It’s All My Fault
It’s All My Fault
SERAPHAE
It was easy to see how Mirror Lake had earned its name.
North of Winter Court, tucked where the pines thinned to a clearing, the lake caught the three snow-covered peaks above it and held them perfectly inverted on its surface.
Everything doubled and still. The most breathtaking part was the sky above the mountains.
Bands of green, blue, and violet light drifted across the sky.
They moved slowly like ribbons caught in an invisible current.
My breath came out in small clouds, and the steam drifting off the water told me it wasn't as cold as it should have been.
The water lapped toward my boots from a breeze that didn't exist.
Caelan appeared at my side, arms crossed, eyes moving over the lake with calculation.
“There isn't any magical way to do this without actually going in,” I said. Not really a question. He had told me the answer to this three times last night. But one could hope.
The mirror shard was in a cavern. The entrance to the cavern was at the bottom of the lake. Of course it was. Where else would the last piece be if not somewhere completely inaccessible and deeply unpleasant.
“Stay here.” He turned to face me. “I'll go in with Maelor. Wait for me.”
He adjusted my cloak. It didn't need adjusting. His eyes dropped briefly to my mouth and came back up when he remembered there were two sets of eyes behind us. He threw a glance over his shoulder.
Maelor was removing his boots as if he were one mission from submitting a formal resignation. He tossed one boot to the ground, clearly annoyed with the plan, before proceeding with the next. He balanced on one leg and nearly didn't.
Riven stood with his arms crossed and watched without offering anything.
“I could come,” I said. “I can light the way.”
A smirk pulled at my mouth. Useful and entirely justified.
Caelan huffed a laugh and started on his cloak. “The water suppresses magic. The second you're submerged, it's gone.”
Of course it does. Because nothing enjoys being convenient. Not enchanted lakes, not ancient caverns, not this entire kingdom.
“I'll be quick,” he promised, removing his boots. “I'll even get you a souvenir. There are crystals down there. Great for jewelry.”
I was going to say something clever about that, but my thoughts failed to align.
He had pulled off his shirt and tossed it aside.
“Oh,” I breathed and stared without any particular shame about it. The way one looked at fine architecture. Objectively and with appreciation.
He glanced up, amused. “Preferred angle, or should I turn?”
“Right there is fine,” I said to his obliques, specifically.
Maelor stepped between us. Also shirtless. Where Caelan was built for violence and movement, Maelor was built like someone had taken the concept of a mountain and made it a person.
“You're blocking the scenery.” I smacked Maelor’s arm.
He looked at me. Then at Caelan. Then at the actual mountains in the distance. Then he stepped aside and took Caelan with him.
They proceeded toward the water, and Caelan went in first after he flashed a playful grin.
“Don’t miss us too much,” Maelor called over his shoulder.
He hit the water with a splash and was gone too.
I sat on a fallen log at the edge of the lake. Riven paced somewhere behind me.
The mirror shard was the last piece. After this, we would return to Twilight, and Maerith would break the bond. That was the sequence. Clean and inevitable.
A very small part of me, a part I was not going to examine, had spent the ride here wondering what staying would look like. There were humans in Primoria. Not common, but not impossible. I could stay on as a guard. Caelan might allow it even without the bond as a reason.
The thought lasted about as long as it deserved to.
He was a prince. I was an assassin with a purchased contract and a list of kills that would turn half the kingdom’s stomachs.
Whatever this was between us, there was no version of it that ended in something official, public, with a future attached.
That wasn't the world. He knew that, and I knew that, and the numbered days we had left were exactly that.
Numbered.
I looked down.
A flower sat wedged in a crack in the log. Vividly purple. Glowing slightly, the way things in Primoria occasionally did without explanation. I picked it up and brought it to my nose. Honey, clean and immediate. Just like the ones in the estate garden trellises.
“What is this called?” I said, turning to Riven.
He looked at me. Then at the flower. “Veyras.”
I looked at it.
Veyra. That was what Caelan called me. Had called me twice now.
“Do they mean something, or—“
“We're being watched.”
I froze.
Riven's eyes had gone to the trees on our left. Scanning between the gaps in a way that meant he was seeing something I wasn't.
I rose slowly. My hand found my dagger.
“How many?” I said quietly.
A pause. “At least three.” His eyes moved. “Likely more.”
Then a sound that didn't belong. A snap. The specific tension-release of a bowstring.
I dropped sideways, my shoulder hitting Riven, his hand closing around my elbow as an arrow buried itself in the log where I had been sitting.
The moment I was steady, Riven shadow-stepped.
Gone.
Into the trees after whatever was there.
Which was what you did. Which was what I would have done.
Except I knew how assassins worked. I had been one for ten years. I knew the technique because I had used it.
Isolation. Draw off the guard. Leave the target alone.
And Riven had just given it to them.
“Shit,” I said, and lifted my blade.
The first one came out of the trees.
Fae. Obvious from the face, the way he moved. Then his skin changed. A slow ripple, the pale color draining into something dull and gray, spreading from his hands up. His hair followed. By the time he stopped moving, he looked like something carved.
Stone-skinned.
The second dropped from a branch in silence and was already in motion. Taller, less broad, gold hair, a dagger spinning in his hand and a wide grin that meant he was either overconfident or had very good reasons to be.
They lunged together.
