51. Isla
51
ISLA
I test my nails to check if they’ll elongate into talons.
Not yet.
Traces of obsidian from the bullet Vance extracted must still be floating through my bloodstream.
Isla Mara Ríhbiadh, talk to me! My father’s resonant voice causes me to flinch and Konstantin, who tracks my every movement through the eye not swollen shut, to frown.
What they’ve done to him and to Izolda fills me with such unadulterated fury that I want to commit heinous crimes.
Tonight, I will.
Tonight, I’ll become the demon the antimorphs already believe me to be.
The yearning to be done with this night—to see my parents, to save my lover and his sister, to wake Lachlano, Aodhan, and Imogen from their paralysis—spurs me to enact my hastily-hatched plan.
I swivel toward Lev’s father, who’s still examining Fake-Isla’s sex. When he traces the shape of my birthmark with his finger, I swear I can feel the violation on my own skin. The rage it engenders numbs the ache in my side and whets my focus. I traipse over to the snoring half-blood and bend over to dig two fingers into his neck.
“What are you doing?” asks the gray-haired man standing over Izolda with his gun barrel all but pressed to the back of her skull.
“Checking that his vitals are still strong,” I lie, ringing the front of his neck with blood and then the back.
Once I connect the semi-circles, I rise, pretend to stumble in order to snatch the fur coverlet from the bed and drape it over my victim. May it absorb the blood that’s about to gush out of his body.
“Think I can fuck her before we kill her?” one of the half-bloods asks. It’s the one who kept the fumes from penetrating into the cabin.
“We do not fuck animals, Vasily,” the older halfling hisses. “I’ve taught you better.”
The quiet rattle of chains makes me glance over my shoulder and pin Konstantin with a look that pleads with him not to spring his chains off.
Not yet.
“I don’t think the great Konstantin Korol appreciated you calling his fiancée an animal, Atsa,” the pervert jests.
Atsa … Could this be the infamous Volkov patriarch? Bohdan’s cousin? Are the five boys—well, four now—his sons?
“Like I give two shits what the poltroon appreciates,” the father grumbles.
I picture toppling his head from the rest of his body.
“Can you all concentrate on emptying the Crow witch of blood?” the old man growls. “This is taking too fucking long.”
“You’re really no fun, Timo,” Bohdan says, drawing the black slip back over my doppelganger’s thighs.
Again, I attempt to coax my talons from my nailbeds. Nothing happens. Blood-magic it will have to be.
I limp over to Izolda, pressing my fingers into my side to collect fresh blood. “How’s my sister?”
“Alive,” Timo grumbles. “Like you asked.”
I shove in between his gun and my friend, wishing I could enclose Izolda in a ward like the one Vance drew on the sleigh, but all I can do is make her invisible.
Invisible doesn’t make one insubstantial. My father’s words stay my hand, leading me to preserve my true identity a heartbeat longer. I turn toward Timo just as the train swerves. Again. I use it to my advantage by feigning unsteadiness.
I flail, catching myself on his thick neck. “Sorry. I feel faint from all the damn blood loss.” I nod to my waist to drag his stare there while I slick crimson from his vertebrae to his Adam’s apple. “I just cannot wait to get my brother’s necklace. It’s going to be a game changer, wouldn’t you agree? Never having to worry about iron again?”
Timo frowns, making me wonder if I’m overdoing the chattiness. Probably. Then again, I don’t give a flying reindeer’s ass, since the male is about to bite the Cauldron.
I prod the wound with my other hand, adding a pained grunt, then wobble on my feet and swap handholds—the hand on his neck goes to the mirrored wall, while the one on my waist rises to the unsoiled side of his neck. Which I soil…liberally.
His thick eyebrows writhe when I paint his mouth to keep him quiet. He jostles the shotgun wedged between us. I shove my front into his to keep the weapon from lifting, and then watch, with immense satisfaction, his neck pucker and split.
I fit my finger over his on the shotgun’s trigger. “Which one of your family members should we shoot first?” I murmur. “The one who suggested fucking me?”
As my identity sinks in, his pupils pulsate. And then he’s turning his head, jaw twitching over a warning he will never be able to shout. The movement precipitates my spell, bloating the beads of blood into viscous drips. Before he buckles, I cut through the gun strap to fully take ownership of the weapon.
“Bohdi!” I screech, jumping onto the bed and getting on my knees in front of Izolda. I shoot at the wall Timo is sidling down, shattering the mirrored panel at his back.
“What the fuck, Ksen?” one of the sons yells.
“A Serpent just attacked Timo! Oh my Gods… He’s coming toward me! Bohdi, do something!”
The color drains from the Faerie’s face. “Where? I can’t see him,” he squeaks as he takes cover behind Real-Ksenia’s chair.
Such a timorous man you are. “Because he’s invisible!”
“Then how do you know where he is?” Vasily asks, gun propped in front of him and aimed at me.
