Elmwood
This time, he was not afraid. He had faced his fear and given Hilde what she needed. He had loved well and would no longer shy away from his fate.
He took a deep breath and closed his eyes, prepared to accept death at last, like reconciling with an old friend he’d too often rebuked but now embraced.
Someone shoved him out of the way.
“We. Are. Having. Dinner!” he roared, and then he tackled the Harrier.
They both tumbled to the floor. The pistol fired, the shot shattering the silvery mirror that hung over the hearth with a terrible crash.
Fingers clasped tightly around Elmwood’s arm. Hilde.
“Elmwood,” she said. “We have to stop them!”
There was nothing Elmwood could do physically to break up the two men, who were now rolling about on the floor. Lord Croft bit the Harrier on the shoulder, and the Harrier responded by bludgeoning him about the head with the pistol. They grappled together, like dogs wrestling in a baiting pit.
There was an especially loud thunk, and then Thorgoode went limp.
The Harrier struggled to throw him off, then got to his knees.
His eyes were alight with a fearsome gleam.
He looked up at Hilde and Elmwood where they stood frozen, watching him in horror, then grinned at them, climbing to his feet and moving to reload his pistol.
“The two of you had best start running,” he said. “Though I don’t suppose you’re very fast, Elmwood. Maybe you can win your whore a bit of time to try to hide if you let me catch you first.”
They ran.
When they reached the entryway, Elmwood was about to pull them both out into the yard, but Hilde shook her head.
“I have an idea,” she said. “But it requires you to use your Charm again. Will you do it?”
He didn’t hesitate.
“I will do anything you ask of me, Hilde. Anything at all.”
She smiled at him, and despite the bruises on her neck and the pain racking his body and the danger of the Harrier coming for them, everything was right and correct in his world. Whatever madcap scheme she had in mind, this time, they were in it together.
They scaled the stairs as quickly as he could manage. When they reached the second floor, from below they heard the Harrier say, “Up? Bad decision.”
Ignoring him, Hilde pulled Elmwood down the hall toward her chamber, then led him inside, leaving the door ajar behind them, and continued into the taxidermy room.
“Here,” she said, then pulled him toward the stuffed bear until they were hidden behind it.
“What’s your idea?” Elmwood asked, looking up at the expanse of the bear’s back.
“We’re going to Charm him.”
“Who?”
“The bear.”
He blinked at her. “Hilde, this bear isn’t just dead. It’s extremely, irrevocably dead, and missing all its meat and organs and the bits that I must assume my Charm reanimates. I might as well try to Charm a pair of boots.”
“Have you ever actually tried anything like it?” Her eyes were so bright and hopeful.
“Well, no, but…”
“Tell me, is Thorgoode like the others you’ve brought back?”
“Also no, but I don’t know precisely why that is, and I hardly think it means…”
“I think it’s because I’d Charmed him, too. And now I think that if we Charm the bear at the same time…we could make a miracle worthy of a saintsong.”
He shook his head.
“I’m no saint, Hilde!”
She reached down and grabbed his hand, and it took him a moment to realize that she wasn’t simply holding it. She was looking at the burn he’d gotten taking the bread out of Merewyth’s oven. Only, she wasn’t looking at it, because it had disappeared.
“Not alone,” she said. “But together…”
He twisted his hand to pull hers to his lips and kiss it.
“Together,” he repeated.
She surprised him, leaning forward to kiss him, quickly.
“This morning at Merewyth,” she said, “I should have told you that I love you, too. Thank you for coming to help me. Thank you for facing what you did to bring Thorgoode back.”
He reached out and tucked a flyaway bit of hair behind her ear.
“It was nothing compared to the thought of you being harmed when I could prevent it,” he said.
Then he kissed her back so that she would know she was welcome to all of it—and everything else he had to offer.
“Get behind me, but stay close,” he said.
She stepped behind him and wrapped her arms about his chest, pressing herself fully to him.
He reached out his arms and placed his hands upon the bear.
The Harrier walked in, pistol at the ready. The look in his eyes was utterly terrifying. It was as though what little humanity he’d possessed had left him entirely.
“I’m sorry to have kept you waiting, but I thought perhaps you might wish to say your goodbyes in private. Now, Elmwood, do be reasonable and step aside. If you insist upon blocking her with your body, I’ll just shoot you both at once.”
“Oh, you’re going to need more than the one shot,” said Elmwood, suddenly filled with a baffling and heady confidence that, somehow, Hilde’s madcap plan would work.
He reached within himself and summoned up the power of his Charm. There was a moment where the power stuttered, as though it didn’t know where to go.
Then the shiver of it ran through his entire body and out into Hilde’s as well, like a season’s worth of shocks from a wool blanket in a dry winter all sparking at once. It buzzed inside them both, and he could feel it in her body as well as his own.
Then her Charm fizzed up and into him, joining his.
Where his felt as though blackened embers were burning through him, her Charm had a sort of bright greenness to it, and together, they surged up like a fire blown by bellows, creating some new thing altogether.
Elmwood clutched the bear and let the power pour into it.