Eventually, the light faded, and so did she.
When she dreamed, she dreamed of Varine the Pale.
They faced one another on a familiar dark promontory whose grasses hissed in an insistent wind.
Of course it was familiar. She’d only just read about it.
The necromancer’s eyes were as black as words could make them, pits of nothing in white flesh, her hair unfurling in dark ribbons rich as earth watered with blood. Her lips were blue. Lifeless, but full and smiling.
Above her, the moon itself was inscribed with her sigil, a diamond with branches like horns.
Viv’s breath dwindled, her chest constricted by what felt like huge, crushing hands. The grass began to shrink away even as other forms rose from the earth. Their eyes glittered with icy blue pinpricks of starlight as they staggered upright, earth falling away in clods and streamers.
“I see you, Viv.” Varine’s form swelled, as though the grass were her mantle and she was gathering it around herself, magnifying her tenfold.
No, she wasapproaching, gliding fast between the wights that shambled toward their dumbstruck prey.
Viv shook herself and snatched for the saber at her hip, but it was missing. Only then did she notice the heavy weight slung across her back. Her searching fingers found the hilt of the greatsword over one shoulder and gratefully tightened on it. The leather creaked, and a current passed from the steel and into her flesh. She couldn’t have let go if she’d wanted to.
She didn’t want to.
“You have something that belongs to me,” purred Varine, looming impossibly large, empty and enormous, while the world hissed away from her like soot blown from white marble. Until there was nothing, nothing but Varine.
Viv unsheathed the blade and brought it before her, solid and right andhers.
“Blackblood.” Varine’s whisper boomed like thunder, and the necromancer was before and behind and above and, inevitably, below.
And then she was inside her like a blade between the ribs, cold and laughing.
Viv snapped awake in the darkness, clutching at her side and the fading burn of ice there.
Her other arm was flung across the bedframe, fingers tight on the greatsword’s hilt.
On Blackblood’s hilt.
Viv sat back on her haunches, her thigh burning and stretching with the motion. She recorked the bottle of bonedust and watched as Satchel boiled out of his resting place and into her room.
When his eyes lit blue, she said, “Couldn’t sleep. Do you mind?”
“You’d like some company?” he asked in his hollow, echoing voice.
“I guess so. Glad to see you’ve dropped the ‘m’lady,’ anyway.”
Satchel stared at the greatsword where it throbbed with lamplight on the bedframe.
“It has a name, doesn’t it?” asked Viv. “Shehas a name.”
“She does,” he replied.
“Blackblood,” said Viv.
His gaze sharpened. “Have you been dreaming?”
“So thatiswhat she’s called,” Viv breathed. Then, “Only once,” she admitted.
The homunculus sighed, dead leaves on stone. “My Lady will come.”
“Not if Rackam finds her first,” said Viv. “But if he hasn’t done that by now… then you may be right.”
