Chapter Seventeen Simran #3
She took Vina’s arm and pushed it—and Vina—to the side. Vina resisted for half a second, then mustered some deep faith Simran wasn’t sure she deserved, and stepped aside.
Courage, Simran urged herself. Then she took a slow step forward.
The Beast rippled, its eyes turning to slits. If it had been Maleficium, its ears would have flattened with displeasure.
Simran lowered her eyes.
“Peace,” she said. “Beast, I come for knowledge—not to cause any good folk of the Isle harm. I come for love, and for friendship. I come to save a life.”
She peeked at the Beast. It watched her unblinking. She realized it was slowly moving closer to her, undulating with the click and stretch of sinew and bones.
Her legs had turned to water. She kneeled.
She swallowed. What did this Beast require? Respect, Ophelia had said. Truth? Perhaps.
She took a leap of faith.
“I also hunger for vengeance,” she said. “But vengeance is a desire for justice our Isle cannot provide us. This man has killed again and again, and no one has punished him. I want to do it. I burn to do it. That is my truth, all of it.”
She held out a hand and closed her eyes.
After a moment she felt something brush her hand. First scales, oddly warm; then soft fur, animal and stinking; then a puff of hot breath against her cheek.
Then nothing.
“It’s gone,” Vina said after a moment. Her voice was full of relief. “It vanished. I think you passed.”
Simran shakily lowered her hand. She rose to her feet and turned to look at Vina.
“I’m sorry you didn’t have a chance to face it, knight to Beast.”
“Don’t be sorry,” said Vina. “Any journey that ends without me drawing my sword—or, well, my fists—is a success in my book.” Fingers touched her spine, urging her forward. “Your chalice awaits, Simran.”
“It may be my tray,” she muttered. “Or, who knows? I’ve heard of a salmon of knowledge. It might be a fish.”
Vina gave a husky laugh. She hadn’t stopped touching Simran. But then, Simran hadn’t moved.
Simran took a deliberate step forward, then another. The mist parted, and there on an altar of dove-gray stone lay—
A chalice.
The chalice was plain and unassuming. It was pale, a stone so white it might have been chalk, but it was too smooth for that. The water in it sparkled. The water in it was not truly water. She picked it up.
She swirled the chalice a little. The liquid in it shimmered like the Thames, like the silver sea. Like a tale.
“What do you do with a magical chalice?” Simran murmured. The stone was cold, but not eerily so. It felt like the shock of putting your feet in an icy brook on a summer’s day.
“Drink it, I suppose,” said Vina. She’d drawn in close to Simran’s side, and was looking down at the water with her. “How else can you take knowledge from it?”
“Drink with me,” said Simran. She held the chalice toward Vina, who looked at her, startled.
“You passed the test,” Vina protested. “You’re the one seeking knowledge. You’re the one the assassin knew.”
“He knew me, yes,” said Simran. “But he clearly knew you too. Why else would he have come to you when you were fighting the fae’s thrall?
If he knows both of us, then he must be connected to our incarnate tale.
And if he’s connected to both of us, then we both need to seek the truth about him. Together.”
Vina hesitated. Then she reached out two hands, carefully placing her hands over Simran’s own around the chalice’s stem. Even through her gloves, her hands were warm—large enough to cover Simran’s entirely.
“If you’re afraid, Simran, you need only say so.”
“Fuck you,” Simran said, without missing a beat.
She couldn’t look away from Vina’s eyes.
There was no heat in her voice. Somehow her anger at Vina had stopped being anger.
Now it was a prickling feeling that ran over her skin whenever she looked at her, and whenever she thought of Vina.
It was infuriating, infuriating. “You’re incorrigible. Just do as you’re told.”
“As my lady witch desires,” Vina said with a wink. Then her face smoothed to seriousness again, and she looked down at the chalice cupped between their joined palms. “How would you like to do this? Shall I drink first, then you?”
“No. We drink together.”
“It’s going to be awkward,” Vina remarked. “It’s not a big chalice. Maybe we would have been better off with a tray.”
“Too much spillage.”
“A punch bowl, then. A decently sized punch bowl of knowledge.”
“Oh, shut up and drink.”
They both raised the glass and moved their heads down to meet. It was awkward. They angled their heads, careful not to knock skulls or spill the chalice. Their faces still brushed, breath mingling. So close, and not quite a kiss.
Simran closed her eyes, and drank.
And.
Fell.
She was the first witch.
She was the second.
She was the third.
She clung to Vina as she fell, as Vina fell with her. Ink ran by them in trailing sparks like falling stars.
Fourth—
And then abruptly it changed.
She was no witch.
She was surrounded by figures. A huddle of bodies.
They wore clothes she had not seen in years, long cloth draped into saris, jackets over tunics and trousers, and other clothing more familiar to the Isle: long dresses and hats; suits, sleeves rolled up to the elbow.
The air was humid, and panic was clawing at Simran’s throat.
Her father was lifting her up, arms strong.
Her father was saying something. I’ll tell you a story. Don’t cry, beta. Don’t cry.
She felt a cry in her own skull.
Don’t follow those tales, Isadora urged. She sounded desperate. Frightened. The answers you seek aren’t there!
It was not Isadora who frightened her away, but the fact that Vina had faded to mist at her side, impossible to touch. Wherever Simran had strayed, Vina could not follow.
Simran hurled herself back into The Knight and the Witch, her own tale wrapping around her in sheaves of parchment, ribbons of ink. She fell back into a memory of her fourth life, and despite her efforts, Vina was not in her grip anymore. Vina was gone.
It was raining above her. She lay in a heap on green sod, under a gray umbral sky.
The air was singing wildly with magic. The rain splattered on her splayed arms, her dress.
She groaned and turned onto her side. The rain drummed against her, black and red on her lily-white skin. It was not water. It was ink.
The knight was not with her. There was no lance through her belly, nor sword through her chest. No loving hands on her. She was wounded, but not mortally. Lacerations ran all over her body, thin and stinging like paper cuts, but deeper, weightier.
There was someone else with her. She forced herself to sit up.
“Vina?” she tried to croak out. But her voice wouldn’t come. Her mouth wasn’t her own, in that moment. Instead, her lips parted, and she said, “Is it done?”
The other figure rose. Bulky, hair as pale as winter. Pale, pale eyes.
“Well,” he said, voice trembling. Blood was pouring from his forehead, and tears from his eyes. “What now?”
Her body rose to its feet, wavering, weak.
Her vision swam, the sight fading in and out, in and out.
Her body reached for her waist, and drew a dagger from her belt.
She felt his clammy hand close over her own.
He was trying to stop her, surely. How could he not be?
Her body, thousands of years dead, leaned over the pale assassin and stabbed him through the throat.
Images hit her like shards: a child in her arms, hair like winter. Be good, XXXXXX, and quiet.
Another life. An adult man, turned away from her child self as she looked up at him. I’ll teach you your craft, he said, voice stiff. Though it isn’t my own.
Another life. A figure picked her up, jostling the lance through her chest as she struggled to gasp her last breaths. He was haloed in light. She asked him, soundless, if he was an angel. Sleep now, he said. Rest, Rowan. It won’t always be like this. You’ll manage it next time.
A hundred lifetimes raced past her eyes and there he was, there he was, there he was.
The world blurred, water and ink, and faded again.