“Look at me.” He shakes me desperately. My head lolls. “Damn it all, look at me!”
As Mother Mabel reaches my side, a wall of air catapults her across the room. She hits the wall with a violent crack, and there are screams,terrible screams. She slides onto her backside, dazed. Blood trickles from her hairline.
“Someone get me a gods-damned healer!” Zephyrus roars.
Yet all is silent. All is still.
“We’ll fix this.” He fumbles for the hilt protruding from my chest. “We’ll…” Blood-soaked hands slip over the gold plating. No matter how hard he yanks, the sword does not pull free.
With a hoarse cry, he releases the weapon. He shakes, fighting to maintain control, and then, as if having succumbed, deflates.
It is an effort to move my hand. Its weight is unbearable. Yet my fingers twitch, brushing Zephyrus’ thigh in whatever comfort I can offer him.
His head snaps up. “Brielle.” Leaning over me, he peers into my eyes.
I swallow around the blood flooding my mouth and throat. “I tried.”
“Shh. Don’t say that.” He pulls me against his sweaty chest. The pulse of his heart beneath my ear begins to fade, as all things do. “Help is coming for you. Just hold on. You have to hold on.”
Deeper and deeper I sink. My words, when they emerge, are naught but breath. “I wish…” A shudder wracks my body, and the blackness spreads, veiling him momentarily from sight. “I would have told you—”
“Told me what?”
I cannot remember.
“Brielle.” The word is too sharp. “What did you want to tell me?” He shakes me again. “Brielle.”
My fingers slacken, fall loose upon the ground. I am dissolving. My thoughts erode, and I begin to forget.
The West Wind dips his head to mine. Even in my blood-saturated haze, I can smell his breath, sweet as honeysuckle. “You can’t leave me,” he murmurs. “Not like this.”
I do not have the words to inform him that I am already gone.
Peeling itself from my body, my soul floats higher in the cavern, far above the gathered spectators, the lush field of grass. I never gavemuch thought as to how I would die. All I know is what follows: the Eternal Lands. There, I would want for nothing. My belly full. My heart whole. My body restful, rid of aches and pains.
But—Zephyrus. Dear, complicated Zephyrus, who smooths the red, tangled curls from my face with his filth-encrusted hands. A rough, broken sound falls unchecked from his mouth. “Why?” He lifts his head, that emerald gaze piercing Mother Mabel across the field as two acolytes help her to stand. “Why would you send Brielle on that fool’s errand into Under? Why demand she collect the sword? I thought you cared for her.”
The Abbess of Thornbrook is many things. Austere. Rigid. Never bent, as she is now. “I care for each of my charges. Brielle was…” Her expression falters. “She was special. No one else was more dutiful or willing to please. How could I have predicted she would stray?”
He sneers. “You claim to care for Brielle, yet it is clear you barely know her.”
“And you do?” Her eyes narrow. “I have looked after Brielle for a decade. You have known her for a handful of months.”
“It takes more than time to know another’s heart. She is a curious, willful woman. She questions the world in which she lives.”
“Let me be clear, Bringer of Spring.” Mother Mabel’s voice quavers despite the steel beneath. “It is because ofyouthat Brielle is dead.”
A snarl rips through the cavern.
The West Wind leaps to his feet, wind-carved blade in hand. “Take accountability for your actions, Abbess,” he spits. “It was your hand that threw the blade. Do not deny it.”
The fair folk, drawn by the whiff of spilled blood, have crept forward in their tiers, but one quelling look from Mother Mabel herds them back into the gloom.
“Do not doubt my care,” she goes on. “I loved Brielle like a daughter. I tried to guide her to the best of my abilities, but you were selfish. You wanted her for yourself. Now here she lies, a corpse.”
Indeed, my freckles appear as broken scabs against my colorless skin. My blank eyes resemble muddy pools.
“If you truly cared for her well-being,” Zephyrus hisses, lifting the sword with blood in his teeth and grief in his heart, “you would have nurtured her. You would have built her up, infused her with the confidence required to face the world. Instead, she floundered, torn down by the cruelty of her peers.” Another tear courses down his cheek. “The true mark of a coward is choosing to do nothing.”