I parried the second. My blade hit the first's forearm and skidded off like I had struck a boulder.
The second came in low. I pivoted, drove my elbow into his throat. His hand caught my wrist.
Pain detonated up my arm. Every nerve, all at once, like fire. It made me want to tear my own skin off to get away from it.
I screamed. Satisfaction crossed his face.
Pain-mage.
In the split second I had, I drove my dagger into his thigh. He hissed, and his grip broke enough for me to rip free.
The stone-skinned one was already on me. Too fast for someone that size. I stepped aside but caught his blade across my ribs anyway, bright and immediate. I tried for the underarm, where armor tended to thin. It didn't thin there. My blade scraped across hardened ribs and did nothing.
He grabbed for my shoulder. I twisted free. The pain-mage lunged again and put his dagger deep into my left thigh.
I went down on one knee in a broken scream. Then both when his hand found my shoulder and sent agony up my spine.
I forced myself up and swept his legs. He hit the ground. But the movement put me in the wrong place, and the stone-skinned one's knee found my jaw and sent me backward into the dirt.
His weight came down on my chest, and the air left my lungs. I drove my dagger up toward his throat. It skidded off his jaw.
He pulled back for his elbow. I rolled just enough that it cracked into dirt instead of my face.
Spots danced at the edge of my vision. My lungs failed to expand from his crushing weight. The thigh wound was deep. I knew what deep felt like, and this was it.
I opened my bloody palm and called everything I had into a single orb, and then released it. One flash. Blinding white.
They both flinched.
I shoved the stone-skinned one off and crawled backward into the water, gasping for air.
The pain-mage moved toward me. I kept going until I was half submerged, and then grabbed his ankle and pulled. He lost his balance and went down into the lake with me.
I rolled onto him fast. The stone-skinned one was at the edge of the water, stepping in. One breath was all I had.
The pain-mage grabbed my wrist.
Nothing.
The water worked. His eyes went to it, understanding coming too late.
I put my dagger into the side of his neck.
Once.
Twice.
A third time because he had very thoroughly ruined my day and I wanted to be certain.
The water between us went red.
One down.
The stone-skinned one didn't hesitate. By the time I turned, his blade was already moving.
It went deep into my abdomen.
My breath left in a sound I didn't recognize. My hands went to the blade where it had entered me, fingers closing around cold steel. Neither of us moved for a moment. His eyes were calm, certain that this was finished.
I thought of Caelan. If I died, he died. That was the bond. That was how this worked.
I grabbed the stone-skinned one by the collar and pulled him toward me.
The movement drove the blade deeper. Pain exploded in my abdomen, spreading outward and taking my breath with it.
I hissed through my teeth, my vision going white at the edges.
He went with me into the water because he had no choice.
He didn't understand what I was doing until the ground vanished.
We went under.
I drove my dagger for his neck, but his fingers gripped my wrist.
My arms were too heavy and shaking uselessly as I tried to pull free. My strength was leaving me as fast as my blood was.
I was going to drown if I did not bleed out first. Or if he didn’t break my neck first. Too many ways to die, and I couldn’t settle on just one.
The fae’s face suddenly contorted, and a soundless scream ripped out of him, muffled by water. Red bled around us, dark and thick. Then his head came clean off his body, bobbing once in the water before surfacing.
Arms came around my waist, and I was tugged sideways before being lifted out of the water.
I gasped for air and choked instead.
“Sera,” Riven said, voice strained. “Hey. Look at me.”
My head lolled against his chest when I tried to.
Fear flickered across his features, and for a moment, I thought he looked handsome against the moonlight. I wanted to reach up and touch his face.
He set me down on the shore, arms wrapped tight around my shoulders to hold me up against him.
An agonized cry came out of me when he pressed a hand to my abdomen.
Ah. Right. Bleeding out. Explains the lack of coherent thoughts about faces in the moonlight.
“Fuck. This is all my fault.”
His hand pressed harder against my wound.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” he rasped quietly against my head.
My breath came in fast and shallow.
I tilted to look up at him.
“Don’t tell Caelan,” I said. The corner of my lip tugged up despite that fact I could very well be dying.
Caelan was going to be angry about this.
Something in his face crumbled as he stared at me.
It struck me as funny. I had always wondered, in the abstract, what dying would actually feel like. I had not expected to find it funny.
I had spent years being the person who did the killing. Now I wondered if my targets felt the same way before they died. I should have asked.
I laughed once. It was weak and breathy, but a laugh nonetheless.
Riven watched me, eyes wide.
I shut my eyes because it felt like a good idea to.
The first dance arrived. The masquerade and the stupid whiskey. Then feeling the wrong thing for the wrong man, trying to name it wrong so I didn't have to own it. And then finally deciding I was done pretending. Deciding that however many days were left, they were going to be mine.
I had killed us both. Right here in a lake that reflected the sky, in the arms of Riven, who apparently was capable of human emotions.
I wanted to laugh again.
I couldn't.
Riven was saying something.
I opened my eyes, but everything was blurry with dancing spots of darkness. I wanted to tell him I forgave him and that this was not his fault. My mouth was not cooperating. My body was not cooperating.
The trees blurred at the edges.
Riven sounded like he was drifting further and further away.
I'm sorry. The dagger. The contract. All of it. Every piece of it was mine to own, and I am sorry.
Everything went black.