Chapter 44
By the time I arrived at the lake, I was so cold I could barely feel my toes. The numbness was nice; I didn’t particularly want to feel anything anyway.
My flight north from Big Deep was already a blur. I had no sense of how long I’d been in the air or if anyone was coming after me, but that hardly mattered. Soon there wouldn’t be anything for them to find. They would have chased me all this way for nothing.
The question remained of how I would do it.
I hadn’t given this much thought while in the air.
All I’d been able to do was keep myself moving north and try not to think about Gareth.
Now I was circling the lake and thinking of him anyway, my eyes swollen from crying and my chest hurting as if something was determined to squeeze me to death.
No matter how hard I tried to imagine Gareth as he had once been, the only image I seemed able to recall was that of his dead body buried in mud.
For a moment I considered just pulling my wings in and letting myself drop into the water.
But that wouldn’t work. My instincts would kick in, and I’d start swimming.
To drown, I would need someone to hold me under the water.
And who was strong enough for that? I could hunt down a chimaera, and stand there and let it disembowel me.
But I feared my training wouldn’t allow me to simply not fight something that was attacking me.
A sad knot of laughter lodged in my throat. I’d sought out danger all those times, not caring if I lived—hoping I wouldn’t—and still I couldn’t figure out how to kill myself properly.
Then the moonlight gleaming on my smooth black talons caught my eye.
There was an idea.
I held my hands out in front of me, turning them over and over and considering my talons’ sharpness, their beautiful crescent-moon shapes.
If I used them on myself, death would come quietly.
The pain of slashing open my own throat would be fleeting, and it would all happen too quickly for my power to start healing me.
I could do it right there on the shore and let the lake feed on me.
My blood in the water would attract all kinds of creatures, and by the time anyone found me, I’d be nothing but bones.
The thought brought me a warm sense of peace, like there had been a hole somewhere deep inside me in this exact shape and now I’d finally found the thing that fit inside it.
Gareth, and everything he had been, and everything I’d lost still dug between my ribs like a knife, but soon that knife wouldn’t matter.
My eyes filled with fresh tears as I descended toward the shore.
Every loss I’d ever known would soon be gone.
All of this heartache, this grief, this gods-awful unrelenting exhaustion that had become easier to bear with Gareth in my life—it would all disappear.
I would be able to rest. And whatever happened to this world that had taken so much from me would no longer be my responsibility.
My sisters would understand, I told myself. I’d hardly been a part of their lives anyway. I pictured their faces and tried not to feel anything. It was easy, now, to not feel anything.
And Brigid, and Cira, and all the Roses who cared about me—well, they were used to death. No one was better equipped to deal with loss than they were.
For every reason there was not to do this thing, I quickly found a rebuttal. Suddenly everything felt so easy.
Gareth wouldn’t want you to do this.
Well, he was dead. I made myself think the words over and over.
He was dead, and for no good reason. He died trying to save a woman who hated him.
The unfairness of it lodged in my throat.
He died, and he is dead. If I had died instead of him, he probably wouldn’t even have contemplated doing something like this.
He would have felt some sense of responsibility to his friends at the university, or to Farrin, or he would have told himself, She would have wanted me to live a happy life, and believed it.
Tears streamed silently down my face. Yes, maybe that’s what Gareth would have done. But I wasn’t him. I was me, and this was one loss too many. I was finished. This had finished me.
But then, as I neared the shore, a dark figure at the lake’s edge took shape, and I realized I wasn’t alone. The Warden was here. She looked awful—haggard, gaunt, like entire layers of her had been scraped away.
And she was bringing a knife to her throat.
A flash of anger tore through me—she had stolen my plan, and she was ruining it; could she never just let me be?
—but in the end I couldn’t stand by and let her die.
What would her death do to the Roses bound to her?
If it killed me, so be it; I would welcome the help.
But I would not allow any more Roses to die because of her.
I dove toward her, my wings pinned against my body, and rammed into her just as the blade met her throat. The knife went flying into the water, and so did she. I skidded along the shore and bumped to a halt twenty yards from where she’d been standing.
