All my confusion, all of my fear and rage, pulls the siren from her depths.
As my skin illuminates, I swipe out at the Green Man with my dagger, relishing the moment the blade meets flesh.
A normal fairy would’ve flinched from the pain, but he doesn’t react. Doesn’t even bother moving his hand. He just continues to talk. “I do have one problem, enchantress. As exquisite as I find you, you are beyond my control. There is, however, a remedy for that.”
Moving so fast I can barely follow, he grabs my dagger-wielding arm and twists.
I let out a cry, half in pain, half in rage. Bringing my heel up, I slam my foot into his chest, knocking him away.
He chuckles, the sound like nails on a chalkboard. He holds up my dagger. “Missing something?”
Shit.
Hastily, I reach for my remaining dagger. My gown is already bloody and shredded. I look like a wraith, like a ghost come to haunt these cursed woods.
My hand closes on the weapon’s labradorite handle, and I draw it out.
Des and his father continue to duel overhead, the air thick with their magic.
I shift my weight, tossing my dagger from hand to hand. Somewhere along the way, I became comfortable with the weapon.
The Thief smiles, and then he charges.
Unlike Des’s father, the Thief of Souls cannot appear and disappear at will. He can, however, harness the Green Man’s power.
The oaks begin to hiss and shake, their large bodies bending to swipe at me.
I duck and dodge the attacks as I square off with my opponent, my body thrumming with energy.
I can do this all day.
When I get within arm’s reach, I swipe out at the Thief, the dagger slashing him across the chest. I follow with my claws, slashing his cheek.
His blood looks striking against his pale green skin.
More. I want more.
I thirst to see him bleed. To see him die.
The sight of all that dark liquid sends me into a frenzy. I move with fluid grace, parrying the Thief’s blows with my blade, slashing and kicking with the rest of my body.
It takes minutes to cover the fairy in his own gore.
This is power.
Foolish of him to fight me.
“You’re going to have to fight a little harder if you really want to hurt me,” I goad the Thief.
He smiles. “That can be arranged.”
Moments later, Mara walks into our clearing, looking a little worse for the wear. The flowers in her hair are wilted, she has dirt smeared across her cheek, and her clothes are nearly as stained and ripped as mine.
It takes her all of two seconds to take in the scene. The Green Man—her mate—covered in blood, dueling the human woman who cut down her beloved trees.
“You,” she practically hisses at me.
Vines come at me from all sides, and it’s all I can do to shred through them with my claws and dagger. And still more come at me.
No longer am I fighting the Thief of Souls so much as I’m defending myself from Mara’s attacks. Right in the middle of the melee, he strides towards me.
The Thief runs his blade down my cheek, then my arm. “So bloodthirsty. I had no idea.”
I swipe out at him, which he easily dodges.
“Mate,” Mara calls out to the Thief, “what are you doing?”
“Exacting our revenge,” he says over his shoulder.
That seems to appease her. The plants around me continue to pin me in place, squeezing me slowly.
The Thief of Souls drags my blade down my other cheek, slicing open the flesh. I feel a brief sting, and then the warm sensation of blood slipping down my jaw. “The only problem is, the moment I truly hurt you, your mate will be on me.” He taps the blunt part of his blade against my nose. “But I think I’ve figured out a solution.”
I might as well be a fly caught in his web. The vines have completely overpowered me. My arms are pinned to my sides. I still hold my remaining blade, but I cannot move enough to saw my way out of my bindings.
He leans in close. “Why don’t I explain exactly what I plan for you?
“Right now, my magic is incompatible with yours, and that ruins all my fun. But it doesn’t have to be that way—not if you drink a certain something.
“Have you heard that lilac wine, the rarest of fairy elixirs, can not only bestow longevity to mortals, it can heal the wounded?”
I thin my gaze.
“It’s a cure all of sorts, and if you drink it, well then, you would be able to fall victim to my power, and your soul … your soul could be mine for the taking.”
This sicko.
“I could just give the wine to you here and now, but”—he seems far too giddy—“I have an even better idea.”
He lifts my blade to his eyes, inspecting it. His gaze flicks to mine.
“This might hurt.”
With one swift movement, he buries the knife in my gut.
Chapter 52
I choke, my skin flaring even brighter.
So much pain!
From behind us, Mara gasps, her vines loosening. “What are you doing?” she asks, aghast.
Rather than answering, the Thief yanks up on the hilt. My body jerks as he cuts through vines, flesh, and organs. I let out a scream, my glamour making the cry sound lyrical.
In the distance, Des roars, the sound eclipsing all others. In an instant he’s there in that forest with us, bloody and broken and angry.
He drags the Thief of Souls away from me, throwing him to the ground with an enraged cry.
I feel Mara’s vines release me, and I fall to my knees.
My surroundings are darkening, and I can’t tell if it’s the Bargainer’s doing, or if I’m just that close to blacking out.
Cannot black out.
Dimly, I’m aware that Mara is watching the scene unfold, and that Galleghar, wherever he is, has not joined the group of us. But more than anything, I’m aware of my mate and the Thief of Souls.
