Chapter Nineteen #2
She remembered watching Honoria pack her things. Are you really going to choose that faerie over me? she’d demanded, arms crossed, lip curled in contempt, eyes blazing. Over what we’ve spent all these years working towards?
I am, Honoria had said, slinging her single pack over her shoulders and looking Lyssa in the eyes. Just like you will always choose your oath over me.
You’re right. I will. Because the oath means more to me than you do, Lyssa had spat.
It wasn’t a lie, and Honoria knew it.
“The next time I saw her, she had the geas on her,” Lyssa told Alderic.
Honoria had cornered her in a tavern in Reedshollow a few months after leaving the Witch’s Wood for the last time.
The locals had been plying Lyssa with free beer all night, in thanks for killing the redcap that had been terrorizing them, and she was drunk beyond reason.
Drunk enough that when Honoria slid into the booth across from her, Lyssa didn’t even lift her cheek from the sticky tabletop to glare at her.
The Hounds, Honoria had said without preamble, as if she knew Lyssa would only humor her for a few minutes. They’re—She stammered and stuttered the rest, entirely unable to speak.
Lyssa remembered very little through the drunken haze. She recalled asking Honoria if she’d been kicked in the head or something, her own words just as slurred and unintelligible. And she remembered Honoria holding out her hand to show Lyssa the faerie-geas carved into her palm.
It won’t let me explain, she’d said with a nervous laugh, but if you come with me—
Fury had overtaken Lyssa at the sight of the faerie mark. Without another word, she had stabbed Honoria through the palm, pinning her to the table.
“The spell kept her from spilling her new mistress’s secrets,” Lyssa said, “so I have no idea what foul lies that aelf bitch told her to get her to betray her own kind. To betray me. But we’ve been enemies ever since.”
“Is that why you cut off her hand?” Alderic asked.
Lyssa looked at him aghast. “I what?”
“Her geas-hand. You cut it off right before you realized that I…” He trailed off, wincing.
But it was too late. The words unlocked something within her, the fog lifting from her brain just enough to glimpse a shadow of memory.
Alderic, swaying in the cemetery, easing an arrow out of his own heart, his fingers slick with blood.
“Before I realized you weren’t dead.” She blinked herself back to the present and glared at him. “You’re immortal,” she accused.
Alderic flinched. Let go of her hand and staggered to his feet. “Erm. Ragnhild said to go get her as soon as you were awake, so—”
“Alderic,” Lyssa warned, her voice as sharp as the pain in her body, but before she could threaten him with violence if he didn’t start talking immediately, Ragnhild poked her head into the kitchen as if summoned by her name.
“Ah, you’re awake!” she said brightly. “Time to check your wounds.”
“Not now,” Lyssa said, her eyes boring into Alderic’s face. He was picking flakes of blood from his palms instead of looking at her. “Not until—”
“Yes, now,” Rags said. “Alderic, scram.” She hooked her thumb toward the door leading out to the porch. “And take the dog with you,” she added, but Alderic had already fled—and tripped over every single herb pot on the porch steps, by the sound of it.
“Did you know that Alderic is immortal?” Lyssa demanded as soon as she and Ragnhild were alone.
“It came up, yes,” the witch said, swatting Brandy’s rump. He howled his dissent, but jumped down from his perch on Lyssa’s legs and trudged over to his bed by the hearth.
“What did he tell you?” Lyssa wiggled her toes. The feeling was slowly returning to her feet, though she couldn’t tell whether it was from the effects of Ragnhild’s healing, or merely because she no longer had a certain bullmastiff cutting off her circulation.
“I am not in the habit of spilling other people’s secrets,” Rags said, leveling a severe look at Lyssa. “If you want to know the details, you’ll have to ask Alderic.” She lifted the bandage pasted over Lyssa’s stomach just enough to peer beneath it.
“That hurts,” Lyssa hissed.
“Oh, stop complaining,” Rags said. “You’re lucky you can still feel anything at all.
” She peeked under another of the bandages.
Apparently the sword through the stomach had been only one of several nasty wounds that Lyssa couldn’t recall acquiring.
“Alderic got you here just in time. If he’d come through the Gate, you might not have made it. ”
“Where did he come through?”
“Here, in the kitchen.”
Lyssa gaped at the old witch. “But the wards on the house—”
“They let him in,” Rags said simply, changing a bandage on Lyssa’s arm that she had bled through.
“Why?”
“I don’t know. Their purpose isn’t to keep people out, necessarily. They’re here for our protection. Maybe they sensed that you were dying, and that Alderic was trying to save you.”
