"Alexander Kazantsev. The Destruction of Faena (ГИБЕЛЬ ФАЭНЫ, англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

"It's the end," said Mada, and she burst into tears.
Ave now saw his companion as a weak and helpless girl. Like a child,
she shook her nurse, kissed her cold hands and tried to wake her up.
Finally she turned her tear-stained face to Ave.
"My nanny is dead. She was so kind and clever! And we are finished."
And she glanced at Yar Alt's contorted body. "Just think! He was my cousin."
"Maybe we should try and help him!"
Mada shuddered.
"The bullets were poisoned. I don't know how my poor nanny came by his
pistol." She began sobbing again.
Ave decided that he must do something. He lifted up the dead Alt, who
had stiffened in his last convulsions, and carried him into a corner of the
room behind the curtains.
Mada stood up determinedly and threw her head back.
"It's no use. The Guards will be here soon, and then my father." She
picked Alt's pistol up off the floor. "Forgive me for taking charge of our
last step. There is no need to fire a bullet. One scratch is enough. Death
will be instant. We shall hold hands with a bullet in our palms. We shall
leave this world in which there is no happiness for us."
Ave looked into her face: determination in her was struggling with
despair.
Mada took the last round out of the pistol. The bullet was silvery and
its sharp prickles were brown where the poisonous coating had been applied.
Ave resolutely gripped Mada's hand.
"No! Faetians don't give in so easily. We can still renounce life, but
happiness... No!"
"There is no happiness in this world," replied Mada.
"Show me the way into the garden," said Ave masterfully, "and then
through the Blood Door."
"You think we can flee somewhere? Dawn is near, the last in our life.
Can you hear the birds singing? I shall follow you because you are my
husband. But we shall take the prickly bullet with us. It will be a safe
protection for us."
"Lead the way," urged Ave.
Mada looked at him curiously. Until now, she had thought herself the
stronger.
They carried Lua's body to a couch and Mada spread over it a pale blue
coverlet from her bed. Then she showed Ave a low door leading into a narrow
passage that ended in a steep ladder.
Just before dawn, the garden had changed completely. A silvery cloud
had filled the avenues, hiding the bushes and tree-trunks from view. It
seemed to Ave that he and Mada were walking into another world above the
clouds. He clasped her slender hand more tightly.
The quivering mist at their feet seemed treacherous, weightless and yet
dense. It was as if there might be water under it one moment and an abyss
the next.
Mada stepped fearlessly into the swirling mist and took Ave with her.
The obedient Blood Door opened in front of her.
A dense mist had enveloped the ruins of the old shrine under the Dread
Wall. As they walked breast-high through the cloud that lay on the stones,