Holdrun was using the lodestone to break his bones. I vaguely recalled reading something about calcium being a metal, and thought maybe Taeral could learn that trick if we could get the stone back from the dwarf.
“Gideon. Hurry.”
“Right, sorry,” I said in Taeral’s general direction, and started for Dante. On the way, my brain insisted on replaying the non-rhyming nonsense verse that Holdrun had recited, especially the last two lines:
The Answerer defends the just,
But will not strike that which is stilled.
And in a flash, as if all that white light had made me smarter, I understood.
Yusef-Dante never struck first. Even in the dream, I’d already gone at him with the moon-sword when he shattered it and stabbed me. He deflected bullets and fought back when we came at him with the hammer, but he’d never made the first move.
It was called the Answerer because it only answered attacks. It defended the just — or the ‘just in possession of Fragarach at the moment,’ in Dante’s case.
But he couldn’t use it at all if we stopped trying to fight.
“Holdrun!” I called, breaking into a fast jog. “Stop fighting. I know it sounds crazy, but listen. I figured out your song.”
Both Dante and Holdrun swiveled toward me, their faces painted with shock. “This is not possible,” Dante thundered with Fragarach raised over his head. “I saw you die!”
Holdrun stared wide-eyed at the deadly sword poised over him. He glanced at me, and then slowly put the lodestone in a pocket and backed away. “By the gods,” he breathed. “‘But will not strike that which is stilled.’ It’s a defensive weapon. Ye can’t strike with it, unless yer struck first.” A wicked grin lifted his lips. “Granda’, ye were a true genius.”
Meanwhile, Dante had managed to calm down. A little. “Are you so certain you have the answers?” he said as he lowered the sword. “Certain enough to gamble your life?”
“Well, I am,” Holdrun said. “Seems the halfling here is, too. Now, that Unseelie —” He broke off and looked past me, to where Taeral lay. “Oh, gods,” he rasped. “Is he…”
“Nah. He’s just wiped out,” I said. “His spark’s drained. I can heal him when I’m done with this asshole.”
The dwarf managed to blanch somehow, his color draining to a paler shade of mahogany. He gave me a look I couldn’t interpret, and then trudged past me and headed for Taeral.
Dante started to laugh.
“You truly do not realize it, do you?” he said. “Your brother is not exhausted, nor is he unconscious. He is dead.”
I huffed a breath. “Bullshit. You know, your buddy Cavanaugh tried that on me earlier. It didn’t work then, and it won’t work now.” I strolled toward him casually, hands in my pockets.
He swung the sword back, poised to strike. When I got close, he struggled visibly to bring it down — but it wouldn’t go, no matter how hard he tugged and strained to swing it.
“Told you,” I said. “Now, I’ve only got one thing to say to you. Ah-dab ilah alnuir.”
I forced every bit of strength and willpower I had into those words, and this time I felt them take hold.
At first Dante didn’t realize it. He started to grin, but then he wavered in place. One of his knees buckled, thumping him to the carpet. Teeth clenched, he pushed the point of Fragarach against the carpet and grabbed the hilt with both hands, using it to pull himself up. “What have you done?” he said, his voice barely rising above a whisper.
For an instant he seemed to double. A ghostly, distorted version of Dante oozed slowly away from Yusef like something pushing against a membrane, mouth open in a silent scream. When it finally ripped free, Yusef’s body staggered and fell back, rapidly shriveling from a living person to a wizened, brittle collection of wasted flesh and dry bones. When he hit the floor, he disintegrated into a pile of dust and a bare, grinning skull — leaving Fragarach sticking out of the carpet like Excalibur.
It wasn’t completely unexpected. Sir Cromwell had done the same thing when I released his soul on the Nostradamus. But it was still creepy as hell, and it robbed me of the chance to tear Yusef’s beating heart from his chest.
He wasn’t Dante, but he had been that bastard’s willing vessel. And I reminded myself to take that skull with me, because having a Hand of the God to interrogate would definitely come in handy. This wasn’t over until we ended Dante for good.