The Bargainer stomps on the Thief’s calve, snapping the bone.
“I could scalp you alive, or remove your entrails and make you eat them,” Des says as he breaks the Thief’s other calf. “Or perhaps I should start with your teeth and nails?”
Mara screams. “Please Des, no more!”
“He harmed my mate,” Des snarls. “By law I’m entitled to retribution—and I shall have it!” His battered wings flare out.
The Bargainer looks like some dark god; never has he seemed quite so Otherworldly. And I can barely see him through my dimming vision.
I clutch the gash on my stomach, blood pouring from it. I can feel myself weakening with each breath I take.
Mortally wounded. I might have minutes left.
And the agony! I squeeze my eyes shut and swallow down my bile.
Des circles the fairy, staring down at the Thief. He lifts his hand, the land darkening.
I know what happens now. It’s the same thing that happened when Karnon faced down my mate.
Utter annihilation.
“Stop!” Mara cries.
She knows it too. She’s a far cry from the haughty queen I met a week ago, her clothes ruined, her face confused, her pride in tatters.
I pick myself up, holding my stomach. Each step is pure agony, but I force myself onwards. I wrap my hand around the hilt of the dagger buried inside me.
Don’t think about it.
Des’s eyes widen when he sees what I’m about to do. “Callypso, no—”
I yank the blade out, gagging on the pain, the nausea, and the screams that should be rising out of me. A torrent of blood gushes out of the wound, making me sway on my feet.
Some of the shadows—Des’s shadows—are receding, but a different sort of darkness tugs on the edges of my vision.
Death.
My mate is at my side in an instant, relinquishing his vengeance for love. He presses a hand to my stomach. Within seconds his fingers are coated with my blood.
&nbs
p; “Cherub, what are you doing?” he asks, his voice torn up.
I meet his crushed gaze. He’s a man who’s watching everything he’s lived for slip through his grasp.
Even he fears I’m going to die.
I can see him desperately grasping at his anger, because if he lets it go … it’s a long way to fall, and the abyss that would swallow him up—it would be world-ruining.
“Let go of me, Des.” There’s steel in my words.
Wordlessly, reluctantly, he releases me.
I stagger forward, right up to where the Thief lays sprawled on the ground. He’s managed to flip himself over, onto his back. His eyes move to my wound.
I kneel next to him. “You robbed thousands of soldiers of their lives. You robbed them and their families and their friends.” All those soldiers who became victims just like me, their bodies buried in the hearts of trees or laid to rest inside glass coffins.
He swallows, a bit of blood leaking out the corner of his lips. “You’re not going to—”
In one swift motion, I draw my arm back and plunge my dagger deep into the Thief of Soul’s heart.
Mara shrieks somewhere behind me, sounding as though with that one blow, I stabbed her as well.
The Thief of Souls laughs, even as blood seeps out of his wound. “You can’t kill me,” he says.
His face changes from that of the Green Man, earning another shriek from Mara. The queen didn’t even know the man she slept next to wasn’t her husband.
Raven dark hair and inky black eyes replace the Green Man’s evergreen hair and amber irises.
“Want to know a secret?” he whispers. “Janus had a twin, a twin who died. The first time you met him, you were really meeting me.”
I reel back. Whether it’s from pain or blood loss, I can’t seem to put his words together.
“Ask yourself this:” he says, “do the dead ever really die?”
I stare down at the monster who’s already ruined so many lives, feeling my own life force seep out of me.
He reaches for a lock of my hair. “Utterly singular …” he breathes.
He smiles at me. “This is our little game—and trust me, enchantress, it’s far from over.”
A gust of wind sweeps through the forest, a dust devil rising around him.
“I’m still coming for you,” he promises me. “Your life is mine.”
Chapter 53
The Thief’s eyes close, his body going still.
It’s only once his life has fled him that his features revert back to those of the Green Man.
Now that the Thief no longer animates the Green Man’s body, the fallen ruler looks benevolent, kind.
Mara pushes past me, falling to the side of her dead mate. She cries over the Green Man, clutching her chest like the loss physically hurts.
I rise on shaky legs, one of my hands still pressed to my stomach.
I feel my own life ebbing away from me. That horrible darkness creeps in from the edges of my vision.
I stagger, then fall. Des catches me before I hit the ground.
“That was the Thief—”
“Ssshhh,” he says, laying me out on the ground before shucking off his shirt.
Efficiently, he rips it into strips, making a tourniquet of sorts for my wound.
It’s too late for that. I know the Thief shredded vital things when he stabbed me. The soldier in Des knows it too.
I touch his battle-weary face, gazing into his fathomless eyes. They’re like a beacon, calling me to life. But the shadows are closing in on me …
“I love you, Des.”
“You are not leaving me, Callie,” he says fiercely.
My cold hand slips from his face, and I feel myself start to descend into that final, eternal darkness.
Chapter 54
Desmond Flynn
She’s not going to die.
She can’t.
She might.
Just like my mother.
This is what happens to brave women. Strong women. If you’re worthy enough, they’ll bleed for you.