“He couldn’t have done it without you,” Lyssa said, a sudden wave of emotion surging through her. She reached out and took Ragnhild’s hand, squeezing it. “Thank you.”
A pleased grin spread across the old witch’s face, and Lyssa realized with sudden horror that Rags was missing several teeth. The gaps were raw and bloody, as if the wounds were fresh.
“Your mouth,” she gasped, struggling to sit up. “What happened?”
“Don’t rip your stitches out on my account,” Rags said sternly. “I’m fine.”
“But—”
“You almost died,” the witch said, busying herself with a roll of bandages. “One cannot simply steal from Death, once a life has been marked as Hers. One must … bargain, a little.”
“So you ripped out your own teeth?”
“Teeth are powerful,” she said with a shrug, as if it were nothing.
Lyssa’s eyes burned with the threat of tears. “Why would you do that for me?”
Ragnhild gave her a look. “Do you really think I’d let the best blacksmith I’ve ever had bleed out on my kitchen table? I would have sacrificed more than teeth to save you.”
“Rags,” Lyssa croaked, her throat tight. “I—”
“I didn’t do it alone,” Ragnhild said, waving her hand dismissively. Lyssa thought she saw a tear slide down the old witch’s face, but Rags scratched her cheek and it was gone. “Alderic gave so much blood that he almost fainted. Although, between you and me, I think he was being a touch dramatic.”
Lyssa laughed at the image of Alderic swooning on a ladies’ fainting couch.
Ragnhild eyed her sidelong. “He cares about you, you know. A great deal. He’s been sitting by your bedside fretting like a mother hen this whole time.”
“I…” She looked down at her hands. They were still faintly pink with blood, and her nails were ragged.
“You care about him, too,” Rags observed.
“I tried not to,” she said, and maybe it was the fact that she had almost died, or the knowledge that there were people willing to sacrifice blood and bone to keep her alive, but Lyssa started to cry.
Ragnhild looked horrified. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” She pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes, so overcome that she couldn’t speak for a moment. “It doesn’t matter if Alderic and I care about each other. It doesn’t change anything.” She dropped her hands to find that Ragnhild’s face had gone soft with sympathy.
“Love can change everything, if you let it,” the witch said. “It is more powerful than magic, more powerful than the Beast. More powerful, even, than your rage.”
“That’s not what this is,” Lyssa argued. “I’m not in love with Alderic. He’s my friend.”
“There can be love between friends. And I hate to say it, girl, but Alderic told me that you went berserk because you thought he died. I’d say that’s your brand of love.”
The words brought more memories out of the fog.
Alderic, arrows thudding into his chest. The devastation of losing him—him, and not just Lyssa’s only chance for revenge.
The sword, the Beast … none of that had even crossed her mind as she watched him crumple to the ground.
All she could think about was destroying whoever had killed him.
Because he had the kindest heart out of anyone she had ever known, and they’d shot a fucking arrow through it.
Because Alderic was her friend, and they had taken him from her.
He treated her like more than a weapon, despite having hired her to be exactly that. He treated her like someone who deserved to be saved, even if the thing he was saving her from was herself.
And her dog liked him.
“Fuck,” she said. “Okay, fine. Maybe I do love him. But it still doesn’t change anything. I’m—”
“Still going to fight the Beast,” Rags finished for her. “I know, my little brute. Nothing will keep you from the path you have chosen.” She chucked Lyssa under the chin with one gnarled finger. “But who knows? Maybe love will make you stronger. Think on it, while you rest.”
Lyssa struggled to shove her emotions down. “I’ve rested enough. The equinox can’t be far away, and we still have to collect Alderic’s personal concern so that I can forge the sword.”
“Nadia has been keeping an eye on what day it is, out there,” Rags said, stacking a few pillows behind Lyssa in order to prop her head up. “As of this morning you still had time.”
“Even so, we should—”
The rest of her words withered beneath the witch’s glare.
“If you even so much as try to get up,” Ragnhild warned her, “I will knock you back out with the most potent concoction I can muster up. Don’t test me.”
Lyssa lay back in the pillows and sighed. “Fine. But I want to talk to Alderic first. He has some explaining to do.”
She could wring the truth out of the frilly bastard lying down, at least.
“You lied to me,” Lyssa said the moment Alderic walked back into the kitchen.
He froze with his hand still on the doorknob, as if deciding whether to stay and get this over with now, or run away again. “You’re looking much better, Carnifex. How are you feeling?”
“Stop stalling.”