Chapter Eighteen
CHAPTER
EIGHTEEN
LYSSA STARED AT Alderic’s body, clenching her teeth against the sting of tears in her eyes. Those arrows—one of them straight through his heart, buried almost to the fletching—had been meant for her.
“You fucking idiot,” she said, choking on a sob, because being angry meant she wouldn’t succumb to the grief clawing at her throat instead.
She grabbed the sword still strapped to Alderic’s side and lurched to her feet.
“You killed him,” she spat at the nearest Hound-warden archer.
Birch. The gangly boy from the Morningstar.
The one Alderic had referred to as his friend.
“Carnifex, wait,” Birch said, his eyes widening as he stumbled back a step, his palm out like one hand could save him from his fate. The geas carved into his wrist peeked out from beneath his sleeve. “It’s not what it—”
Lyssa roared, fury unleashing itself upon her. But as she swung for the boy’s neck, he tripped over his own feet, falling on his face, and her blade whistled through empty air.
“Stop!” Honoria screamed, clutching the wound in her shoulder as she struggled to her feet; the bullet had gone straight through her leather armor. She stuttered for a moment, fighting and failing against her own geas. “You don’t understand!”
Birch fled like a piss-soaked rabbit the moment Lyssa shifted her attention from him to the Hound-warden leader.
“Oh, I understand, Honey,” she growled, and the tide of rage broke against her heart, working its magic on her, singing in her blood.
“You let that faerie whore turn you against me. Let her put that geas on you instead of killing her, like you should have. She took my friend away from me, and now you have done the same.” Her voice broke.
As much as it scared her, as much as she had tried to deny it, that was what Alderic was. Her friend.
“He’s not dead,” Honoria blurted, gasping and red-faced like it had taken great effort to get the words out.
“In case you didn’t notice, your lackeys shot him through the heart,” Lyssa spat. “There’s no saving him now. And there’s no saving you, either.” Whatever she had once felt for Honoria, there would be no mercy for the leader of the Hound-wardens. Not after what she had done.
There would be no mercy for any of them.
Lyssa gripped the sword and advanced with a snarl of rage.
Dimly, she felt an arrow thud into her thigh, another grazing her cheek as it flew past her head.
As she closed in on Honoria, one of the other Hound-wardens stepped between them, slashing at her with his silver cutlass.
Lyssa cut him down like he was wheat beneath the scythe of her sword.
Another came between them, and she cut that one down, too.
An arrow slammed into her forearm, and another into her calf, but she barely felt them through the battle-haze that had taken over her.
Honoria drew her own sword, the bronze blade glinting in the sunrise.
She held up her geas-blighted palm and stammered something, but at the sight of the faerie-symbol carved into her flesh, the wave of Lyssa’s rage crashed over her, drowning out everything else.
With a roar, she chopped off the Hound-warden’s hand, severing that disgusting sigil from the woman she had once loved.
Honoria staggered back, clutching the bleeding stump to her chest, words tumbling out of her. But Lyssa couldn’t hear her through the blood roaring in her ears. She raised her sword to end Honoria’s life, and—
“Stop!” Alderic’s voice broke through her fury, and Lyssa froze. The rage receded all at once, the battle-spell broken by a jolt of confusion and disbelief.
She turned to find him swaying on his feet behind her, easing the last arrow out of his chest with blood-slick fingers. The others were in a splintered pile beside him.
“How…?” She didn’t understand what she was seeing. Ragnhild had told her time and again that not even magic could raise the dead.
Alderic tossed aside the arrow and crossed the distance between them with long, furious strides. Lyssa stumbled backward, the color leeching from the world around her. Shock. She was in shock. And that shock was mirrored on Alderic’s face as he looked down at the two Hound-wardens she had slain.
“You … you killed them,” he said hoarsely.
“They hurt you,” she croaked, and shook her head to see if that might dispel the angry ghost in front of her. It didn’t. “I told you, no one hurts the ones I love and gets away with it.”
Alderic stiffened, his eyes going wide. “What did you say?”
“You are my friend, and they killed you,” she said. “So I killed them back.”
A wild emotion crossed his face. “They didn’t, Lyssa. They didn’t kill me. See for yourself.”
He reached out to her, and she took a step toward him.
And then something punched through her, her vision going white with pain as a bronze blade erupted from her abdomen.
Alderic screamed as the blade ripped back out of her.
The world tilted beneath Lyssa’s feet. She stumbled. Sank to her knees. Was somehow looking up at the sky without knowing how she had gotten onto her back. She heard shouting. Chaos. But she felt disconnected from it, like it was the roar of a distant ocean she couldn’t see from here.
Alderic’s face loomed into her vision, pale and drawn with fear as he yanked off his cravat and shoved it against her wound.
She sucked in a sharp breath. Reached up to brush her bloody fingers against his cheek. “You’re still warm,” she murmured.
“Because I’m not dead, you fucking idiot.
” He seemed to see something out of her line of sight and shouted for help, waving one hand frantically over his head.
Then he looked back at Lyssa. Picked a leaf from her hair.
Cupped her cheek with one hand. “I’m not dead, and neither are you, and it’s going to stay that way. Do you understand me?”
“But they shot you in the heart,” she said.
“No—feel.” He took her hand and pressed it to his chest; his heart was racing beneath his torn, blood-soaked shirt. “I’m real. I’m here.”
“How?” she whispered, trying to blink his face back into focus. She could barely keep her eyes open, she was so tired, but she had to know how he had done it, before she went to sleep.
His lips pressed into a thin line. “No matter how much I want to, no matter how hard I try, I can’t die. I’m…” A look of despair passed over his face, and he shook his head as if to clear it. “I’m immortal.”
“Oh,” she said. Her body relaxed against the cold grass, and she slipped into oblivion.
Lyssa jolted awake with a gasp. Someone was slapping her cheeks hard enough to sting. After a moment, the pale blur in front of her sharpened into Alderic’s face.
“Hnh,” she protested, but she was too tired to fight him off, too tired to lift her hands to bat his away.
“Lyssa, darling, you have to wake up,” he said, and his voice was as calm as his expression was panicked.
“You have to stay with me, do you hear me? No,” he snapped at someone beyond her sight.
“She doesn’t need medicine, she needs magic.
” He turned back to Lyssa. “We have to get back to Ragnhild’s.
I need you to draw a Door. Here, take the chalk—” He pressed something into her palm.
“We’ll do it together, okay?” He lifted her arm, and she felt her hand drag against something solid—a wall?
But her fingers weren’t working right. She was too tired.
Why wouldn’t he let her go back to sleep? If she could just …
The chalk slipped from her fingers. Alderic swore, moving out of her vision.
Lyssa’s eyes fluttered closed.
“Please!” Alderic screamed, jolting her out of that half-sleep. He had drawn a Door on the wall with three shaky lines, and was pounding on it with both fists, crying in earnest now. “She needs help! Please!”
“Doorknob,” she said. “It needs … doorknob.”
As she drifted out of consciousness again, a glow penetrated the thin flesh of her eyelids, washing the darkness in orange.
Alderic choked on a sob, and then there were arms around her, lifting her. She screamed, agony slamming her back into her body for just long enough to realize that Alderic was carrying her through the Door he had drawn.
They stepped over the threshold and into Ragnhild’s kitchen.
“Help me,” Alderic said, and the old witch screamed in surprise, dropping the jar she had been holding.
“How did you—” she started, then her eyes went wide. “What happened?”
“Help me,” Alderic said again. “She’s dying.”
And then Lyssa slipped back into the void.