“Oh, don’t stop now,” M. Voland said, his voice quiet and measured. And Sam knew that he would kill her in the next moment, no matter what Mr. Ashdown said about their not being murderers. Not if Jakob didn’t see who the real monster was and stop him. “A man who what?”
Sam held Jakob’s gaze as he gripped the blood-soaked wooden knife with its poison-green eyes, its power blistering even from so far. Everything relied on him now. She had to trust the change she’d seen in him. Trust that beneath all that armor, he was still the boy she’d known. Trust that he didn’t actually want to kill the Mórrígan?—that he thought it the only way to protect Sam.
“Don’t be shy, not now.” M. Voland pressed the fleam deeper. Four trickles of blood ran down her throat from four blades. “A man whowhat?”
“A man who has already lost,” Sam said with a smile as Jakob raised the knife.
M. Voland whirled. “What are you doing, you fool!” His hand twitched on the device, but lockpicks flew from Hel’s fingers like throwing knives, burying themselves deep in M. Voland’s wrist.
“You didn’t really think we were unprepared for resistance, did you?” Hel drawled.
M. Voland cursed, his fingers convulsing on the arcane device, but he was too late. The knife sheered through the cage. The Mórrígan was on her feet so fast Sam didn’t see her move. Another blink, and she was before M. Voland, tilting her head, her eyes black and round as a crow’s, his face gripped in her blacked fingers. Gazing into his eyes, she wrenched her hand into his guts and pulled out his intestines, lacing them around her fingers. Blood streaked her pale body.
“I do not give you permission to die.”The Mórrígan was speaking Irish?—Sam knew she was speaking Irish?—but by some enchantment, Sam could understand her. Her voice was harsh and strangely harmonic. Crows filled the chamber, making a storm of their wings.
Róisín gasped, crumpling over, as if it were her guts the Mórrígan threaded. Jakob stood with that knife clutched in his hand, looking between them, uncertainty warring on his face.
“Cut us loose, quick!” Sam said. “Before the rest of them realize something’s gone wrong and come back.”
As if her voice broke the spell, Jakob rushed to her side, slicing through the bonds. “You fool. What were you thinking, baiting him like that?” Jakob said as Sam worked the feeling back into her hands.
“I was buying you time,” Sam said.
“By what, getting yourself killed?” Jakob demanded. That was just it: The fleeting diversion of her deathwasthe distraction. It had been Sam’s first field lesson.
“We don’t have time for this. Listen, we made a deal,” Sam said, looking over at Miss Shinagh, curled in on herself, her breath a quick pant. “Miss Shinagh will argue for their lives.”
“Wasn’t she the one murdering everyone?” Jakob said doubtfully. “And you’re... what, on her side? Trusting her?”
Miss Shinagh wrenched her head up, and Sam was horrified to see something unfurling in the socket where her left eye had been?—a black flower, thorns hooking it into the socket. The punishment she paid for the partial breaking of her bond. Sam wondered what would happen to her if the Mórrígan killed the other members of the Vespertine?—if Miss Shinagh’s whole body would change, leaving only an oddly shaped topiary behind.
“Jakob,please.”
“This had better work,” Jakob grumbled, as he sawed through Miss Shinagh’s bonds. She pushed herself off the ground, and into a bow.
“An Mór-Ríoghan,”Róisín said, grimacing around the pain. Then, switching to English, for the benefit of her witnesses: “Great queen, I made a deal: their lives for your freedom.”
The Mórrígan’s black eyes snapped to her, to the black flower blooming in place of her eye.“Those were not your lives to give.”
“I gave them until the sun sets tomorrow,” Róisín begged. “If they are still here then, they are yours. I swear it to you.Tá a fhios agat féin go n-íocaim m’fhiacha.”
“Tch.”But the Mórrígan let M. Voland’s intestines slip from her fingers. Sam half expected the Mórrígan to claw out his throat, to drink from it like a cup. For a moment, Sam was fairly certain the Mórrígan did too. But then, the Mórrígan tilted her head back, at the open sky, her skin seeming to shiver.“I’ve spent too long here already.”
Feathers sprouted out of her arms and back, her mouth sharpening, pulling into a beak, her body seeming to fold in on itself until she dwindled into the shape of a crow. The Mórrígan screamed, and the crows in the room screamed with her, and all of them blew out through the broken glass like a black wind. The only sound in the room was M. Voland’s groans as he lay crumpled on the ground, struggling to hold himself together.
Sam couldn’t help but wonder at the relationship between Miss Shinagh and the Mórrígan, that she would let her captors walk free simply to spare this one woman’s life. Or perhaps Sam was letting her imagination get the better of her again. She didn’t think she’d earned the right to ask.
M. Voland gasped on the floor. “Help me. We would never have killed you. You can’t?—”
“No,” Hel said flatly. It was some measure of justice, at least.
“I’m sorry,” Sam said to Miss Shinagh. “About your eye.”
Miss Shinagh shook her head, her remaining eye gleaming as she watched M. Voland squirm. “It was worth it.”
Sam turned to Hel, but the other woman was already tearing into her.
“Neverdo that again,” Hel said, furious. “What were you thinking? You?—”