The Warden stormed back toward me through the shallow water, her heavy black gown, far too big for her now, clinging to her body. A bright slash of red marred her white neck, but it was shallow, and she no longer held the knife.
I rose to my feet, shaking with fury. I didn’t want to be furious. I was tired of feeling all these terrible things. They were so much more plentiful and tenacious than the good ones. And with Gareth gone, I couldn’t imagine ever finding those again.
“What’s wrong with you?” I said. “Why were you doing that? Have you lost your mind?”
Her black eyes were wild. “Leave, now.”
“Answer my questions.”
She struck me. I glared at her, my jaw stinging. “You can’t hurt me anymore.”
“Is that right?” She laughed, then gestured at my avian body. “Evidence would suggest otherwise, child.” Then she really looked at me, her eyes narrowing. “Why are you crying?”
I couldn’t find the words, and I didn’t want to give her the answer anyway. She didn’t deserve to have yet another part of me.
But she saw it as plain as day on my face.
“Ah,” she said. “Your lover. Is he dead, then?”
The delicate scorn in her voice was obvious, but I couldn’t bring myself to feel angry. Her words simply knocked the breath out of me.
“Yes,” I whispered.
Her mouth twisted. I thought I saw on her face a flicker of sympathy, like some piece of her, somewhere, was sorry, but then it was gone.
“What a waste this all was,” she said. “We could have spent these last few weeks in happiness, you and I. Instead you threw all of that away for him.”
Something silver glinted on the beach only a few feet from us.
The waves had pushed the Warden’s knife back to shore.
She saw it at the same moment I did. We both lunged for it, but she was the slightest bit faster.
Once more she brought the blade to her throat.
I threw myself at her, knocking her flat.
I grabbed her wrist and held it still. The knife hovered between us, locked in our grip.
“What’s wrong with you?” I didn’t understand the deranged look in her eyes—where it came from, what she was thinking. “You don’t have a successor in place. If you die with all of us still bound to you—”
“You would die along with me,” she said simply. “All of you would die. And wouldn’t that be a relief?”
Yes. The word stuck in my throat, unsaid. “Why would you do this? Why would you even consider it?”
“Has it never occurred to you, Mara, that you’re not the only one who longs for death?”
The words were meant to chasten me, and they did. My throat went hot with shame. “Madam—”
“I did try everything else first. But then you and your sisters, all your friends and lovers…you were so determined to end this war. And it seems that you did. So now I must do this. It’s the only path left to me. To us.”
I didn’t understand. I gripped her collar in my fist—an empty threat, but I didn’t know what else to do. “At least give the others the dignity of an explanation. If it were only me bound to you—”
“You would have let me do it, isn’t that right?” Her voice was soft, her eyes glittering. “You would have stood there and watched me draw the blade across my throat, and you would have been glad.”
“To die? Yes. To lose you?” I swallowed hard, disgusted with myself, with the strange, mean life I had lived. “I should want that, but I don’t. Despite everything, I love you still. You took me from my mother and replaced her, and everything I am, everything I know, is because of you.”
“Well, not everything. Let’s be honest with each other, Mara, here at the end.”
A chill swept through me. For the first time since finding Gareth’s body, I felt something other than grief and anger.
I felt fear.
“What are you talking about?” I said evenly. “Stop stalling. Explain yourself to me.”
“Don’t worry about your sisters. They mean nothing to me now.
But I’m not a fool. Surely you can’t think I’m ignorant of what all of you really are.
Demigods.” She laughed a little, closing her eyes.
“Such power inside you. It would have been perfect, if you’d just gotten out of my way.
We wouldn’t be doing this right now. Maybe your Gareth would even still be alive. ”
“What would have been perfect?” I shook her a little. Her grip on the knife had relaxed. She was no longer fighting me.
“You, at least, I will grant the— What did you call it? The dignity of an explanation.” She opened her eyes and touched my face.
I couldn’t read the expression in her hard, glittering eyes.
“Kilraith and I made an agreement years ago. I would help him win his war. In exchange, my Roses and I would be spared and granted protection in his new world. The Order would no longer be necessary. We would be free.”
I stared at her. “You did what?”