You tapped the mark on Valiance. “Saint Sinclair. The finest weapons maker of the modern age. Vivian must have had fifty swords made, a hundred. Each time it broke or chipped, she simply replaced it with a new one. Manufactured magic.” More quietly: “It’s a prop, Una. A fake. All of it is.”
I remembered shattering that sword and finding it whole again in the morning. I remembered the strange comfort of it; if I was cruel or violent, if I cut like a knife through the world and left a bloody wake behind me—perhaps I had no choice. Perhaps it was my fate.
You went on: “You and I both swore to serve crown and country when we were too young to know better. But we served a lie. We have no honor. We have no duty. We are sworn to nothing and no one, now—save each other.”
You lifted your hands and laid your palms along the planes of my thighs. You were not a supplicant now, but something much more dangerous, and a shudder moved through me at the sight of you.
You said, low and ragged, “I have loved you since before I was born, I think. I have studied you, worshipped you, lost you, mourned you. I have wept at your bier and fought beneath your flag. I havekilledyou, Una, over and over.” Your voice dragged now like a dull blade, whetting itself against me. The tips of your thumbs pressed into my flesh. “This once, please—let me save you.”
I sagged back to the earth. I nodded my head once, very slightly.
It felt awful, that letting go. Like falling on the field, like losing a limb.Like killing the girl who’d been born that day in the woods, bathed in the blood of her enemies, and not knowing who was left.
You asked for my hand. I gave it to you. You took Valiance in your other hand and drew my thumb carefully, so carefully, along the blade. You hissed as the skin parted, as if my flesh were yours.
You pressed our hands to the open book, and our blood swam together on the empty page. I did not ask where or when we were going; it did not matter where we ran, so long as you ran beside me.
Very soon we were gone, and there was nothing beneath the yew save a gun, misplaced in time, and a sword beside it.
THE
THIRD DEATH
OF
UNA
EVERLASTING
17
IT IS DIFFICULTto keep track of time when you are traveling through it. We dove and rose through the years like a needle through cloth, and the needle does not count the stitches.
But you began to mark the days, after a while—even in rags, on the run, you were a scholar—and you tell me it was nine years, all told.
Nine years, we ran. Nine years we stole, hour by hour and page by page, from the miser of history. Nine cowardly years; nine perfect years.
I know you want to write the whole of it, every detail, so that we’ll never forget again, but Owen, have mercy: Don’t make me remember too well. Don’t make me lose them again.
If you must write it, write it as a story or a song. A tale overheard, about other people. Write it withoutyouorI,but onlythey.
Say:They ran and ran.
Say:They ran until they found heaven.
Say:They ran until the devil caught them.
Alright, love. Like a story, then:
Once upon a time, there were a knight and a scholar who both served the same wicked queen.
(We’ve been so many things—a legend, a history lesson, a lie—why not a fairy tale?)
The knight and the scholar did not want to serve the wicked queen any longer, and so they ran away. But they did not run in the ordinary way, over land or sea. Instead, they ran through time.
The scholar had stolen the queen’s enchanted book, you see, which could send them into the distant past or the far-off future. They had only to set their hands on the pages, close their eyes, and bleed. Both of them had spent more blood, for worse causes; they did not mind a little more.
The first time they opened their eyes, they found themselves precisely where they had been before: beneath the yew, in the heart of the dark and wild wood.
