Chapter Ten Vina #2
“The witch isn’t wrong,” said Vina.
“What are you saying?” Matthias asked, frowning.
“I’m saying the writing’s on the wall. I’ll die no matter what happens next, and so will she.” A hum shivered through Vina’s veins, and the fae magic in her sparked faintly in response to whatever Simran was doing with her feet. “Before that happens I need to do this. I need to—”
“—what, run off holding hands into the sunset?” Edmund sneered. “I don’t know what fantasy you’re living in, Vina—”
There was a sharp hiss, a whistle—and Matthias’s sword was suddenly at Simran’s throat.
“Stop what you’re doing, witch. I see you.”
All good humor fled Vina’s heart like a wolf was on its heels. She felt entirely cold. Steady.
“Leave her,” Vina said in a low voice. “Right now.”
“If she won’t put down her magic, I won’t put down my sword,” said Matthias.
“Fool,” said Simran, implacable under the blade. “I carry my magic with me everywhere. I can’t lay it aside.”
“Step back, Matthias,” Vina ordered again. She heard the scuff of footsteps; from the corner of her eye she saw Edmund approach.
Edmund grasped Vina’s arm. That was enough. She was done.
She slammed her free arm up, smashing her fist into his eye socket. Before he could react—he’d never been quick with his reflexes—she threw a fist into his stomach, and then another into his jaw.
He raised his sword without any intent as he fell. But sharp-ended weapons didn’t need intent to do damage, and Vina barely avoided a blow as she wrenched herself back.
No second-guessing. Her blood burned hot in her veins, half fae geas and half fury. She drew her blade and turned it in a sweeping arc that raised the hilt angled to the sky. She slammed the dull hilt into the side of Matthias’s skull. Simran sensibly ran, moving out of reach of his sword.
Vina used her weight and momentum to throw Matthias off balance. He stumbled and fell with a thud, gravel crackling under him.
Her blade sang with her. She twisted her arm, turning the edge of the blade toward him. It would be easy to finish this—two clean blows would see them done. They’d always underestimated her. They wouldn’t expect her sword.
There was ink in her, an old tale in her young bones, that knew a thousand ways to kill her fellow man.
“Lavinia.”
Her own name was like a discordant twang of broken strings in Simran’s mouth. There was no gentleness, no compassion. Simran’s arms were crossed, her jaw tense.
But there was no fear either. That calmed some terrible, wing-beating shame in Vina’s chest, and turned her rage hollow.
“Simran,” Vina said hoarsely.
“Turn that strength of yours to getting me out of here,” said Simran. Her voice was steady, her chin raised. “You promised.”
“I did,” Vina agreed. She exhaled steadily, violence still pounding hotly in her blood. She struggled, caught still in the grip of a deadly rage. She sheathed her blade as her friends groaned on the ground.
Matthias and Edmund were not dead. That would have to be enough. “Follow me,” she said. “Quickly.”
The exit she’d planned was likely no good now. But unless the Palace planned to helpfully spit them out across the borders of the Palace grounds, they had no choice but to try.
She moved to try the gate, when she heard a sound unlike anything she’d ever heard before. A howl, guttural and polyphonic, that echoed across the Palace grounds and turned her blood cold.
“Look up,” Simran urged. Her hand was suddenly on Vina’s arm—still hot from the flames no longer on her skin, her grip viselike. “Knight, look.”
Vina looked up. A huge shape loomed in the sky above them.
The Queen’s wyvern was free—and flying high above the Palace. Its great golden wings were spread. Its mouth was wide. She realized the sound she’d heard was its screaming. She’d never heard the creature scream before, entirely unfettered, free in the open sky.
Hell, the damage a wyvern could do to London was incalculable.
Soldiers and knights were yelling. The beast was rising, against the velvet backdrop of the sky, when arrows reached it, fire-tipped.
Some missed—one landed in the garden, burning a hedgerow in an instant conflagration.
But others hit their mark with one flesh-cracking thud after another. The wing-beats slowed.
Then went still.
The wyvern fell in an arc. Its body crashed into the rose garden, the sound reverberating across the Palace grounds. Then, utter silence.
It was broken by a wail. Weeping. The sound echoed more loudly than any mortal voice had the right to. It was the Queen who grieved.
“I never thought I’d see her escape the Queen’s control,” Vina breathed. “How did it happen?”
Simran said nothing for a moment. Her expression was shuttered. Then finally she swallowed and said, “While they’re distracted—let’s go.”
“Vina,” a voice said. Thick with blood.
Edmund was up again, limping toward them. Vina’s stomach dropped.
“Don’t try and stop us again,” said Vina. She felt exhausted. “Seriously, Eddie. It’s enough.”
“Enough, you say. Like I’m not the one with the busted face.
” Edmund stepped forward. “I used to think you were a coward. When we were children you’d never want to pick up a sword if you could avoid it.
You’d only do it if you were punished. But now I know—you were hiding what you can do. Didn’t want to humble us, is that it?”
“Being an incarnate changes you,” Vina said.
“It’s not skill. It’s a gift that lives in me.
” She didn’t mention hours of practice, the calluses on her hands; didn’t tell him that it wasn’t a gift that being an incarnate had given her, but a compulsion.
You must learn to fight. You must be honorable.
You must teach your hands to understand the weight of a sword, the way it feels to force a blade through a sternum.
You must become strong. The voice of her tale dogging her heels, demanding she become what it needed her to be.
“All I’ve got is the skill I’ve learned,” he said. “But I’m in a tale too, Vina. I may not be an incarnate, but I’m a Queen’s knight. I’ve got a duty.”
“Edmund Tallisker,” she said. “I don’t want to fight you. I never want to fight you. But if you try and stop me again, I’ll have to draw my sword.”
“You going to stab me this time?”
“I don’t think either of us really wants to stab each other.” Godsblood, even her veins hurt. The fire of the geas was dying, but the embers still burned. “But I will, Eddie. I will.”
His expression flickered with betrayal. Then his jaw firmed, and he threw something to her. She caught it, and looked down.
A key to the postern gate.
“Go, then,” said Edmund. His voice was rough; a quiet rasp in the screaming clamor of the night. The bruise around his right eye was a livid circle, already purpling. “Get lost, Vina. If you don’t want to be here anymore, I won’t keep you.”
There was a lump in Vina’s throat. Her chest ached strangely.
“Eddie,” she said.
“Go.”
Simran snatched the key and went to the gate. If Vina didn’t want to lose her, she had to follow her now. So she forced herself to turn—to grasp Simran by the hand as the gate creaked open to drag her through into the grounds beyond.
She looked back once, for a half second. Edmund was still standing there in the open gate, watching her go, a small and isolated figure in the dark.