Chapter 45
Chapter Forty-Five
Death was a mess. Withered and gaunt, his hair more white than red, barely able to lift his head from the pillow. Scáthach cringed away regardless.
“Husband,” Hilly breathed, taking his hand. Then: “You old fool. How long have you been back with us?”
“I’m not.” He grinned up at his wife, baring sharp yellow teeth. “Not really. Amara can explain. You look like hells, woman. Dammit!”
“Keep that up, you’ll get another pinch.”
“Wow. Wow,” Gray said, goggling. “I thought you got us all in here for dramatic effect, not because your dad was going to be the surprise speaker.”
“Both of those can be true.”
“It isn’t fair.” Skye had gone from too-pale to too-red in about a second and a half. “Your time is done, old man.”
“Not your call, Scáthach.” To Amara: “It’s a trade, yes? A good one. That’s all right, hon. I’m tired.”
“I’m standing right here,” Skye snapped.
“It doesn’t matter. You don’t matter. Don’t you understand?” Amara asked, contempt warring with pity. “You tried and you lost. Nothing will change that.” To Death: “This is what I’ve been putting up with.”
“What, Death, you think you can just open your eyes—”
“How is he opening his eyes in the first place?” Gray slapped his forehead. “Oh. Because half-assed.”
“—and all goes back to what it was?”
“No, Scáthach. I don’t think that. I think I’m tired and I think you’re tedious.” Amara’s father sighed. “Good thing I don’t have to put up with either of those anymore.”
“I did what I had to do,” Skye insisted, because she was incapable of reading the room. “To survive.”
“Is that what you told my sister when you intercepted her all those years ago in the snow?” Amara took a step closer to Scáthach.
And another. “I wonder, did you kill her on the spot the moment you caught up?” She had never been this close to Skye unless they were hugging.
Or sparring. Their noses were inches apart.
“Or did you weasel your way in close, knock her out, and wait for her to freeze to death? I guess it doesn’t matter.
” Amara’s voice was almost unrecognizable to her.
The only time she’d sounded this coldly forbidding was when she confronted Gray’s mother.
Only now she wouldn’t have to fight the urge to beat someone to death.
“What does matter is something you didn’t count on. It. Didn’t. Work.
“And the fact that you thought it would just shows you never really knew any of us. My folks didn’t give up.
They dug in. They risked their hearts to have another child.
And another. Until they got me. So you waited and plotted a few hundred years before you tried again.
And you still couldn’t get the job done. ”
“Dammit, woman!”
“S-sorry, husband.” Hilly dropped Death’s probably throbbing hand. “Amara, what are you saying?”
“I’m sorry, Mom. I suspected it a couple of days ago, but I couldn’t burden you with it until—”
“It was easy, Hilly.” Skye bared her teeth. “That yodeling twit could never have taken over.”
“—Skye confessed,” Amara finished. Then she leaned in and whispered in her mother’s ear, and got a shallow nod in return.
To Skye: “Mom mentioned what a comfort you were back in the day. How you helped her get through the tragedy. It stood to reason that your cowardly coup campaign didn’t start with me.”
“Oh, Skye,” Penny moaned. “How could you do such a thing? To attack one of us? Our children?”
“And for nothing,” Arawn added. “You killed that lively child for nothing.”
“I did what I had to do.”
Amara couldn’t keep the scorn from her tone. “Self-defense? Is that what you’re going with? And when I kill you, what is that, exactly?”
“A pipe dream,” Skye snarled, and launched herself.
Amara could see how to block the first blow, dodge the second, and blow Skye’s kneecap between the first and second. But overconfidence would be a mistake. Doubtless there were plenty of moves Skye never bothered to teach Amara Morrigan.
And yet, she wasn’t Amara Morrigan anymore.
She blocked, but Skye was able to get a swipe in regardless, tearing Amara’s sunglasses off. Then, blinking in surprise: “What’s wrong with your—”
“They aren’t migraines,” Amara replied, and then seized Skye with something stronger than the strength in her hands: her birthright.
“I Reap thee, Scáthach of the Isle of Skye.” The words were familiar, though she’d never heard them before, and certainly never said them before.
“I don’t take all from you, only your life. And so farewell.”
It wasn’t especially dramatic, or even drawn out. One moment Skye was a khaki bundle of envious rage, and then she was a husk and when Amara dropped her, no one flinched at the unmistakable bonk of a dead skull hitting the floor.
“Your, um, all of a sudden your hair color’s new. Red. Really brilliant red. We’ve been friends forever and I’ve never seen your hair like this. The color of—” And he cut himself off.
“No, Gray.” Amara pulled her gaze from the corpse at her feet. “My hair’s not new. It’s gone back to the way it always was.”
And her headache was gone.