What was going on here?
But she didn’t get even half a second to wonder about it, because suddenly those carts were barreling in her direction, and the brownies were slapping their reins down on the rat’s backs with vicious glee.
Their eyes glowed a deep shade of blood red.
“Wormwood? Phenome?” She said their names, but it was more than that. It was a question. Many questions.
Why were they here?
Why had they pretended like they didn’t know her and now suddenly they did? And why were they coming at her with single-minded determination?
“Up!” they cried at once, and Flint’s world was suddenly upended.
She was knocked off her feet by an invisible fist and dangling in midair. Her skirts fell down around her neck, and she screamed as she tried to get out of whatever control they held her under, but it was no use.
Phenome and Wormwood were on her in seconds, filching whatever they could off her. Their greedy little paws ripped at her hair, her clothing.
Flint did the only thing she could do. She whipped her vines out at them. One of the vines knocked into Phenome’s cart, tossing him sideways.
The rats squealed violently as they flew through the air like tiny, furry missiles.
Phenome landed in an ungraceful heap, his atrophied legs pointing in unusual angles behind him.
Wormwood, being the smarter of the two brothers, turned with whatever booty he’d managed to take off her and fled back from where they’d come.
The moment he turned away from her, she was released from their magic and dropped like a ten-ton sack to the ground.
Moaning because there wasn’t an inch of her that didn’t hurt or sting from their little demon claws that’d so ruthlessly torn into her, she struggled to a sitting position.
Wormwood was nearly out of sight now.
What had Idris told her once?
Lose any part of yourself here and you’ll be trapped forever…
Screaming, she knew instantly what the brownies had done. Phenome was down for the count. His eyes were still closed and his breathing erratic. She’d injured him earlier—he wasn’t going anywhere.
Rushing to her feet, she ran in Wormwood’s direction, but though she was fast, he had a long lead on her. If he went back to his caves, she’d lose him.
So with a wing and a prayer, she flung one last vine out at him, praying to God that it would be enough to at least slow the demon doll down.
The vine looped through the holes of the cart’s button wheels, upending it and tossing Wormwood high into the trees.
Flint picked up her speed. She knew the little demon couldn’t walk, but she was far from thinking she’d won yet.
He was screeching when she got to him, pinned between two interlocking branches and hissing unholy fury at her.
“Ye foul creature! Human filth, I’ll kill ye, I will.” He slapped at her hands, digging his claws in deep as he fought to keep his stolen treasures, but she was twice as strong as him.
After yanking them out of his hand, she jammed the pieces of cloth back onto her body, her gown instantly reabsorbing them into itself.
“Ye’ll never win. Ye’ve not the heart for what comes next,” he hissed.
Sick and tired of hearing him talk, she commanded a vine to ram down his throat.
He wouldn’t die of it, but it shut him up sure enough. Gasping and wheezing, he fought to disentangle the plant from inside his mouth.
“I could have put thorns on it. Just remember that next time, you disgusting excuse for a man.”
He was still muttering, but his words were incoherent now. Turning, she went back to where Phenome had fallen. He’d still not moved, and all her little bits and pieces were scattered around him. It would be days before he didn’t see stars.
She’d have felt bad for them if they hadn’t been such nasty little things to her in the first place.
Snatching up her goods, she shoved them all back down on herself and breathed a sigh of relief when once more she felt herself hale and whole.
The moment she gathered up all the missing parts of herself, the scene around her shifted again and she screamed out for Abel.
Only about a hundred yards separated them now. She stood on a spit of land that acted as a tiny bridge to walk on to where he hung in his cage.
Abel was the twisted monster he’d been when she’d first taken him below ground. He was also still asleep or in suspended animation, whatever they’d done to him.
Her eyes were fixed on him, drinking him in, assuring herself that he was basically fine apart from the fact that if he woke up now he’d try to destroy her still.
Because the place she stood in was mostly dark with only patches of flame coming up from the deep valleys that dropped hundreds of feet below on either side of her, she failed to notice that his wasn’t the only cage.
On the other side of the isthmus swung Idris, and standing before him with a cruel turn of her lips was Winter, though she looked nothing like the gorgeous woman Flint had seen in the stadium the past two days.
This woman was nothing but a tower of jagged ice that vaguely resembled a human form. The spiderwebs all around her were actually frozen shards of ice that crawled inexorably up Idris’s cage.
Flint frowned. “Idris? What are you doing here?”
Her brother’s eyes were solemn and haunted. He didn’t hold on to the bars, no doubt because they were infused with iron. He stood tall and straight, dressed as he usually was even though he was clearly feeling the effects of Winter’s chill.
Though his skin was always a ghastly gray color, it was now a deep shade of purplish-blue.
His lips tipped up just slightly in one corner. “You found us, darkling.”
He said the name with affection and she shook her head, backpedaling as she held up her hands. “Why are you there? What are you doing? You said you couldn’t be in my tests?”
“I said I couldn’t come against you, Flint.”
Swallowing was difficult right now. She wasn’t sure what any of this meant, but she knew it was bad. Really bad.
“Why is Winter standing before you?”
