Chapter Thirty-Nine #2
Edmund grabs her arm. She careens to a halt, almost yanking it out of the socket. His mask is tinged with blood, the left side torn and dangling.
“Cassandra, I—”
She rakes her free hand across his face. Releasing her arm, he yells and stumbles backwards, tripping over his long robes. He hits the ground with a hard, meaty thunk. Even though it’s not entirely, strictly necessary, Cassandra kicks him twice in the ribs.
She’s about to go for one more—just to make sure he stays down, she tells herself—when a breath of noise from behind distracts her. She whips around, saving herself by mere seconds.
Roth’s fist brushes the side of her ear.
“I said I would ruin you,” he says, breathing heavily. “An eye for an eye, Cass.”
Cassandra dodges another punch, but her foot catches on a chip in the floor and she stumbles backwards, into the table. Roth grabs her, his hands digging into already tender flesh. She hisses, but he grins, his eyes over-bright and deadly behind his mask.
She has no way out.
Then she realises what she’s been hearing all this time, what’s teased insistently at the back of her mind. The river.
If she can hear the river, that must mean they’re in a tributary bookshop.
And if they’re in a tributary bookshop, she doesn’t need a book to read.
There’s no ink, but how much ink has she drunk in service to the river already?
There has to be something still in there.
Something the river, at least, would recognise.
Desperately, she reaches deep into her mind, and conjures the river. Forget holding all the possibilities, forget the infinite—just a story, any story—anything to save her.
And the river, as always, obliges.
Words burst from her mouth, in a language she only vaguely recognises. Her skin glows with the phosphorescent azure of the river’s waters, language inking itself around her limbs. The room starts to shimmer and distort. Beads of condensation lift in the air.
Out of the corner of her eye, the society members back away, unease crossing their faces. Then they run.
She’s not even sure what she’s reading for—save me, she’d thought, and nothing more—but power pulses through her, uncontained by the usual ties of control.
The walls of the bookshop creak and groan, the walls weeping a dark, viscous substance.
Above, the ancient chandelier’s pendants start to fall, crystal smashing on the flagstone floor.
Then, as if through an invisible hand, they come together again, fragments floating back to the chandelier in reverse. Fall, smash, rise, mend, fall—
Roth’s hands close around her throat. Her voice closes off with a sharp gasp, the language disappearing from her skin in an instant. The suspended pendants crash to the floor again, and this time they remain shattered fragments.
Cassandra scrabbles at Roth’s fingers, but he’s so much stronger than she is, not exhausted and beaten and nauseous with pain. He straddles her, pinning her to the floor.
“Who are you screaming for?” He bares his teeth in a vicious smile. “No one’s coming for you, Cass. Let’s face it, who’s going to even notice you’re missing? Your bar friends? Your landlord? Hell, even your bookseller will just think you’ve given up.”
That’s your problem, Cassandra. You never want to commit.
Oh, but she has committed, she thinks wryly, even as the rest of her panics at the absence of oxygen. She did exactly what Chiron asked—and now she’s going to die for it, just like he did.
Her vision bleeds black spots as she drowns, airless. Her lungs burn. You have to hold on, Cassandra, she tells herself. But her grip on Roth’s fingers slacken, strength falling away.
She’ll never have a chance to tell Lowell that she’s sorry for lying to him. Never make it up to Byron. Never be more than a fuck-up and failure.
Around her, the river churns, rising from the stone floor.
Lady Fate emerges, her hair sleek and ink-black.
That enigmatic smile. That carefully cocked eyebrow.
Her hands, at once scaled and smooth, water pouring from them.
She looks down at Cassandra with an expression somewhere between pity and disappointment.
Cassandra would laugh if she wasn’t dying, and maybe even then, if she wasn’t rapidly running out of air. Even Lady Fate thought she could do better. What a thing, to disappoint the oldest storyteller.
Lady Fate presses a kiss to her forehead. Lips cold with the touch of death, or maybe Cassandra’s already beyond feeling anything. Her body bucks in response, then stops. The vestiges of her strength slip away.
Is this what Chiron saw, just before he died?
Somewhere nearby, a door slams open. Roth’s grip eases fractionally. Lady Fate winks, and the river vanishes all at once.
“What the fuck—” Roth starts.
And then he’s off her entirely, no longer pinning her to the floor.
Cassandra gasps, choking on air. Her chest spasms as she drags in lungful after lungful, throat burning.
Her pulse rushes in her ears. She attempts to sit up, before Roth can grab her again, but her muscles refuse to obey. She has to get up; she has to—
Hands pull her upright; a shock of blue in her peripheral vision. Now she knows she’s really dead. Because there’s no way Byron would have finagled her way here, to this miserable, lightless room. Not for someone like Cassandra.
“Cassandra? Oh my God, your face—your neck. That motherfucker!” Byron snaps towards two people wrestling on the floor. “Get him, Lowell!”
Her heart, still juddering, misses a beat.
Lowell?
If Byron shouldn’t be here, then Lowell is an outright impossibility. But he’s right there, tackling Roth to the ground, their bodies landing with a heavy thump.
“You… shouldn’t…” Cassandra’s voice is barely a whisper; her throat is like sandpaper, bruised from Roth’s fingers.
“Shouldn’t what? Beat the shit out of him?” Byron glances at them. “He deserves it. Let’s get out of here.”
Cassandra manages two steps before her legs give out from under her. Her head aches beyond exhaustion. Her eyes flutter, and the room briefly goes black.
“Oh, no, absolutely not.” Real panic tinges her voice. “Cassandra? Cassan—shit. Lowell!”
A glimpse of Lowell, shirt rumpled and torn. Blood bright across his face. And that expression on his face—
“I’m fine,” she mumbles.
Byron reaches for her, tries to pull her upright. But she is so very tired. Her thoughts keep swimming around the view in front of her: Lowell, his knuckles red and fisted, eyes black and furious; Roth, backing away with an expression she’s never seen on his face before—fear.
She closes her eyes again, and this time, it’s impossible to open them. A yelp, scrambling sounds, swearing. A chair, toppling over. Then footsteps, running towards her.
“Cassandra—listen to me, please.”
Another voice. Lowell’s, she thinks drowsily.
Then the river is pulling her under, setting aside her thoughts, her pain. Darkness swallows her.