Chapter 53
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
The spiritstag’s call had been given, and yet neither Rhiannon nor I moved. We remained with bows drawn, arrowheads pointed high.
Faun’s words came into my head: Think. Improvise.
I stared at Rhiannon, waiting. Watching. She remained still. What was she waiting for? I was a perfect target.
Then I felt it.
A fresh wind caught the tail of my braid, pushing it back from my body. There had been no wind tonight. Not until she’d called for it.
Magic. She was already tilting the field. With this headwind, my arrow would never fly far enough.
With the smallest flick, her fingers released. The arrow flew from her bow so fast, I lost sight of it the moment it was in motion. But I heard it, its keen whistle, like a bird cleaving the air.
Think. Improvise.
I dropped my bow and arrow to the ground. I yanked the quill full of arrows from my belt and let the shafts spill. I began backpedaling. My eyes searched the sky, ears pricked.
The whistle rose. The arrow came in fast, sudden. I tracked it a quarter-second before it would have hit me in the chest, and I shifted my body sidelong. I felt the wind off it as it raced past me and drove itself deep into the ground.
I stared. It stood upright in the grass, half as tall as me, the white fletching blowing softly in the conjured wind.
I jerked my head around. My eyes had begun to adjust; Rhiannon was already nocking another arrow, her fingers sliding over the shaft as she positioned it.
Run, Eury. Close the distance.
It was my only chance.
I burst into a sprint. I ran through the meadow, against the headwind, grateful for the linen tunic and pants Dorian had insisted I wear.
Every stride was proof he had been right: this was a test of endurance.
Her arrow found its place in her bow, and her eyes fixed on me. If she was surprised, she didn’t show it. Perhaps she’d always known I would take this tack; no one rivaled her skill. She adjusted her aim as she pulled the string taut. She waited, patient, as I closed the distance.
Gods, half the meadow still between us. And she was a quicker draw than I had thought possible.
She released the arrow, this time with less of an angle. I wouldn’t have as much time to dodge.
I threw myself to the right, diving into the grass. I didn’t know if it was her doing, but the wind seemed to move with me. A half-second later, the arrow drove itself into the earth not a foot from my head.
I didn’t wait. I grabbed at the grass, ripping it from the ground as I pulled myself upright. I started running toward her even as she reached over her shoulder and slid the next arrow into place in one motion.
She was getting faster. But I was closer. Forty paces, maybe.
The headwind seemed to push harder now, buffeting me as I ran. She pulled the string more quickly this time, the bow aimed straight at my heart. If I dodged one more time, I could make it. She wouldn’t be able to draw fast enough before I was on her.
She loosed. The shaft blurred, disappeared into the night sky, became nothing but a whistle in my ears. I flung myself left.
A gust of wind pushed back against me. It slowed my fall just a hair—
Rhiannon’s arrow slammed into my left shoulder. The impact threw me backward into the grass. My head struck earth; air rushed out of my chest.
Stars blossomed in front of my eyes, white wisps moving through my vision that weren’t the stars in the sky. And pain—
Pain, pain, pain.
Pain lanced through my skull. Pain speared through my chest. Pain expanded like an explosion in my shoulder.
She got you. She fucking got you.
Get up. Get up.
I jerked to stand, the movement as instinctive as a deer, but the arrow held me fast. My left shoulder felt like it was being torn in two. Don’t panic. Don’t fucking panic. Even as the pain raced through me, some part of my mind stayed rational. The herb; it must have been the herb.
The arrow’s fletching floated in my periphery, the shaft leading straight into my body. The arrowhead had gone through my already injured shoulder and into the ground. That was what pinned me.
Creak—Rhiannon’s bow bending again. I couldn’t see her, but the sound was enough. She was preparing her last shot. The kill shot.
Think. Improvise.
I scrabbled at my belt with my right hand, found the grip of my sword, wrenched it from the sheath. With a guttural yell, I swung the blade, hacked through the arrow’s shaft right above my shoulder.
