Chapter Twelve
The first thing she thought was: No, no, no, this isn’t right. It couldn’t be right, because she’d read the thing he’d said herself. You couldn’t kill someone with their own magic. It
just wasn’t possible.
And yet the results spoke for themselves.
He staggered back the moment the blade went in. Eyes wide, mouth a circle of shock, one hand going up to clutch at the hilt.
Like he wanted to try pulling it out, it looked like. But he didn’t even have the strength to hold it for long. He let go
after no more than a few seconds, and suddenly that arm went limp.
All of him seemed to go limp, in fact.
He sagged back against the now curtainless side of the stage, as if he needed something to hold him up. And just as she was
thinking, No, this can’t be; vampires cannot even be killed by a dagger through the heart, he met her gaze. He looked at her with eyes full of wounded shock.
How could you? they said.
“But I didn’t mean to,” she blurted out in protest. Though, of course, she knew protesting wouldn’t do any good. You couldn’t
unkill someone with good intentions, or an insistence on some misunderstanding. All you could do was try to fix things—and
she had a good idea how to.
He’ll heal if you take it out, she told herself, and didn’t even think twice about it. She scrambled to her feet, heart somehow thumping harder than it
had in that suffocating velvet darkness. And she stumbled forward to take hold of that knife. “Hold on,” she gasped, as she
clutched the hilt. Eyes on his face, so she could see exactly how much damage she was doing.
But that just meant she saw his expression change the moment it did.
Like a switch being flicked. One second it was hurt and shock. The next it was the smug fuck she had come to know all too
well. “I just cannot believe you fell for that,” he said, so firm and clear and kind of exasperated, it was as if he had never bled at all. Though it
still shocked her anew, when the red on his lips evaporated. When the blade dissolved. When it became obvious that all this
had just been an illusion designed to draw her in, and nothing more. And now he got to grab hold of her wrists, as he carried
on saying the most annoying things in the world. “You were doing so well. I really thought that was going to be it. I really
thought fury was the key, but not only was it not, you gave in to sympathy the second you felt it. Even though you knew, even
though you read it with your own eyes that vampires cannot be killed like that, that my own blade could never even be turned
against me, you still caved to kindness.”
“Kindness isn’t a weak thing, you fucking cheat.”
“It is when you think cheating is something your enemy should be above.”
“I don’t think that. I just thought that you—I didn’t think that you—”
Do not finish that sentence, she ordered herself. Because she knew the end was would do that to me, and god, that made almost no sense at all. He’d just tried to suffocate her to death. He’d made her scream around a mouthful
of old velvet. He was rotten, he was rotten, he was rotten.
He was worse than that.
“It doesn’t matter what you think of me. It matters that you do not ever hesitate. Because I will never. I will see my opening and seize it,” he said, and as he did, the whole room revolved, so violently she thought she might
be sick. Bile rose in her throat; she got that buzzing in her teeth that usually meant her dinner was coming back up. And
then she felt something against her back, and all motion stopped.
But absolutely nothing got better.
Because somehow, she was in the maze again, laid out on that stone plinth, like some ancient sacrifice to a god she didn’t
believe in. While he crouched above her, just like before, caging her body in. Only worse, god, it was so much worse. He still
had hold of her wrist, and now he had it pinned above her head. His body seemed closer, his face even more familiar.
“This time, I am going to drop you into the Underneath,” he said, low and heavy. It wasn’t the sound of his voice that disturbed her, however.
It was the words. The words. Like he had known exactly what had been in her mind, when he had done that to her.
“So you are in my head, somehow,” she said, as she strained against his grip.
It wasn’t a comfort, however, when he shook his head.
“No, Mina. I don’t need to be, to know your worst fear.”
“But that place isn’t it. Not even a little bit. Not at all. It’s—” she tried to say, thinking only of him. Just him and all the ways he made her feel. Everything he did, everything he said. You are my every nightmare and all my torment, she thought, but somehow, she couldn’t get it out.
She looked up into his face, and saw only the long grass.
Felt that shadow behind it all. The slow sink into losing herself in it.
And it must have shown all over her, because his seemed to change.
“What connects you to magic,” he finished for her. “Whatever it is you have to feel, you are afraid of feeling it; you hide
from it. You hide it from yourself. One hand acting, to distract from what the other does in secret.”
Then before she could say no, he reached up. Like he was about to strangle her, she thought, and tried to escape it. She struggled,
her free hand going to protect her throat. Body bucking against his, suddenly half mad with the need to escape. But all it
did was make the long, heavy length of him roll against her. All it meant was feeling her own pulse, thrumming between her
fingers.
He would kill you if he could, she thought desperately.
Just as he used that hand to find the curve of her cheek.
And then he stroked over it, so slow and barely touching that it almost seemed like a dream. Like something she would wake
up from, and tell herself she didn’t really feel.
Even as it sent a wave of warmth through her, so intense she didn’t know how to speak because of it. She went to say stop,
and all that came out was a great bloom of light, between their bodies. It filled the hand she had on his chest, so strong
and sure she couldn’t believe it. Couldn’t even use it. Didn’t know what to do with it now that she had it. Or at least, she
didn’t know what to do with it, at first.
But then he said two last words.
“It’s desire,” he whispered.
And when he did, she just couldn’t help it. She used that magic to send him into the sky, in one violent rush. All the way
up to the barrier above, so far she could hardly see him.
Then she simply didn’t hesitate.
She scrambled down from the stone table and fled.
She ran, with the sound of him falling, falling, falling far behind her.