Dreamwalker's Bride - Chapter 449

Chapter 449: Murder
Trace watched with fascination as the Emperor looked over their group, and then reached one giant hand towards Denholm.

The cowardly man attempted to scramble away, but he wasn’t quick enough.

However, that occurrence was secondary in his attention to Ben’s addition to the conversation.

“Denholm’s crimes are myriad,” He asserted. “Again, just now, we all observed him commit murder. Under our laws, he is deserving of death several times over.”

Murder?

Trace’s eyes searched for his father. Grandpa was laid out on the bed. Mia knelt beside him, tears streaking her face. Ford had one arm around the girl in comfort, but his eyes were hollow as he stared down at the old man.

Brokenhearted.

The fake sorrow Trace had felt before was nothing compared to the rage and grief that filled him now.

“KILL HIM!” He screamed to the Emperor, jumping to his feet. “If you still intend to obliterate humanity for the crime committed long ago, at least begin with the gift of letting us watch justice fall upon his accursed head!”

“Trace,” Anaisa said, closing her eyes briefly, “That isn’t helpful.”

“Helpful?? I’ve been helpful for weeks, I’ve been working day and night to save humanity from obliteration, and that lunatic has to go and try to steal something for his own gain! He’s ruined everything, and killed–”

His voice broke, and Anaisa ran to put her arms around him for a moment.

She turned her face to speak aloud once more, up to the Emperor.

“If you will, please allow me a moment to show you what Grandpa meant to us,” She requested.

The Emperor nodded slowly, and Trace shook with rage as the monarch went still for a moment, his eyes glazing over slightly. Denholm struggled in his grasp, but was unable to escape.

Anaisa grew stiff in Trace’s arms, and he pulled back, worried. She seemed to be in a daze, unseeing as he moved a hand in front of her eyes.

“What’s happening?” He demanded of anyone. Everyone.

“She can show memories,” Ben explained. “It’s her magic. The Emperor already took Martin and Ford’s powers, and hers were next, but… apparently they are needed a little longer.”

Trace was torn between continuing to hold his absent wife, and running to his father… who was dead.

Dead?

It couldn’t be.

But they wouldn’t lie to him, and this wasn’t some terrible dream. It was real. And he had no powers to do anything about it. Even if he were able to make some cure-all potion or something appear… his powers were suppressed by the wights.

He had nothing.

No one spoke. There was nothing to be said. Martin was staring at the wall. Ben moved to his wife, picking her up where the wight deposited her and holding her while she spent the remnants of the false emotions in tears against him.

Eventually, Anaisa moved again, and the Emperor sighed heavily.

His gaze moved to Grandpa’s body, and then to Denholm.

Ben spoke first, after a moment of quiet.

“Please don’t let our tentative treaty die for the actions of one man.”

The Emperor stared down at them with a complicated expression, then turned to Denholm, still in his fist, whose glare was full of vitriol.

Not a speck of repentance was anywhere on the man.

“Justice,” The Emperor declared coldly, extending his hand over the bed.

For a moment it looked like he might drop Denholm, but instead he squeezed. A sound like a squeak was the last one the man made before his bones began to crack and groan.

Anaisa turned her face away, but Trace watched. He had seen much violence, and did not shy away from watching the blasted man’s end.

It was well-deserved and long overdue.

And it was not nearly slow and violent enough to make up for all the horrible things Denholm had done.

The fact that Trace had almost grown used to being around the man after so long in the wights’ company made a sickening nausea grow in his middle. He was too soft, too forgiving.

Was that a mistake, or by design? Had Denholm been subtly planting those feelings in him all this time, growing them little by little so that it didn’t seem so obvious at the end, when Denholm used that to turn on him?

The deviousness of it all was hard to overstate. The subtlety of Denholm’s evil was disgusting, but it was finally over.

Finally, the perfidious man was dead.

A slow drip began from the Emperor’s hand, and Trace finally recoiled from watching further gore. He didn’t need to see the cascade of Denholm’s blood to assure himself the man was well and truly gone, except…

It wasn’t red. It was a clear, almost bluish substance Trace didn’t quite understand. It almost looked like something one of the wights would bleed, not a human.

And it was dripping down onto Grandpa’s still body.

Mia and Ford scrambled back, confused and alarmed by the liquid.

“What is it?” Mia glanced up. “What are you doing to him??”

Her voice was hoarse from shed tears, and Trace almost stepped forward to stop it from happening.

Whatever was leaking from Denholm’s body was desecrating his father’s corpse. It should be preserved, embalmed, and properly buried.

Trace’s mother would be devastated. His children… he didn’t want to think about how his sons would react to the premature death of their grandfather. There was so much more than his own grief involved, so many more things to handle than his own emotion.

How would they get the body home before it began to rot? They couldn’t bury it here; he wouldn’t want to leave Grandpa behind in a strange land, with a grave no one could visit… if any of them even survived.

He’d forgotten that the Emperor had not agreed to spare any of them; perhaps the monarch was simply granting Trace’s wish that Denholm be the first to die.

Trace would volunteer to be the second. He didn’t want to watch anyone else suffer.

Before he could open his mouth to say so, one of the wights spoke again, answering Mia’s question.

“Life for life.”