. Is that what I am condemned for?”
“Yes!” Veesway hissed.
“Then, I suppose, your son is nothing but a monster,” Sway held out his hands, almost like he was asking for an embrace.
A motion that put a sickened expression on Veesway’s face.
“I won’t bother subjecting you to my presence any longer than necessary. Where is my female? Bring Grace to me, and we will go.”
Veesway fixed his face back into a hard mask as he stood straight again, tall and commanding. Like he hadn’t just disowned the very son that had driven him to create this entire city.
“The female stays with us.”
Sway’s arms dropped in time with his smile. “Excuse me?”
“She is human,” Veesway said. “And you have lain with her. Which means she now possibly carries a hatchling in her belly.”
Sway’s eyes narrowed. “And so what if she does? You’ve just declared that you are no father of mine. What does a monster’s young have to do with you?”
“A youngling is not at fault for the crimes of a monster. All the blood staining you has not yet touched the innocent.”