The blade bit. Wood splintered.
I thrust my shoulder up. The broken shaft slid through my flesh, white fire lancing down my arm, but I couldn’t stop. If I stopped, I was dead.
When my shoulder slid far enough, I felt it come free. I rolled away from the spot where I’d lain and onto my chest, breath hissing through my teeth. The pain was a throbbing, living thing inside me.
Another arrow thwicked into the grass on my right. It landed right where my head had been.
In a few seconds, the next arrow would find its mark.
Rhiannon had me. Here, belly-down in the grass.
Behind my closed eyes, my mother’s face flashed. I heard the words she’d spoken to me the day she’d died. Never sit down.
Then, new words: Not on your stomach, Eury. Not like this.
I rolled again, opening my eyes as I landed on my back with the sword still in my grip. My gaze shifted, and I saw her. Rhiannon stalked toward me, the bow raised with an arrow nocked. Twenty paces away.
“Stay down, girl,” Rhiannon said. “I’ll make this quick.”
The words stung. This was exactly how I didn’t want to die. On my back, staring up at my killer—
Then it came to me, sudden and obvious and total.
With gritted teeth, I forced myself to an elbow. Rhiannon came into full view, her next arrow pointed at me.
But she didn’t let it fly. Not while I was rising to face her.
With slow movements, I forced myself up to my feet. I staggered to standing, my left arm dangling at my side. In my right hand I still held my sword.
She stared. She could shoot me now, right here. But she didn’t—she couldn’t. Not if she wanted to be worthy of Sylvanwild queenship.
The spiritstag watched on.
She hissed and lowered her bow. “You’ll wish you’d died fast, changeling.”
Rhiannon dropped her bow into the grass. The thin linens of her tunic and pants blew in the wind as her right hand moved to the sword at her waist.
Rhiannon leads with her right hand at the start of any fight.
She drew it silently, with a glint off the flat of the blade under the moonlight. It was as long as her thigh and slightly curved. She gripped it like she’d held it a thousand times with that hand. And she probably had.
She held the blade low. “Come.”
I didn’t move. There was nothing to be gained.
A gust of wind hit me in the back, forcing me to stumble forward.
“Come,” Rhiannon hissed. “Or are you a rabbit after all? Swing, rabbit. I won’t even raise my sword.”
She wants the spiritstag to see her coolness.
I swallowed. My left arm was useless, openly bleeding; it dangled at my side like an appendage the gods had forgotten to bless. I was right-handed, but I’d always used the left for balance through my swings. I’d hardly noticed until I stepped forward and half of me felt like dead weight.
The sword had been my best hope, and I couldn’t even switch hands.
I had no choice but to come forward; Rhiannon would buffet me with her magic until I was before her. Better to go at my own pace than be shoved like a leaf in her wind.
I raised my sword and approached. My gaze longed to fix on her sword, the lethal edge of it by her side. But I forced myself to stare into her eyes. The eyes were where the fight was.
Her face was a cool mask. She didn’t move.
Step by step I closed. I couldn’t overextend, couldn’t go in too far. But I had to swing fast and hard enough that she would feel I was trying.
Six paces away, and I could see the small parting of her lips and the shadow of her teeth between them.
At four paces away, I quick-stepped in. I raised my arm and swung it toward her, the blade arcing toward her face.
She jerked her head and shoulder to the left and didn’t even bother with blocking. The blade whiffed past her body into empty air.
Her eyes snapped to mine. “Is that all, girl?”
I recovered and swung again, a low lateral arc toward her waist.
She quick-stepped back, the blade once again missing her. Right now she wasn’t even using her magic. She let out a bitter bark of a laugh that clapped across the meadow.
Arrogant, spiteful queen.
A wild thought entered my head: I longed to defeat her. If only to see Rhiannon kneel to me. If only to see her hateful gemstone eyes lower to the ground at my feet.
