Chapter 49
“If She is sacrifice, He is death. One cannot exist without the other, and I fear their war will never cease. We cannot keep the Gray Man imprisoned forever.”
Hoarfrost sprouted along her fingers, up her arms with a biting cold, and the two men holding Alexys released her with a hiss. The ropes that bound her wrists and ankles fell away.
Silas’s voice whispered in her ear as she lurched to her feet.
I save you and your little friend at the expense of the ones who wish you harm.
A shiver raced down her spine. Alexys had no illusions about what Silas was insinuating, but the image of the knife buried in Nic’s chest was burned into her memory. It was all she could see.
There’s a balance I have to maintain. It’s a small price, considering, Silas crooned in his thick drawl.
His disembodied voice echoed around her, traced frozen fingertips along her skin.
They were planning to kill you both, anyway.
A cult of the disillusioned. What are their lives truly worth in the grand scheme of things?
Alexys was barely listening. She scurried toward the remains of the stone altar as the cultists tried to collect themselves from the places they’d fallen.
She found Nic sprawled among the wreckage, the blade hilt sticking out of his chest and blood soaking his once-white shirt. He looked horribly pale.
She raced to him, tripping and stumbling over frost-touched rubble, until she was crouched beside him.
“Nic?” Alexys carefully lifted his head and cradled it in her lap. His eyes were closed, and his hair was wet with blood that pooled beneath him. “Nic? I need you to stay with me, Nic. Please.”
She brushed curls off his forehead and pressed a few fingertips against his neck in search of a pulse.
“Come back to me,” Alexys begged. “I can’t do this without you. It shouldn’t have been you. It should’ve …”
“It’s not too late.”
She turned her head. Silas stood beside her.
He was in one of his gray, three-piece suits, a smug smile touching his thin lips, and the obsidian knife held carelessly between two of his fingers. He met her gaze, and his smile widened. Too many teeth, and not nearly enough kindness. “Hello, darlin’. Did you miss me?”
Alexys blinked several times, barely understanding everything that had happened so far.
Did she see him pull the knife from Nic’s chest?
Or walk into the room? She accepted Silas’s presence with the same dazed detachment with which she started to accept the rest of the night’s events and focused instead on Nic.
“Please, can you save him?” she asked.
“I can bring him back to you, yes,” he drawled. “But every favor has a price.”
She answered without hesitation, “I’ll pay it.”
She couldn’t afford to lose anyone else. She couldn’t let another person die at her hands, in her place, because of her. Not Nic.
Silas’s smile was the same cold, dead thing he showed her when he told her to find Elliot. It reminded her eerily of the Jackalope’s grinning maw or the Hollow Walker’s skeletal visage. It was the smile of death, of suffering, of an endless winter.
Her fear of Silas’s darkness faded some as a familiar woman stepped within her line of sight.
Agnes, cloak covered in dust and face marred with rage, stormed toward them.
Alexys’s own anger reignited. Any lingering reservations she had about making a deal with Silas vanished. The woman who performed such cruelty, who stabbed Nic, who killed countless others. She could unleash that darkness on her.
Alexys looked to Silas and found his hand stretched out to her.
“Life for life. Shake on it, darlin’.”
The gravity of the choice she was making and the weight of the responsibility she was going to have to bear were going to haunt her for a long time, but she couldn’t turn him down. Better the devil you know … Alexys reached out and shook Silas’s ice-cold hand.
He winked at her, and Alexys turned to find Agnes almost upon them.
When Silas stepped forward, she saw some of the fire in Agnes’s eyes sputter out. Uncertainty took over her expression, and her steps faltered.
“Who are you?” Agnes snapped.
“Have you forgotten me already, little Aggie?”
Agnes’s face went white.
“Ah, there it is.” Silas chuckled, deep and menacing. “I thought you might remember.”
“You shouldn’t be here.” Agnes backed away from him slowly, a hand raised between them as if to ward him off. “You can’t be here. Our magic is supposed to keep you out.”
Silas advanced on her, keeping pace with Agnes’s slow shuffle backward. “You think your little ritual can fight against one of my bargains?”
