Chapter 28 Ravana’s Armor #2
“Will you shut up!” she screamed, whirling on him, slashing out across his throat with something that she’d slipped from her sleeve.
A line of red instantly followed; Gueldefore choked out, blood spluttering instantly from his mouth, spluttering from his neck.
The knight clawed at the wound, but it was too late, and too soon he slumped towards the ground, let out a last cough, and stopped moving.
Morfran raised his eyes from the dead man back to Ravana, all his nerves alert.
She looked down at the mess, wiping a splatter of blood from her forehead with the back of her hand. He saw she was holding a simple knife. “Oops,” she murmured, a little tonelessly. She turned to him, and he saw—
“Ravana?”
Her forehead was a strange coloring of ivory and the sickly green of moldy bread. She looked at her sleeve where her makeup powders were, then touched her skin. “Drat.” She shut her eyes. “I was hoping you wouldn’t notice.”
Alarmed, he asked, “What is happening to you?”
She lifted and dropped one shoulder, then raised her left hand up to stare at her fingers. “My magic ring,” she drawled, staring at it gleaming dully on her finger. “It’s gone bad. Ever since you smashed yours and abandoned me, it’s been causing me all sorts of grief.”
“What does that have to do with your skin?”
She cast him a lazy look, but after seeing her so quickly lose her temper and kill Gueldefore, he couldn’t ignore her casualness. She was going mad. The jars, the trophies, how she hoarded soldiers up in Warshire—she was going mad.
“I’m getting older, Morfran,” she said. “I used the magic to preserve my looks. But about six months ago, it started to backfire.”
He studied her. The makeup didn’t just cover her face. She’d caked it onto her neck, her arms, and her hands, too. That was why she’d been so powdered up when she’d projected her spirit to him. She was hiding the problem. “You’re decaying?”
She scoffed, her nose wrinkled in distaste, her smile nasty. Then she nodded, a strange look in her eye. “I am, dearest.” She spread out her arms. “So why don’t you come embrace and kiss me one last time?”
“Is this why you don’t want to turn yourself in? You think there’s no time to become good? Ravana, the rebels have a healer, two actually, who can heal you. They’re with us now. Just remove the ring. Let us help you.”
“I don’t want your friends to touch me with their dirty fingers,” she spat.
“If they come near me, I’ll slaughter them.
” Her eyes gleamed as she said this, a dark gleam, the same one he’d seen when she’d smiled at the screams of men she tortured.
“Gueldefore told me all about them. That crusty old man who can barely walk, that annoying little girl who acts so benevolent all the time. I’ll kill them both, Morfran, you know I will.
I’ll kill them all. And if you don’t believe me, bring them here and watch as I rip their limbs from their pathetic bodies. ”
He was wrong. She wasn’t going mad. She was there already.
And after seeing the black look in her eye and hearing her giddy glee as she threatened to kill an old man and a little girl, he knew there was nothing he could do or say to reach her.
She was wicked-wicked, evil-evil, and she needed to die.
But for the first time since he’d abandoned her, he found he didn’t want to kill her.
He raised the blade with great, reluctant sorrow. “Then I think there’s nothing more I can say to convince you.”
She laughed. “I knew it. Knew you’d come here and return as the hero. But I promise you this.” She spanned out her arms, grinning, the makeup powders across her face smeared enough to expose the green hue of rot. “Whoever kills me dies as well.”
He paused.
“It was the last enchantment this ring would spit out,” she said. “A spell of offensive armor. However I die, that individual will die in the exact same way.”
So that was the catch. Something inside his chest released, and he exhaled quietly. “I’ve sent hundreds to their death. What’s two more?”
He lunged at her. She screeched, sawing through the air with her knife, which he narrowly evaded by swerving aside. She didn’t let up, however, and slashed thrice at him in what could only be described as precise, swift death thrusts, all of which almost landed lethal blows.
He kicked her in the knee, knocking her backwards. He swung his blade to cut her down.
She ducked, came up, and slashed him across the knuckles.
He blinked in surprise, the cut stinging.
She snickered but didn’t answer his question, leaving him to realize on his own that even though when he’d left her a year ago she hadn’t known how to wield even a practice stick right, she’d changed that. She’d trained for this.
She was quick after that. Almost too quick. He was trying to cut her down with a longer-range sword, whereas she was spinning, pivoting, and popping up behind him to deliver quick, painful slashes that he couldn’t fend off.
Fine, then. If she wanted to fight in close quarters, then he could do that as well. Bronwen’s dagger was in the pocket of his breeches. He swept it out now, discarding his sword behind him, and began countering her blow for blow, catching a slice in the ribs here, a gash to his collarbone there.
He landed a nasty cut to her scalp, to which she let out a hysterical howl of a laugh before headbutting him, right in the chest where Gueldefore’s bolt had struck him earlier.
Black spots washed over him at the pain. But he was already moving, already bringing his hand up to stop her from stabbing him in the eye—
Her knife went through the palm of his hand, coming to a stop at the hilt. He groaned, hot pain rippling through his fingers, down his wrist. She was forcing him backwards, towards the wall, grunting at the exertion.
He stopped trying to hold her strength back, recoiled, and as she fell forward, slapped her across the face. Hard.
She staggered back with an oof, toppling over an armchair. While he had a spare moment he peeled her knife out of his palm, seething and cursing every name he could think of until it was out. Black spots were returning, threatening to take him.
No. He fought. Stay awake. Stay awake and take her down.
She’d done a backwards somersault to catch her fall, and was still crouched like a wildcat on all fours, her hair in tangled streaks of black about her body.
He held both her knife and Bronwen’s dagger, and before he could consider which to throw—his chest wound was inflamed again, and he couldn’t quite grip Bronwen’s dagger with his left, while his right side was free but he wasn’t right-hand dominant—she pounced at him with an animalistic scream that slapped the ceiling almost before it slapped his ears, and he raised his left hand up and—
The dagger buried into flesh. Morfran sucked in a terrible breath with her. They both stared down at the weapon embedded deep into her thigh. He hadn’t been able to raise his hand soon enough; the pain in his chest was too great.
“Oh, Morfran,” she said, almost mockingly, through her pain. “Don’t you know anything?” A small, wicked smile formed on her lips. “Thigh wounds are like shoulder shots. They’re never fatal.”
She then rammed his sword through his stomach, spearing it so it went cleanly out his back. He choked, dropping both weapons, his hands instinctively flying to the foreign object skewering through his body.
She wrenched it out.
He collapsed, and this time the black spots returned at the corners of his vision, appearing and reappearing like the coming and going of a tide.
His ex-wife tugged out the dagger in her thigh with a lack of self-preservation and gazed at it with morbid curiosity before tossing it aside and gripping his sword with both hands.