When my voice came out, it hardly sounded like me. Someone had thrown gravel into my throat. “Sister-killer.”
The movement of the muscles around her eyes was fine, as though she had practiced a mask against insults every day in a mirror. But I could see it: the slight twitch of a deep, deep sting.
Yes. Yes.
I didn’t wait; I came at her faster, stepping in with a diagonal backhand aimed at her torso, so whiplike she couldn’t just dodge.
Her sword leapt up and deflected, the clang ringing through the night. Finally. I took another step forward and swung again, this time on the other diagonal. She blocked again, and then we were in it.
This fight was real.
I tried a third swing, but she caught me. With a snarl, she thrust my blade aside and went in.
Her movements blurred. Quick, light, her sword a gleam of light under the moon. I had to pull my attention from her eyes—I had no choice. I raised my sword and blocked, staggered back, blocked again, left, right, backstep, block. Again, again. My arm shook keeping pace with the blur.
Some part of me knew she was too fast for any human or fae. That was when I noticed it: every time she swung, a gust of wind carried her sword. She manipulated it like a musician with her instrument, at just the right angle and pressure to quicken her hand.
This wasn’t even what I’d seen in the throne room. This was Rhiannon’s child’s play.
I couldn’t fight against this. All I could do was block blow after blow, react to her swings. The only thing keeping me alive was my right arm, which already burned. Before long, this foreplay would be my end.
Think. Improvise.
Magic. I needed magic. Needed it like I’d crossed a barren, joyless plain for days and found nothing but thirst.
What had Dorian said to me? Golden spiderwebs… something about death. Remembering death.
I couldn’t think. Could only react. Raising my blade again and again.
Rhiannon’s sword came down on me from above, and I barely blocked. The force of it made my right arm cry out. She spun, leapt, and crashed down on me again.
I stumbled this time, my sword arm bowing under her weight.
Memento mori.
Remember death.
I could only think of people. My mother. Theo. Isa. Elisabet. I’d loved them all. And they were all of them dead.
Had loved. The love was still true, but they were gone.
Far off, past Rhiannon, a glint of light caught my eye. The torchlight on the far side of the meadow, where Haskel and Dorian stood watching.
Dorian.
My kidnapper. My partner. My lover. My killer.
My life is yours.
He had nearly died to get us out of the Eldermaze, had fallen in the dirt with his veins blackened by magic. He had given his life over under that waterfall, subjugated himself to the Wild Hunt. He would have been torn apart for me. Only for me.
But I couldn’t allow it. I couldn’t see him die. I’d let out an unholy noise. My body had vibrated with something like anger, grief, fear, every limb filled with it.
The thought of him made my heart press hard against my ribs in a strange alchemy.
Even now, I wanted to throw myself at him the way I had done that first morning when I’d thrust a dagger at his throat.
And I had killed a man that way, under the acid rain.
A king. I’d leapt onto him and slit his throat until his neck had opened up wide and drank in the rain.
I’d killed for Dorian that day.
Death had made me a blade.
Death made me a blade.
Death made me a blade.
Remember death.
Memento fucking mori.
The thought suffused me. Flowed into my chest like the heat off a bellows. There it was—the feeling. The power. Carys’s power, running through her fate lines. The power of a changeling queen who’d been subjugated, who’d gripped at freedom with clawed hands.
She was in me still. Now, and maybe always. I had seen through her eyes, felt the world through her hands, swirled with anger and fear and grief in her lungs and heart. We were joined, changelings, a thread through four hundred years binding us.
She might be dead, but in me she was alive.
The anger and fear and grief surged through me. And with it, I saw magic. Magic everywhere. So very much of it, just waiting to be commanded.
My eyes flicked up to Rhiannon, to her throat, to the pale column of it.
The night had been clear. But clouds massed now. Somewhere distant, thunder clapped.