They’ll die for you.
I feel my throat working.
Please, not again. Never again.
And not her. My mate.
Life was bleak enough without my mother. But with Callie, with Callie everything changed. Life was a thousand times sweeter than I could’ve imagined.
If she dies … there will be no surviving this.
I stroke her cool, clammy cheek, desperate to coax life back into her. She stares up at me, and there’s such brutal truth in her expression.
She knows what’s happening to her.
I feel my heart crushing. I almost can’t breathe through the pain. So much worse than my injuries.
This is not how I thought it would all end. But everything Callie is, everything that makes up her essence, is fading.
I run my hand over her bracelet.
Her bracelet! While she lives, she’s still bound by her vows.
I’m not above exploiting them.
“You will not die,” I command.
My magic flows out of me, and one bead begins to fade … then another and another. She draws in a shuddering gasp.
“Des, what are you doing?” she asks, breathless.
“Saving you.”
And by the gods, it’s working.
Row after row of beads disappear.
Take them all, just bring her back to me.
The beads start to vanish slower and slower until finally, they stop disappearing altogether.
Only a little over a row remains.
Her breathing is still as shallow as ever, and her wound hasn’t stopped bleeding.
I’m no healer, but if the magic took, then something should improve.
But it doesn’t.
And then, with a whoosh, the whole thing reverses.
The magic slams back into my body, rocking me backwards, and the beads begin to reform one by one.
Nooooo!
Can’t complete the spell.
Beyond my control.
Callie’s eyes widen, like she felt the balances tip as well.
I gather her body closer to me, rocking her in my arms, my head bowed over hers.
I’ve never fallen apart in front of Callie. Not even when she was at the mercy of Karnon. But now I begin to.
Because this is the real thing.
“Till darkness dies, love,” she says, her voice faint.
“No.” I’m shaking my head. “Even then, no.” The night could end, and she’d still be mine.
Always mine.
Her eyes slip shut.
“No.” I say more emphatically.
I glance up, blindly looking around. This is the moment I’ve dreaded since I met my mate. The moment I lose her.
I’d rather do something unforgiveable to keep her alive than let her slip quietly into death.
Something unforgiveable …
“Mara, where is the wine? The—the lilac wine.”
The Flora queen looks up from her own dead mate, her eyes dull. “The royal cellar,” she mumbles, as if in a trance. And then her attention returns to the Green Man.
The royal cellar. I’ve actually been there several times over the centuries.
It takes an instant to leave Callie’s side and materialize there, then several precious seconds to locate the tell-tale purple glass bottles.
Grabbing one, I disappear, returning to my mate’s side.
With a swift jerk I snap the narrow neck of the bottle clean off. Already I catch faint, telltale whiffs of the wine.
I promised my mate that I’d protect her from this side of myself, the selfish, immoral side.
I lied.
The thing is, I’m both a fairy and the son of a tyrant king; I’ve descended, undoubtedly, from demons. Wickedness is in my blood.
For once I will give into the depraved thoughts that revolve around my mate.
Callie’s face is ashen, her skin already cold. Her puls
e is a weak, fluttery thing.
I’ll take my mate’s mortality from her just as I have always imagined.
Bringing the bottle to her lips, I tip the lilac wine into her unresponsive mouth. Using a little of my magic, I force her throat to swallow it.
I pour it all down, every last drop, my hand never once wavering.
And then I wait.
I comb her hair back, then stroke her iridescent wings.
Never should have brought her here. Never should have rekindled what we had. Never should’ve entered her life in the first place.
It’s a peculiar kind of agony, knowing that the love of your life would be alive if not for you. Loving her enough to want that life for her even if it means erasing all that you had together. Because then, at least, she’d still be alive.
Movement draws my attention to her wrist. Where a minute ago, my black beads had re-appeared, row after row of them now vanish once more.
Only death or repayment can fulfill a bargain. Death or repayment.
Death.
Fear—true, heart-crushing, sweat-inducing fear flows through me.
She really is leaving me.
A chasm inside me opens, and it’s being filled with all my pain, all my dread, all the suffering I’ve borne throughout these long centuries.
I let out a choked cry and run my hand down the side of Callie’s face, her skin damp from where the lilac wine spilled.
My skin begins to tingle, itching right over my chest. My magic gathers there, the pressure from it building to such intensity that it’s almost painful.
Out of nowhere, it blasts out of me. I groan, my back bowing at the sensation.
And then … and then I feel my power fuse. Fuse with another’s.
I lean over Callie’s body, drawing in several ragged breaths.
I search her features. I’ve been around archaic magic long enough to know when it’s at work—as it is now.
Seconds later Callie’s chest rises then falls, rises then falls.
It worked.
Gods’ hands, it worked.
Callie’s alive.
Her body arches, her lungs heaving in breath after breath. Before my very eyes her wound stitches itself up.
I look to the heavens above me and laugh once, a wild, manic sound. The night, in all its infinite chaos, moves around me and through me.
A Strange Hymn (The Bargainer Book 2) Page 30