Trying to convince myself that the overwhelming rage flooding me was an overreaction — again — I turned away from the dust pile formerly known as Yusef and headed for Taeral.
“Well done, brother,” he said.
“Thanks.” I grinned, exhausted but finally rid of the strain that had been pulling me taut ever since we left for this godforsaken desert. And maybe something still didn’t feel right, but Yusef was dead and Dante was gone. We’d won. “It wasn’t just me, though,” I said. “And hey, did you know you could do that bone-breaking thing with the lodestone?”
Taeral didn’t answer. He might’ve passed out. I’d have to heal him fast.
Holdrun watched me approach with a terrible, stricken expression. He’d straightened Taeral out on his back, and for some reason he’d folded his hands together on his stomach. The dwarf had also put the lodestone pendant back around Taeral’s neck — and he hadn’t even taken his prosthetic arm.
“I’m sorry, laddie,” he said when I knelt on Taeral’s other side. A fat tear rolled down the dwarf’s cheek, hissing into steam before it could drip into his moustache.
I gave a half-hearted shrug, less worried about his apology than my brother. “I’ll probably forgive you, sooner or later,” I said vaguely as I held a hand palm-down over his chest, searching for a point to pass healing energy through. “Taeral? Not so much.”
“No, not —” Holdrun cut himself off with a hard breath. “I meant I’m sorry for yer loss.”
Tears scalded my eyes. I swallowed, blinked them back, and carried on not seeing what was in front of me. “What loss?”
“DeathSpeaker.” He reached across Taeral’s body — form, it’s a form, not a body — and gripped my wrist, carefully this time. His skin felt like a leathery heating pad. “Please, stop this,” he grated. “For yer own sake.”
“Stop what?” I whispered, casting my gaze down.
“Tryin’ to heal him.” The dwarf shuddered. “Gideon … he’s gone.”
Chapter 31
“No, he’s not,” I heard myself say.
“Laddie—”
“No!” I shot to my feet, fists clenched as the rage tried to swallow me again. “He’s not dead. He talked to me, just a minute ago. Didn’t you hear him?”
Holdrun stared at me with that same stricken look he’d worn when I came over. “The Answerer ripped the spark out of ye, and ye were dying,” he said very softly, as if loud words would break me the way he’d snapped Dante’s bones with the lodestone. “Lord Taeral, he gave his entire spark to ye so ye’d live. I saw him do it, though I’d not understood what it was until …” He let out a shaking breath. “A Fae can’t live without his spark. The moment ye breathed again, he died.”
“Goddamn it, he’s not dead! He spoke to me. Three times, at least!” My jaw clenched so hard, I thought my teeth would shatter. “He just needs moonlight,” I said, spinning on my heel to stalk across the stupid, pretentious, ridiculously overblown fucking sanctum. “Thrucíar,” I snarled, gesturing at the completely unnecessary skylight as I passed beneath it. Shattered glass rained down behind me.
I reached the completely unnecessary window and ripped the heavy curtains down. Shattered that pointless glass too, for good measure. Then I walked back to the broken skylight, where the soft glow of the moon shone through the hole in the ceiling and fractured into glittering diamonds on the glass-strewn carpet.
“Ahmac àn beahlac,” I muttered, barely holding back a sob as I gestured at the mess. The busted glass scattered across the room, and I laid the drapes across the cleared
carpet, one on top of the other. I didn’t want Taeral to end up with a bunch of glass slivers in him when I brought him to the moonlight.
I returned to my brother to find that Holdrun had taken the CB I gave him. I figured I’d let the dwarf have the damned thing — there were about a hundred more of them scattered around on the ground level, and we wouldn’t need them any more, anyway. “I’ve called yer friends on this gadget,” he said, waving the unit around. “Told ’em ye need them. They’ll be up shortly.”
“Good.” I crouched, slid my arms under Taeral and struggled to stand with him. Son of a bitch weighed a ton, and he was utterly limp, so that wasn’t helping. “They should be here,” I said, grunting as Taeral tried to slide away from me when I turned with him. “So we can celebrate. Because we won.”