Agnes shook her head, faster and faster until it was a frantic blur. “It’s supposed to keep you locked away. That’s … That’s why we do it. We kill them to keep you caged!”
Her voice was shrill, echoing through the mine and scraping against Alexys’s ears. The fear in Agnes’s eyes was primal and satisfying.
“You think I’m weaker than Her?” The venom with which Silas spat the word made Alexys shrink down and hold Nic a little tighter. Agnes withered under his caustic gaze and turned a panicked gaze toward Alexys.
“What have you done?”
Fear made Alexys’s heart lurch, but she held no pity for this woman, this monster.
“I’ve been plotting my escape for longer than you’ve been alive,” Silas hissed.
“And the new bargain I’ve struck negates everything you’ve done.
” Agnes’s eyes opened impossibly wide, darting around the room like a cornered animal desperate for escape.
She was shaking, hands gripping her cloak with white knuckles.
“Now, I’m going to kill you,” Silas announced calmly.
“Every single one of you. And when I do …” His hand snapped out impossibly quick as he grabbed Agnes by the jaw and pulled her in close.
“Her magic will fade. And She’ll have no hope of containing my wrath. ”
Agnes opened her mouth to speak, and Silas drove the obsidian dagger under her chin.
Alexys’s own satisfaction at the blood that spilled from Agnes’s throat sickened her, but she couldn’t look away.
She needed the retribution. To know that Nic, whether he lived or died, had been avenged.
That Elliot, the poor, sweet Warden, had been avenged.
Even more twisted was the disappointment that her hand wasn’t the one to wield the knife.
Agnes dropped to her knees and then fell forward into the dirt. Blood began to pool around her, and Alexys finally looked away, repulsed by the sight.
She turned her attention to Nic, brushing her fingertips against his cheek, trying to will the color back into his skin.
Begging his thick lashes to blink open and reveal those clever gray eyes.
Her gaze slid down, and Alexys saw the blood still leaking from the wound on Nic’s chest. Panic seized her.
“Silas,” Alexys called. “I need you to—”
“Little busy, darlin’.”
She looked up to find Silas dragging one of the cultists to their feet. Their hood was up, so she couldn’t see their face. Not that she could have recognized them if she’d seen it.
Silas lifted them effortlessly from the ground until their feet dangled several inches from the dirt. “Saving your little friend has a price.” Silas looked over his shoulder at her, smile wide. “Have you forgotten our deal already?”
“Wait.” Alexys tried to gently move Nic’s head out of her lap and stand, but she wasn’t moving fast enough. “Silas, wait!”
The man’s neck snapped with a sickening crack that echoed through the mine, and Silas moved on to the next before Alexys was able to stand. Her feet slipped in the puddle of blood she was knelt in, Nic’s blood, and caused her to stumble as she rushed to stop him.
“Silas, stop!”
He didn’t answer, didn’t look at her as he struck them down one by one.
Alexys screamed at him, rushed through the fallen bodies and scattered altar remains to try and end the carnage before it could get any worse. Her footing slipped. She went down and landed hard on her hands and knees. The collision with the packed earth sent ripples of pain streaking up her limbs.
She scrambled to her feet and pushed her hair out of her face. A dark liquid dripped off her forehead. She looked down.
Alexys’s hands were covered in blood. Soaked to the elbow.
Her jeans had absorbed so much of the stuff, they looked black and clung to her skin.
She tried to wipe it off on her shirt which did nothing but leave violent red streaks across the fabric.
She nearly choked when she realized she’d marred Nic’s sweater with bloody handprints.
The metallic scent filled her nose, so strong her head swam.
She couldn’t tell if it was tears or blood wetting her cheeks.
Her gaze darted over to Nic, still lying next to the broken altar, and then back to Silas.
Silas stood among the bodies of their captors. Obsidian dagger dripping blood in one hand and a limp body clutched in the other, he looked like a painting of Death itself. The bloodthirsty grin that split his face was decorated with crimson stains. His eyes cut to hers, and her chest hollowed out.