Nineteen #2
Ah. So Athan was a him, then. Good to know. I kept ripping and tearing, discarding chunks of the spell even as it was crumbling in my hands. I had a long way to go, but I thought I could get there before I burned through the blood I had just swallowed.
Then a spear slammed into my back, shoved through with the kind of force that pierced everything in its path.
Raysel squealed, dancing back and letting go of me as the spear emerged from the front of my chest. I opened my eyes in surprise, looking down at it.
“Really?” I asked. “Oh, for the love of—”
The spear had collapsed my lung, making it difficult for me to breathe. It had also caused me to start bleeding again, which was surprisingly convenient under the circumstances. I ran my hand across the front of my shirt, then licked my palm.
The remaining threads around Athan sprang immediately into focus, and I resumed my ripping, tearing them away as fast as I could.
Lack of oxygen is one of the things that can knock me down, and I was going to be on the ground in short order, which meant I needed to do this fast. So I ripped and ripped, and Raysel ducked around me, shrieking words I couldn’t quite make out at someone I couldn’t see.
I wasn’t turning into a tree. There was that, at least. And as long as Raysel was yelling, she was still here, and that mattered more than almost anything else in the moment.
The final scraps of spell came away, and Athan screamed, full-throated and furious. I opened my eyes, blinking away the black spots that were starting to dance around the edges of my vision.
The massive, terrible Rider was gone, replaced by a Reynard boy no older than sixteen, with gills in the side of his neck and fin-shaped ears that didn’t quite match up with anything I’d seen in the Undersea.
His hands were webbed, but his legs were still humanoid, and as he tumbled off the horse he caught himself, then stood, shivering.
The other Rider looked from Athan to me in horror, then hauled on their reins and rode away into the dark, apparently not willing to risk the possibility that I could do it twice.
“What did you do?” Athan demanded, in a strangely squeaky voice.
“Let you … go…” I croaked, around my rapidly worsening lack of air. The spear was too thick for me to just shove it back the way it had come, and I certainly couldn’t pull it the rest of the way through.
Raysel was still yelling, and now Luna was yelling back. I could understand some of the words now, but as they weren’t really saying anything, it didn’t seem to be all that important.
“I can … I can think,” said Athan, putting a webbed hand against the side of his head.
“Broke … spell,” I said.
He looked regretfully at his fingers, then at me. “Not the whole spell. But enough. I— You don’t look so good.” He hurried over to me, bracing me against his shoulder as he looked at the wound in my chest. “You’re not supposed to pull things out of stab wounds.”
“More … impalement…” I said.
“I think it’s the same rules.”
“Please … pull … out…” Every word was getting more difficult. I was going to collapse soon, and when I did, Luna would be able to make off with Rayseline.
Athan gave me a baffled look, then shrugged. “If you say so,” he said, and moved around behind me, grabbing the spear.
The first time he twisted it, a sick feeling spread through my entire chest, my guts churning and my remaining blood going cold. Things weren’t supposed to move like that inside my body. He twisted it again, and I felt something come loose, whether organ or weapon, I couldn’t really say.
And then he pulled, and the spear came free, leaving my lung the room it needed to reinflate, which it did almost immediately.
I started to cough, trying to expel the blood that had been trapped inside the lung when it began repairing itself, and kept coughing as I straightened.
The hole in my chest was already sealing over, leaving me with only the internal injuries to worry about.
I spend way too much time worrying about internal injuries.
I turned. There was Raysel, hands balled into fists as she confronted her mother, who no longer had her Riders.
What I’d done to Athan raised some uncomfortable questions about consent—I hadn’t asked him before I’d freed him—and whether the Riders could consent.
Michael’s magic changed their minds along with their bodies, but they were autonomous individuals.
If the spell laid atop their transformations meant they weren’t in their right minds enough to say yes or no, was I doing something wrong by choosing for them? And was there any right answer?
Luna was scowling at Raysel, her magic crackling around her like a cloud of angry thorns, but she wasn’t moving toward her.
I realized, perhaps belatedly, that I didn’t know what she could actually do without some sort of backup.
Her magic was all inward, not outward, and, as far as I was aware, didn’t come with any forms of physical attack.
I moved toward them, Athan trailing silently behind, and put myself next to Raysel, glaring at Luna.
“Where’s your backup now, hmm?” I asked. “Where are your big, scary enforcers?”
“It would have worked, if you’d just had the sense to leave us alone,” she said, shifting her anger smoothly to me. “She’s my daughter. You never should have interfered.”
“Kids aren’t property,” I said. “Once they’re old enough to tell you what they want, you need to learn to listen.”
Luna scoffed. “She’s not even an adult yet. She needs to listen to her mother.”
“I’m choosing Dad in the divorce,” snapped Raysel. Luna looked stricken.
“Your father would never—” she began.
“Actually, I think he might,” I said, cutting her off.
“You’ve gone too far this time, Luna. This was so far beyond appropriate that I don’t even know how to start explaining how badly you’ve fucked up, and honestly, if he doesn’t ask for a divorce, it’s going to be because he never gives up, not even when he should.
I’ll be stunned. And you’ll be the luckiest woman alive. But I wouldn’t count on it.”
“I wouldn’t count on that ‘alive’ part,” said Acacia, gliding smoothly out of the trees with Tybalt walking beside her. She focused her gaze on Luna, who managed to pale, despite her skin already being as white as a sheet of paper.
“You should go,” Acacia said, flicking her eyes to me and Raysel. “My daughter and I have a great deal to discuss.”
Tybalt retrieved my candle from the ground, moving to pass it to me. The wick burst into flame as soon as I touched it, burning tall and bright in my hand.
“We only have two candles,” I objected. “Raysel…”
“Will travel with you if I’m opening the door,” said Acacia. “Go. Now.”
She pulled the air between us open like a sheet of painted canvas, revealing the Luidaeg’s living room. I reached over and took Raysel’s arm, and together, the three of us stepped through, leaving Blind Michael’s skerry and its eternal night behind.