111. Lily
LILY
Blood spilled hot and stinging into her eye as she staggered backward.
Her vision oozed and doubled. She tripped over empty air behind her and collapsed to the floor, clutching one hand over her face.
Several Hawleyhursts and Braithwhites wove and merged before her.
Hawleyhurst had hit her with a span of metal tubing from the debris pile.
The jagged edge of it was what had ripped her forehead open.
As she crumpled onto her elbow, vomiting champagne, she considered how she was lucky that he hadn’t gouged out her eye; a strange thought considering that he was clearly going to kill her.
It was obvious in his expression, the cold fury that always lurked there, suddenly ignited into something black and consuming.
He wore a chain with a talisman on it, the same one he’d worn at Halloween, and in her extremely fucked-up state she could see the magic pulsing out of it.
Next to him, Braithwhite, wearing a similar talisman, began to cast, and Lily yelped as biting cold whipped out from him and lashed her wrists behind her, agonizingly tight.
Whatever the spell used cut into her. She felt the moment her skin parted around it, and blood slicked toward her fingers.
She fell over sideways, the tips of her hair dragging in the puddle of vomit.
The bindings on her wrists cut her off from her magic so deeply she couldn’t even remember her Words.
Hawleyhurst jerked his chin in her direction, and Braithwhite dragged her, throwing her back against the couch so that she was tipped upright. Hawleyhurst took a step toward her, and she couldn’t help flinching.
He laughed. “Well, well. Windermere’s heir in the flesh. Where’s Allsaires?”
Sebastian.
Relief coursed through her. At least Sebastian wasn’t here. What a clusterfuck that would be.
“He’s not here,” she said.
“What, and you went after the Chalice alone? A lover’s quarrel, is it?”
“Does it matter?”
His face clearly indicated that it did. An opening. If he was talking, he probably wasn’t killing her.
“What do you even want with him? For someone who claims to hate him, you sure do seem to spend a lot of time thinking about him.” His face twitched. She slid the knife in further, recklessly. “What, Braithwhite here is just a poor substitute?”
Braithwhite punched her in the face. The cartilage in her nose crunched as her vision burst. A fresh gout of blood sprayed into her eye.
“What was he to you, Conrad? You broke up with him, but here you are—”
“I didn’t break up with him,” Hawleyhurst roared.
Braithwhite froze. Lily didn’t breathe.
“He broke up with me. I didn’t want to come out, but I didn’t want to break up! That was his decision, and he made it for both of us.”
Lily was too stunned to say anything.
“And then, and then…” His voice shook; his whole body shook. “And then you.”
The air around his hands sizzled and shimmered as he pulled magic from his talisman, and Ascalon hissed into scintillating life.
He hefted the spear and drew it back.