You made no answer, but only turned your body very slowly so that you and I stood back-to-back, our shoulder blades brushing.Now?
I whispered, “Now.”
It was like pulling the pin from a grenade. You didn’t move so much as detonate. Your shoulders left mine, heaving forward, as if there weren’t four naked blades facing you. It was how you’d always fought—unfeeling, heedless, as if even your death wouldn’t stop you. It had been true, before. But I’d burned the book, and made you suddenly, horribly mortal.
From behind me came a yell, cut short. The muffled snap of a bone breaking. The wet slap of viscera on bare dirt.
The men facing me started forward and I kicked the fire at them, scattering coals, sending a rush of sparks between us. They blinked, blinded, and by the time they opened their eyes you were there.
For nine years, I’d tried to make you forget yourself. I’d taken away your sword, your story, your armor, your honor, your name. I’d wanted you to disappear, and for my sake, you’d tried.
I should have known: If you couldn’t kill Una Everlasting, then what chance did those poor bastards have?
You went through them like a scythe through late-summer hay. You came bare-handed, unshielded, blood-slicked, and you left only bodies behind you. A sword arced downward; you caught the hilt and thrust it through another man’s throat. A hand reached for your ankle; you stamped it with a sound like dropped porcelain.
The last man—a little older than the others, clever enough to know what his own death looked like when it came for him—did not even try to strike at you. Instead, he struck at me.
I watched his sword drive toward my chest, aimed just to the left of my sternum, where the blade wouldn’t get caught in the bone. I minded less than I thought I would; I had sworn never to watch you die again, and now I wouldn’t have to.
But the blade never arrived. You caught it, inches from my breast, in your bare hands.
I watched the blood well up from your fists and knew a moment of sick vanity. When you had fought for your queen, you had conquered Dominion; if you had fought for love, you might have conquered the world.
You ripped the sword away from the soldier, lips peeling back in an animal snarl. You turned the blade—still holding it by the naked edge—and drove it into his belly. The only mercy you had in you was that you killed quickly, but you had none for him: You twisted the sword, burrowing cruelly into his bowels, before you drew it out.
You stood watching him choke and whimper, your chest heaving like a great bellows. You held the blade one-handed now, the edge biting so deep into your palm that blood coursed down the blade and dripped from the point. The man fell to his knees, hands full of his own guts, and still you watched him.
I said, gently, “Una.”
You didn’t look at me, but your grip eased on the sword. You drew it cleanly across the man’s throat—his eyes closed in awful gratitude—and let it fall.
I went to you then, stumbling over sprawled limbs. You turned to face me, and I reached for your hands—God, yourhands—
I stopped myself just before I touched them, in case my shaking hurt you worse.
“I’m sorry,” you said, earnestly. Your pupils were huge and black. “I know you wanted me to be other than I am, and I tried, I swear I tried. But…” You looked vaguely around at the scattered corpses. A shudder moved over you, and your voice went low and raw. “Have you learned to fear me yet, boy?”
I touched my palms very carefully to the backs of your hands. “Never.”
You exhaled, shakily. “Madman.”
“Yes, but I’m your madman.” You snorted, then hissed as your hands jostled. You looked down at them as if surprised to find them still attached to your wrists.
“We’ve still got some iodine, let me—”
But when you lifted your face again, you were smiling. A summertime smile, sweet and easy, as if we were still eating berries in the woods, or would be soon.
You lifted both your mangled hands high, a pagan priest blessing his flock. Blood ran down your wrists and several of your fingers flopped obscenely. The blade had cut through tendon, straight to the bone. I’d spent enough time in field hospitals to know you would never hold a sword again.
You looked over my shoulder and said, still smiling, “I’m no good to you now.”
I wondered, briefly, who you were speaking to; it simply didn’t occur to me that you would have spared her.
But you had. Vivian answered easily, calmly, as if she wasn’t standing among her butchered men, “But you’re still mine.”
You shook your head. “Not anymore. Not ever again,” you said, and stepped around me. Our floor—packed earth, swept clean—had turned to black, brackish mud. Your feet sank slightly into it as you crossed the cottage to face Vivian Rolfe.
You placed your ruined hands carefully, almost respectfully, around her neck. She didn’t flinch or blink. She tucked her own hands in her trouser pockets, showily indifferent. Well, perhaps she was right: You had refused her, and you had run from her, but you could barely meet her eyes.