I ignored the tears that splashed on his shirt and soaked into the fabric as I carried him to the skylight and laid him under the moon. Then I knelt carefully next to him. “As the humans say … mission accomplished,” I whispered. “Right, brother?”
Taeral didn’t say it, but I knew he agreed.
Some time passed. I stayed there in the moonlight, watching it bathe him, waiting for his glamour to restore. It would happen. Later on when we got home, he’d lecture me and tell me to stop trying to sacrifice myself for him, or anyone else, because I was the important one. I was the DeathSpeaker, and I had to live. No one else could stop Dante.
And I’d tell him I didn’t want to be the goddamned DeathSpeaker anymore.
Eventually I heard things. A door slamming open. People moving. An impossibly drawn-out, keening wail and someone sobbing Taeral’s name, over and over again.
“No, Sadie, it’s okay. He’s not dead,” I murmured, even though I couldn’t really see her. Everything was shimmery and running together because of all the light. Like a thousand Arcadian moons that dragged me back from death and sent my brother … to sleep.
Now someone else was crying. Arms went around me and I tried not to stiffen. Because if I moved, even a little bit, I was going to shatter like the skylight I’d busted. I wasn’t going anywhere until Taeral was healed.
“Oh, God, no. Gideon …” A soft hand stroked my face.
I flinched. The moonlight eased back and ran down my cheeks, and I made out Calla kneeling on the floor in front of me. She was between me and my brother. “No, I … it’s his spark,” I said, trying to push her away. “He just needs the moon. He’s okay.” I met her luminous, horrified green eyes, but the reassuring smile I tried to imagine wouldn’t materialize on my face. “I heard him talk,” I said haltingly. “I heard him.”
Calla’s breath hitched, and her lips pressed together. “Gideon, honey,” she whispered gently. She’d never called me that before. “Of course you heard him. You hear all of them.”
Her words triggered a vortex inside me, spiraling rapidly and threatening to consume everything. I tried to push it back. I didn’t want to acknowledge the awful truth behind those words, the truth I’d known the instant I opened my eyes after Dante killed me. Of course you heard him.
Because I’m the DeathSpeaker. That’s why I heard, but no one else did.
I’m the only one who can hear the dead.
Chapter 32
“It’s done, then.”
The deep, crackling voice sizzled through me, searing my nerves. Holdrun. It felt like too much effort to acknowledge him, so I didn’t.
I was sitting on the hood of a disabled jeep, one of many in the hangar, with elbows propped on my thighs and my hands pressed against my hot, swollen eyes. What I wouldn’t give to go back to denial. This realization, this knowing, was indescribably worse than any of the countless horrors I’d experienced in my short, shitty existence.
Taeral had given his life to heal me, but the gaping hole was still there, just as raw as the moment it was inflicted.
And it was my fault. Of course it was. I’d been the one to insist on coming out here, being proactive, taking on the bad guys. I was the one they’d looked to for answers, for decisions I didn’t want to make. But I’d been too late. For Basin Springs, for my brother. Every fucking time, I was too late.
I was the one with the power to stop this, the one who had to live at any cost. Well, the price was too damned high, and I didn’t want to pay it anymore.
But I still had to. I’d have to pay it forever.
“Gideon?” Holdrun again. “I said, it’s done. I’ve destroyed the—”
“Fine. I heard you,” I snapped without moving. He was trying to tell me that he’d destroyed Fragarach, upheld his end of the bargain. ‘Hollow victory’ was too gentle to describe how I felt about that. “Taeral already gave you the lodestone once,” I said. “He fulfilled his promise.”
Now I had it, around my neck with the moonstone, and that was where it would stay. I wasn’t promising shit to anyone.
“I don’t want the stone, DeathSpeaker.” I cringed when he spoke my ‘title.’ Christ, why wouldn’t he just shut up and go away? “I just … well, maybe ye aren’t in yer right mind, but I think Lord Taeral would’ve wanted—”
“Don’t you dare talk to me about my brother!” I launched myself from the hood and landed on the ground in front of the dwarf. Everyone was out here trying to wrap things up and decide how we were going to get home, and I felt them all turn shocked stares on me. I didn’t give a damn. “You don’t know him,” I said with a quiver in my voice — not sorrow, but white-hot rage. “You have no idea what he would’ve wanted. And I don’t want to hear what you think you know about him. Say his name again, and I will find a way to finish what Dante promised and end your miserable existence.”
