Her gaze darts around, but she can’t see what I see. If she did, she would probably freak out. The man hanged for murdering a young woman is leering at her, trying to lick her face. She doesn’t flinch.
“They told me you were coming,” I continue, stopping a few feet from her, close enough to see the rainwater clinging to her eyelashes. “They have a great deal to sayabout your lineage, slayer. Most of it ends in tragedy.” I let the silence hang between us, thick with the dust of ages and the sorrow of the forgotten. “You seem determined to continue the family tradition. Tell me, is it arrogance or ignorance that drives you?”
I reach out and flick the lecherous murderer in the forehead, and he backs off.
Nyssa’s gaze snaps to my hand, and she steps back.
“The dead told me. Ciara, Seamus, all of them. Bright sparks, every one. And every one extinguished. Tell me, does it ever occur to you to just… stop?”
She looks at me as if I’ve just suggested she start breathing water. “Stop? Stop what? Protecting people from things like you?”
“Things like me are inevitable,” I murmur, my voice dropping. “But your death doesn’t have to be.”
“Aww, are you trying to protect me?”
Her sarcasm is a beautiful thing.
“More like move you out of the way.”
“Of what? You?”
I laugh, a low, dry sound that echoes in the dead air of the hall. The spirits around us shiver. “Me? Sweetheart, I’m not the storm. I’m the silence that comes after. I’m the one who collects the pieces when the game is over.”
She rolls her eyes at my masterful monologue.
Maybe not so masterful.
“You’re fighting a tide, slayer. A cosmic shift. It’s admirable. It’s also incredibly stupid. I said, no,” I add to the murderer and shove his face away from her.
She frowns and again looks at my hand, which appears to be touching nothing in her view. Her jaw tightens, a muscle twitching in her cheek. “I’ve heard the ‘end of the world’ speech already today. You gods need new material.”
“This isn’t about the end of the world. This is about the end of everything. There are things waking up that make Aethel look like a petulant child. Things that don’t want to rule. They want to unmake, devour, and you’re standing in their way.”
“What is it?” she asks. “What is coming?”
I shrug. “It has no name, only a reputation for demolishing realms.”
“And somehow this was awoken when the veil was torn open?”
“It has always been awake, Nyssa. But now it is coming.”
“Why not before? Was it locked away on its own?”
“You are full of questions,” I say with a smile, which turns malevolent when the murderer goes for her again. “No!” I roar and hold my hand out to eat him face first. “You don’t fucking touch her!”
“What?” Nyssa stammers and steps back as the air turns to ice around us. The murderer’s spectral form is sucked into my palm, and I feel the chill of his hungry soul settle. I let the cold recede, the frost on the stone floor melting back into damp. The other spirits have vanished, terrified of my outburst.
Nyssa is staring at the empty space where my hand was, her knuckles white on her blade.
I fix her with a casual gaze. “Just a minor pest. This house has an infestation problem. You learn to deal with them.”
“Why don’t you want them touching me?” she asks, herchin raised.
“You are not theirs to touch.”
“I’m not yours either, Voren,” she snaps. “I don’t need your protection.”
“You have it whether you want it or not, Nyssa. That creature was trying to lick your face, much like he licked the face of the woman he gutted like a fish before he ate her insides for dinner.”
