Dagger - The Light at the End of the World Read Free

his Dragoons to drop them in her
hands, one at a time.
    Tum, tin,
tin .
    “ I won’t always be so
lucky,” he said. “Try to learn how to take care of yourself. I
spent the whole night in the rain to beg Ktisis for a stroke of
luck, and you? I’d bet my soul you gave up at the first
difficulties to get back here. Sometimes I wonder how you can be
still alive in a place like this. It would be much easier for me if
you were not here!”
    With a moment’s delay, he
realized that he had said too much. He saw her smile disappear from
her face, slowly, very slowly. She bent down her head and closed
herself in that offended and impenetrable silence of hers. She did
not answer even after he stroked her hair. Crap , Dagger thought. She was really
upset. He hated when she made him feel guilty like that. This time
she was not doing it on purpose, as she always did. He could see
through her emotions. In truth, he could literally see through her
body: Seeth had white skin, white hair and white eyebrows. She was
thin and looked like the ghost of a girl her age. Yet he found her
beautiful; a frail, rare and priceless beauty that did not belong
to that world, certainly not to the ship
cemetery . Everyone in there thought she had
a demonic nature. This was the reason why they always kept her at a
distance, at least, those who did not approach her from time to
time in order to try to sacrifice her to Ktisis. Dagger too knew
what it meant to be considered a monstrous creature. Nobody ever
wanted to have anything to do with him either, because he had one
thing in common with that little girl, just one thing: his eyes.
Red as if the flames of hell themselves burned in them. In that
world of snakes, having eyes of the same color was enough to feel
close to someone. If it were not for her, his life would have been
unbearable. If it were not for him, Seeth would have ended in a
brothel, or worse, but perhaps there was no need to remind her
every time.
Ktisisdamn. I’m really an ass when I put
myself to it.
    “ Come on,” he said. “Take
that look off your face. You know I didn’t mean it. I never mean
it. I’m an asshole, remember?”
Seeth shrugged. “I just couldn’t do it,
really, Dag, I tried to, but tonight I couldn’t stay in the rain.
If I get sick once again I won’t be so unlucky to survive,” she
coughed. “You never get sick.”
    “ Your cough on request is
becoming more and more impressive, little sis.”
    “ Did I already say ‘fuck
you’?”
    “ No.”
    “ Well, fuck you!”
    Dagger looked around and saw
that the other Spiders were so taken by the magic dust that they hadn’t noticed
anything. He hated this place, full of spies. He hated his fellows.
He hated being there.
He kissed Seeth on the forehead, under a
lock of hair white as milk, to remind her that he cared about her
at all times, ever since their paths had crossed.
    “ You and I are one,” he
said. “What happens to you, happens to me.”
    “ Are you drunk?”
    “ No. It’s that without you
I… I…”
She smiled and hugged him. “Love you, Dag.
Even if you are a disaster at words.”
    Dagger closed his eyes and
hoped that moment could last a bit longer than those in which he
felt alone. She was his refuge from the ugliness of the world,
those skinny arms, that one creature who needed him. If, for her,
Dagger was salvation and the only form of protection in the world,
for him Seeth was even more. She was his only Redemption , the one element of his
life that the Overgods would not fault him on the day he would die. Leaving behind
his mortal remains, he would have faced them on Almagard’s
threshold, asking for toll; a single act of pure and selfless good
accomplished in the sea of mortal sin. Redemption .
Seeth was his.
It had been like that ever since his
companions brought her in there for the first time, in a bag,
closed with a punch. He observed her fragile body pushing against
the worn fabric, felt her desperation in the weak moans