I turned and stalked away. From him, from the others, from everything. Blinded by tears, I stumbled my way past vehicles and bodies toward the vast, open doors on the mountain face and the night beyond. Cool desert air swirled around me, forcing its way into my gasping lungs and lifting the stench of death from them.
I hadn’t made it far when I dropped to my knees in the gritty sand and raised my face to the glittering sky. Memory struck me with lightning force — Taeral and I reclining on a rock beneath this very same light-studded canopy, savoring a precious moment of peace. Counting stars.
My brother. Dead.
Well, that was going to change.
“Kelwyyn!” I screamed at the sky. “I don’t know how I did it before, but I’m summoning you now, goddamn it. I need your help!”
A bolt of pain split my head, and I was falling toward the ground. My eyes rolled back and closed just before my face hit the dirt.
“DeathSpeaker.”
I gasped and forced my eyes open to billowing green. For a minute I stayed where I was, trying to orient myself to the uniform insubstance of the Mists, before I pushed over and got my feet beneath me.
Kelwyyn watched with hands clasped in front of him, a sorrowful expression on his face. “I am so sorry to hear about —”
“Save it,” I said brusquely, not even bothering to ask how he knew. “I’m here because you’re going to help me. And I’m pretty sure you know what I want.”
His sorrow fell into astonishment. He struggled to recover, and stammered, “That is not possible.”
“Don’t give me that. I’m not interested in hearing about natural order, cosmic plans, or the goddamned circle of life. Or any other bullshit mystical clichés I know you’re about to spout at me.” My fists clenched at my sides. “You are going to help me.”
Kelwyyn’s lips thinned. There was still sadness in his gaze, but a spark of anger had joined it. “What makes you believe you’ve the right to demand such miracles?” he said. “Why should you—”
My arm flashed out of its own accord. I grabbed his tunic and hauled him off the ground, such as it was, bringing his face to mine. “You will tell me how to get what I want,” I growled. “Right fucking now.”
He stiffened. “Perhaps there is a way, after all.”
“Yeah. That’s what I thought.” I put him do
wn none too gently. “Tell me.”
He told me.
It wasn’t anything like what I expected, but I’d get it done. Somehow.
“Thank you,” I said in a slightly calmer tone when he finished.
The former DeathSpeaker frowned. “I’d rather you did not thank me,” he said. “Beyond my unease at revealing such a thing, I cannot help but feel that I’ve just sentenced you to death as well.”
I shrugged. “I’ll take my chances,” I said. “So, how do I get out of here?”
Kelwyyn gave a solemn nod and folded his hands again. “Close your eyes.”
I did. Almost instantly, a weightless sensation bloomed in my core and spread until I felt completely insubstantial, just a wisp of thought and intentions. The non-state lasted for a time I couldn’t measure, and then substance and feeling slammed through me again.
I opened my eyes in the desert.
My face was still pressed to the ground, and there was something on my shoulder. Someone’s hand. “Mmph,” I said, spitting sand from my mouth as I raised my head and blinked.
Calla was next to me, her tear-stained face pale and shaken. “What happened?” she said. “Are you hurt?”
I almost said no, but that would be a lie. Instead I ignored the question, sat up so she could see I wasn’t physically injured, and started brushing the sand off my clothes. “Just got a little dizzy,” I said. There was no way I could tell her where I’d been, what I was doing there, or what I had to do now. She’d want to help, but she couldn’t. Not this time.
Understanding and pity washed over her. “Here,” she said, handing me a canteen she must’ve found somewhere in the base. “You should try to stay hydrated. This is a desert, you know.”
I knew she was trying to make me feel better, and I attempted a dutiful smile. It didn’t quite catch, so I accepted the canteen instead. “Thank you,” I said as I twisted the top off. The water inside was cool and clean. I expected to take a token sip, just to make her happy, but I surprised myself by drinking most of it.
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