73. KILL THEM ALL #3
He let out a grunt and pushed against me, but I slammed a knee into his side and pressed my injured hand to his face, blinding him with my blood as I reached for his dagger that was only a few feet away. My fingers clawed at the moss and the branches but came up a few inches short of the pommel.
Killian yanked my hand from his face, twisting my arm until the rest of my body had no option but to go in the same direction. I yelped as I fell to the side, further away from his dagger, but closer now, to my own.
He wasn’t paying attention to the weapons; his crazed eyes were on me. As I struggled to get a hold of my blade, he scrambled on top of me once more, both his hands clamping down on my neck and squeezing.
Gods, the pressure, the pain . . . I choked, gasping for air and clawing at his wrists, but he pressed harder.
I summoned my light, but it remained pinned in place inside me, just like I was pinned beneath Killian. I didn’t know what was happening, or why I could not access it. Darkness crept along the edges of my vision, and my entire body thrashed in panic.
Desperate, I dug my fingers into the forest floor, reaching for something—anything—
My nail caught on a metal edge. My dagger. I strained, blindly fumbling to get it in my grasp. When I finally closed my hand around it, I jammed it into Killian’s side. A bark of pain broke from his throat, and his grip on my neck loosened.
The world came back into focus as my consciousness cleared. I pulled in heaving breaths of air and shoved Killian off of me, yanking the dagger free in the process. He collapsed onto his back, and I climbed on top of him, then drove the iron blade straight into his heart.
I channeled all of my anger into the force I put on the dagger, ripping it down through his chest, inch by inch, repeating my brother’s dying words in my head. Kill them. Kill them all.
Killian gargled on his own blood, his panicked, bright blue eyes flitting between mine.
The blade undulated with his rough, faltering breaths, and I pressed it deeper, turning it, severing flesh and scraping against bone.
A barking cough spluttered from his throat.
Another pushed a fresh slurry of red down his chin.
His mouth opened and closed like a floundering fish.
His hands, now weak and shaky, grappled with mine, desperately trying to remove the blade, to cling to life.
He looked up at me like he couldn’t believe I had actually done it.
“You were mistaken to think that I would kill you gently.” I leaned further over him, pressing both palms atop the dagger. “Perhaps I was a gentle lady once, but many days have passed, and too many of my loved ones have ceased to breathe since then. I’m afraid I don’t know what mercy is anymore.”
I leveraged my weight against his body and snapped the handle off the blade, leaving the iron embedded deep inside his chest where he couldn’t pull it free. His arms fell limp at his sides as his power evaporated from his veins like smoke.
I smirked at the High Lord of the Woodland Court one last time and whispered, “Tell AEbon I said, ‘hello.’”
His eyes widened at the mention of the god of death, but his attempted rebuttal died on his quivering lips as his gaze went distant and his heart finally gave out.
For a moment, I sat and stared at him, trying to see the true familial resemblance between him and Breck. Killian was different in every possible way. I’d thought about it when I first met him, when he’d used the word cousin, and Breck didn’t deny it.
But that didn’t matter now. He was dead. We were one enemy less, and though it didn’t change the fact that he’d sent my brother to an early grave, it brought me the peace I needed.
There would be no funeral for the fae lord.
No words spoken over his body, or ceremonies performed to see him into the afterlife.
The Great Wood of Belthria did not hold the same flair as the woodlands in Anbrya.
The colors were mundane, the foliage bland and limp.
It was the opposite of what Killian was used to, a fitting place for him to rot—unknown and unnamed.
I pushed to a stand, but was instantly met with another vise around my neck. Though, this time, it wasn’t someone’s hands. It was a shadow—Skadi’s shadow.
The goddess stepped toward me, her outstretched hand commanding the power that closed the distance between us.
Her eyes slid to the forest floor as she stepped up to where Killian lay. “Such a pity. He was a promising little pawn, even if he did like to defy orders and take matters into his own hands.”
I panicked, scratching at my throat, grappling against her shadow’s hold as I gasped for air.
Once again, I tried to summon my power, but nothing came.
What was happening to me?
Something was wrong, I could feel it. The burning in my chest was deeper now, more pronounced, and . . . spreading. I couldn’t access my power, couldn’t port or summon a weapon, no matter how hard I tried.
“Shhh, shhh, shhh,” Skadi chided. “Soon all of this will be over.”
“Stop!” the queen’s voice rang out from across the clearing.
I turned my head as much as I could, and found Corinne stepping forward.
What was she doing?
She lifted her chin and steeled her voice as she said, “I am willing to make a bargain.”