The moment she asked it, Winter skated toward Abel’s cage, then reached inside and blew a kiss to him.
Immediately Abel’s comatose form sparked to life, and with a start, he howled, rattling the bars of his cage as the animal instinct inside him demanded he flee this unknown torment.
In seconds his cage was coated in a thick layer of rime, and he began to tremble.
“It’s okay, halfling.” Idris smiled gently. “You did great. You figured out the riddle.”
She shook her head. None of this was okay. “What riddle? I didn’t do anything.”
“You came back to the beginning. To where you hid him. You found Abel.”
Gaze jerking between the two men, she curled her fingers into fists by her side. “I never put him here.”
“We are inside the earth, Flint. And you figured that out.”
She sniffed, her heart coming to the realization of what was happening long before her brain was ready to accept it as fact.
Idris continued on, even though he was obviously trembling now. Ice crystals clung to his hair. Winter skated between both cages, dancing as ice and snow swirled around her crystalline body.
The dance might have been beautiful were it not for the fact that both men were dying from it.
Abel’s howls had stopped, and he was shaking his massive head as though dizzy and disoriented.
Flint bit down sharply on her bottom lip.
“You remembered what I told you.” Idris sounded proud.
“Huh?” was all she could manage to mumble as her vision swam.
“With Phenome and Wormwood. You remembered.”
“I thought they weren’t real,” she whispered.
Idris gripped the cage, and immediately Flint sensed his pain as his face crumpled with the contact, but he refused to let go. “That wa
s the riddle, Flint. All of it. You had to have faith not in what you saw, but in what you knew. But you still have one test left to pass.”
She sniffed, wiping her nose with the back of her hand. “I haven’t passed anything. You know that.”
He grunted, dropping to a knee before shaking his head. Idris was ice blue now and his speech started to become slurred. “You passed them all.”
“But I drowned.”
Coughing, he shook his head. “No, you didn’t. You made it out in time.”
Her chin wobbled. “But Dean cheated.”
“No, he made the fight fair. A green element never stood a chance against fire. But it was your desire that turned the power on her.”
She clutched her breast, gasping. She’d been the one to burn Echo alive? The tears dripped freely now. Flint could only shake her head.
With a heavy grunt, Idris released the cage. He dropped his head and whispered in a voice full of grit and gravel, “And you made it all the way here. And now there’s nothing left but to choose.”
“No.” Her voice cracked. “No way. I’m not choosing. I choose you both. I want you both.”
Winter pirouetted, then turned and nailed Flint with a glacial stare, and in those eyes Flint saw eternity stretching.
“You will choose only one. The other belongs to me.”
A blast of arctic air slammed against Flint’s body, causing her to temporarily lose her balance. She flailed her arms, pulse rocketing as she stared down into the depths of certain death.
“No,” she pleaded, looking around, knowing The Ciardah watched and waited. “You can’t make me do this. I’m your granddaughter, doesn’t that mean anything to you?”
“Flint”—it was Idris—“stop. You know you have to. Those are the terms.”
“No, Idris, no. I can’t. You’re my family, I’ve just barely begun to know you. Why are you even here?”
His smile was weak. “I told you he wasn’t happy with me.”
The emptiness Flint felt was infinite and never ending.
Winter’s words were chilling. “You choose—by your hand one is saved and one is lost.”
“Oh God.” She gasped, starting to hyperventilate.
Her head was a miasma of emotion, swirling with pain and fury and the knowledge that in the end a man she hardly knew had outfoxed her after all.
Flint had fooled herself into believing she could actually take Abel away from here without anyone noticing. She’d even fooled herself into believing she could walk away from this arena unscathed.
Hadn’t Idris warned her over and over that the fae were tricksters?
“No” was the only word she could say.
Winter laughed, and the world spun with crystal flakes.
“I can’t do this.” Flint looked back at Idris.
The noises falling from Flint’s lips, they were guttural. It wasn’t a normal cry, this was nothing but pain. Torture. She was full of the knowledge that in order to save the one she had to kill the other.
“There has to be another way.”
“There isn’t!” The winds howled with Winter’s fury, screaming with ice and power. “Time runs out for them, darkling. Choose now, or I shall take them both.”
She wanted to die. Wished that the snow hurt her too. That she could sink into the oblivion of forgetting what she was about to do, what she was forced to do.
But if she didn’t act, they’d both die.
“I hate you all,” she whispered. “You are monsters.”
Winter laughed harder and both men groaned.
Running down the narrow strip of land to Abel’s cage, Flint stared at him. His eyes slowly turned to her, and in them she saw not the black of the demon but the brown of her best friend.
“Fl…int.” He gasped, then shuddered, closing his eyes and curling in on himself.
“Abel.” His name was a broken whimper falling off her tongue.
Cain would never forgive her.
The rosebud blooms of her fingertips opened up and the world smelled of ice and flowers.
“I love you, Abel.” She nodded slowly. “I promised you I’d make this right, and I meant it, okay?”
He didn’t respond.
Winter twirled around her, brushing cold fingers against Flint’s cheek and making the blood in her veins feel like it had turned to ice for just a moment.
