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Tam collapsed to the ground, blood gurgling from his mouth. Blood spurted from the wound on his neck.
Linh screamed and fell to her knees beside him. “Tam! No!”
Her breath was ragged and heavy as she yanked the arrow from his neck, only causing more blood to pour from him.
There was way too much blood.
“I need you to be okay,” she managed, barely able to speak. Her tears stained his already blood-marked gray shirt. “You have to be okay.”
He said something, but she couldn’t hear him because of how strangled his voice was.
This couldn’t be happening.
Linh tore a chunk of her cloak off and placed it against his neck in a desperate attempt to stop the flood of blood, but it was too late.
“Tam!” she screamed, her voice tearing from her throat in a guttural shriek.
His lifeless eyes stared at her.
Tears blurring her vision, she closed his eyes gently. He looked younger in death. In life, he had always been much older than he was supposed to be.
The grief choked her, and she needed to do something.
Anything to make this pain disappear.
He was gone.
Tam was gone.
He couldn’t be gone.
He shouldn’t be gone.
But he was.
Her eyes locked with Gethen, still holding the bow that had shot the arrow now in Linh’s hands, bloody with Tam’s blood.
Tam was dead.
Tam and dead didn’t belong in the same sentence. But Gethen had forced the words to be in the same sentence.
She would make him pay.
If Tam couldn’t be alive, neither could he.
Gethen sneered at her, and she clenched her fists at the audacity.
The world was blurring, filled with only white-hot rage.
He would burn.
Next thing she knew, she gripped his tunic tightly in her hands.
If powers weren't in the equation, Gethen would easily beat her. But they were, so he had no chance.
She was the water; the water was her.
She was a tidal wave, and would wash his life away as easily as he had Tam’s.
He would feel the pain he had dared bestow. Tenfold. He deserved way worse. She planned on giving him the worst she could. And her worst was a lot.
Linh would avenge Tam, no matter the cost.
"Don't you know that pain you sow is pain you reap?" she whispered ominously, her breath hot against his ear.
He pulled away from her sharply, but she clenched her jaw, and tightened her grip. Tam had insisted she carry a weapon, so she was decorated with a thin silver knife.
“You killed him!” she screamed. “How dare you! I will kill you, and I will do it slowly and painfully. You will regret this day for the rest of your life, which I promise you now won’t be long.”
“You’re not going to kill me,” he said softly with a smirk. “I’ve seen how you act. You’re afraid to kill. Too squeamish to even harm someone.”
There was an underlying shadow of fear hidden in his words. Good. He better be afraid.
She nimbly slipped her knife into his hands, and showed him just how serious she was by slicing his finger off.
A horrid sound tore from his throat, and she smiled, not a smile of happiness, but of satisfaction.
“I warned you,” she taunted.
“You—” he started, and she could tell the way his spiteful words were headed, but she didn’t let him finish.
This was where her powers came in hand.
The water in the air turned blistering hot, and he shrieked at the boiling temperature.
“Stop!” he yelled. “You’re just a kid.”
His words added flames to her already sky-high fire. “Just a kid?” she repeated dangerously, a mirthless laugh falling from her mouth. “Just. A. Kid! My brother was ‘just a kid’! And you killed him.”
“Make it stop!”
Oh, how she enjoyed his screams. It distracted her from the unbearable pain, listening to him break.
It was beautiful.
“Now, why would I do that?” she said in a sing-song voice. “I’m going to kill you. And don’t think I’m going to make it easy on you. There will be no arrow to your throat. No, I’m going to do a lot, lot worse.”
The water poured into her every thought, slowly taking over. Her senses heightened, and she could feel every source of water.
With a small smile, she watched as he writhed in pain, too tortured to even make a sound.
The water around him boiled his rapidly reddening skin, but that wasn’t the worst of it. His body consisted of a lot of water, as did everybody’s.
She made the water poison, let it hurt him like she was hurting.
What looked like black ink swirled through his arms. Like black veins.
She was doing this, she was killing him. There was no turning back. She wouldn’t have wanted to even if she could.
He killed Tam.
And for that he would pay.
He deserved this.
She threw every last bit of strength she had at him, and let the boiling water burn his face until it was unrecognizable, rapidly adding to the heat.
She sucked water from throughout him, weakening him. No one could live without water.
It was a beautiful thing, really. It was something necessary to live, but a torturous way to go for death.
She choked him from the inside with the water. He couldn’t breathe.
It was perfect that he couldn’t breathe, she thought furiously. She couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t even think.
Him losing his life was mercy, even by a painful way.
The writhing stopped, and she assumed he was dead. To make sure it wasn’t a ploy, some sort of trick he’d learned, she brought her dagger down and stabbed him again and again and again.
When she was done, blinded by her rage, all that was left of his body was an unrecognizable bloody pile of flesh.