“The floor. You can see his footsteps. He’s right”—I shoot—“in front of you.”
My bullet sinks into Vasily’s chest, bowling him into another brother, who shrieks, “What have you done?”
“I’m sorry! I’m sorry! Dig the bullet out!” It takes everything in me to keep my lips flat. And then I shout, “Careful!”
He jumps, dancing away from his fallen brother. I pull the trigger, meeting my mark yet again. I wonder how long their gullibility will last? Long enough for me to pick them off bullet by bullet? That would be convenient. I glance at Konstantin, who’s watching the whole scene unfold with something akin to amusement.
“Make sure he can’t get to Isla, Bohdi!” I yell, almost wishing my father and grandfather could be here to witness my marksmanship. I bet they’d be quite impressed with my newest skill.
Bohdan whips out his palms and surrounds himself and Ksenia with a wall of fire, leaving the two remaining Volkovs out in the cold.
A smirk tugs at Konstantin’s mouth as he cranes his neck. “Hello, Vance.”
One of the half-bloods swings his weapon in Konstantin’s direction.
My heart stumbles over several beats. I shoot, clipping the enemy in the cheek.
“Isla!” Konstantin screams, jumping to his feet and slitting the last standing half-blood’s neck with the snowflake dagger I snuck him after clipping his chains. “Your chest!”
I drop my chin to peer down at my chest, at a hole in the fabric just beneath my collarbone. That’s not good.
“Holy fuck, you played me!” I hear Bohdan exclaim as Konstantin shoves his dead jailor aside. “What a performance, Miss Ríhbiadh. What. A. Performance. Bravo .”
Bravo ? Doesn’t he realize he’s next on my kill list?
I angle the gun in his direction. His wall of fire balloons, impairing my view of him. I flex my finger and shoot in his general direction. Though there’s a click, no bullet flies out.
Shit.
Fuck.
I toss the gun aside just as his fire touches the bedframe and skips onto the sheets. I whirl and roll Izolda off the bed, away from the magical flames. Pain streaks through the side of my body that was struck earlier and I yelp.
I hear my name being shouted as I stumble off the bed and smack into a window. I lift my bleeding finger and draw waves to shatter the glass. All I manage are uneven squiggles that dribble instead of sink into matter.
“Konstantin!” I choke out, trying to spot him through the billowing smoke.
“Release him of his necklace, and I extinguish my fire, Vryna !” Bohdan barks, using my genus instead of my name—indubitably to belittle me.
I wear my heritage with such pride that it only emboldens me.
“Do as he says,” my Faerie King cries out.
My eyes water. My throat blazes. My lungs shrivel.
“Very well,” Bohdan says. “Syncope it will be. I can’t guarantee that Izolda will be alive when you come to.”
“Isla, please !” Konstantin begs me.
Perspiration slicks my neck, matting my borrowed hair to my skin.
“Relieve me of the talisman!” Konstantin shouts over the incessant chime filling my ears.
He mustn’t be healed, otherwise he could’ve rid the cabin of oxygen to snuff out the conflagration or redirect the blaze.
“First, Bohdan puts out his flames,” I splutter.
“You’re in no place to make demands, Miss Ríhbiadh.”
Cauldron, I should’ve fed him my first bullet.
“Pull back your fire,” I wheeze, “and I release Konstantin of his bargain.”
I’m almost surprised when the sweltering wall recedes, leaving behind darkness, ashen corpses, and a cloying stench that turns my stomach.
Though Konstantin’s shirt is in cinders, and his skin, dark with soot, he’s alive. I peer over my shoulder at Izolda. In the glow of Bohdan’s retracted flames, I spy her chest rising and falling.
“Your turn,” says the male who lusts after my lover’s kingdom.
Everything in my chest throbs, in part because of the bullet, in part because of my despair. In Crow, I croak, “The bullet is still inside me. I don’t know how long I?—”
“Best be long enough to release Korol of his necklace,” Bohdan singsongs in perfect Crow, “or your fiancé will wake up to a world with one less Crow and one less sister in it. And I’m not talking about Ksenia.”
Larynx aching as deeply as the left side of my body, I sag against the cabin wall, praying that if Vance fell under the spell of the slumbering fumes, he will wake soon.
Konstantin hobbles toward me, using the wall for balance. “Isla, my love”—his voice is scratchy from exertion and smoke inhalation—“I don’t need it.”
But he does, for I cannot live in a world without him.
When he finally reaches me, he cups my cheek. “Let him have it.”
“I’m counting to three. One…”
A sob hiccups through my chattering teeth.
“Shh, Yegmenka ,” he murmurs, kissing the tip of my nose. “Annul your bargain and remove the glamour. I want to see your face.”
“Two…” Bohdan drawls.
“I release you of our bargain, Konstantin Korol!” The loathed words streak up my aching throat and score the air.
I pray Konstantin has a plan and the energy to execute it, because I’m fading fast.