Sucking in a deep breath, a scream trapped in her throat from the pain, she gazed wide-eyed at the elemental.
So much power dwelled inside that fae, and Flint had barely tasted a fraction of it.
Winter laughed and the sky shook with ice.
Feet feeling like lead, Flint turned and walked toward Idris’s side. He was curled in on himself.
“Zombie boy,” she whispered when she got to him, dropping to her knees miserably and reaching through the bars for him.
Iron kissed her skin, singeing the flesh. Gritting her teeth, she clamped down on the shriek but still continued to hold her hand out to him.
His fingers found hers, but he lacked the energy to do more than squeeze the tip of her digit once before letting go. He was so cold.
His face jerked into a weird sort of spasm, and she figured he’d tried to smile for her. “I wouldn’t… have it… any other… way.”
“Oh, Idris,” she whimpered, making strange sounds in the back of her throat. Sounds that would no doubt haunt her sleep for years to come and wake her up in the middle of the night when she screamed out to him. “How can I do this? I just barely found you. I don’t want to lose you now.”
As though finding some hidden surge of strength, he pushed himself up with trembling arms. And it killed her to see him so weak, knowing he was one heartbeat away from death.
Idris was her age. He wasn’t like most of the fae in these courts who’d lived centuries, eons… He’d barely begun to live.
“I’m glad I found you, darkling.” It was a struggle for him to get through the words, and she had to strain to understand what he’d said, but she smiled when she did.
“Even though finding me killed you?”
“Do it… do it again.” He nodded in jerky, spasmodic movements, and she could see the flash of pain that had scrawled itself across his brow.
Idris didn’t have much time left.
“Mercy,” he whispered.
She shook her head, knowing exactly what he meant. “This isn’t mercy, brother, this is murder.”
“No.” And with an untapped well of strength, he latched onto her hands and slammed them to his chest so that her rosebuds rested against the icy wall of his chest. “Love”—he coughed—“I know love now, sister.”
Winter chimed in. “One minute till they are mine, halfling… Ticktock, ticktock. Who will live?”
And with a tortured cry, Flint shoved her poisonous flowers through his chest.
At first nothing happened, but then… Veins of black suddenly bloomed beneath his flesh, and for just a second, he smiled.
“Not so cold anymore,” he said, marveling.
And as her body pumped its poison into him, she watched with her heart trapped in her throat as the extended family she’d always wanted and never known she’d had slowly passed away in front of her.
The smile never left his lips when he took his final breath and sank to the bottom of the cage.
When she pulled her claws free, twin rose markings bloomed beneath his flesh.
Suddenly the wind died. Winter was gone and Abel’s cage swung open.
Standing, Flint stared at Abel in a daze as he stepped out.
Dean stood between them.
“You sacrificed what you held most dear, and Idris has given you a gift in return,” Death said softly.
Flint could hardly think. All she knew was that she was a killer. And she could never take back what she’d done. Her thoughts were numb with the beginnings of grief.
“Take the roses, Flint,” he commanded, nodding his head toward the still prostrate body of her bro
ther.
Moving in a daze, she turned and stared at Idris. He looked so peaceful. Like he was asleep. She might have even been content to think that if it weren’t for the black veins covering his flesh.
Somehow she was able to command her feet to move to him, and knowing without asking, she reached toward his chest. The roses, the markings of his death, sprang from his skin to the palms of her hands.
“Now place them on Abel,” Dean instructed.
But Flint didn’t move. She stared longingly at her cousin who’d been as close as brother to her. He’d sworn he’d fix this, and she hated him for not telling her how it would be done.
He’d known. Of course he’d known.
“I didn’t know you long, but I love you, Idris. Rest now, and maybe someday if we’re lucky, we’ll meet again.”
She bent over and kissed his forehead. When she opened her eyes, she watched as a golden wash of light poured from him, a twinkling glow that overtook every inch of his body until soon he was nothing but that light, and then that light climbed higher and higher, disappearing like a golden cloud into the heavens.
A gentle breeze stirred, and Idris was gone.
“I’ll never forget you.”
Sniffing, she stood and walked over to where Abel waited. His eyes were searching and full of keen intelligence.
Opening her palms, she laid them tenderly on his chest. The markings slid off her and onto him, blazing a bright gold, and when that light cleared, Abel stood before her a man.
No longer was he the scrawny boy from high school. He’d filled out just the way Cain had. He was tall, powerful, and beautiful, and he was looking at her with devastation in his eyes.
He knew the sacrifice she’d made.
“Oh, Flintlock, I’m so sorry,” he whispered, and she knew he meant it.
He opened his arms, and she sailed into them, sobbing miserably for the choice she’d had to make.
Dean nodded. “We are free to go home now. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry for what happened tonight.”
He patted her shoulder awkwardly, but she couldn’t even look at him. If she did, she was afraid she’d do something stupid like try to fight him. And there was no fighting Death, because he always won.
He’d told her there would be a sacrifice to be made, that she’d have to give up her soul. She’d not understood it then, but she felt it keenly now.
The Complete Tempted Series Page 79
