“I have accepted ageasto kill the Beast of Brimmond,” I tell her. “I do not want this. You ought not be in our world. Faeries are not—”
“I do not take orders from theHunter,” she scoffs.
“Yourqueen is why I am here.” I draw my sword. I’m not certain that I have the strength or agility to beat her. The faeries I have trained to fight are weaker things, ones that slip through the gate from Faerie. “I don’t even know what you are.”
“Your death,” she says softly.
And then she charges at me, and although I expect it, I am still not prepared. Not for the sheer force of her, not for the power of the arm that slashes toward me. I hold my sword, grateful that the one in my hands is a strong two-handed blade, and the impact of the blow between my blade and her arm shakes me to my bones.
I was not prepared to fence blade to clawed arms, but she moves as if her arms are both swords. I feel the cuts of my sword sink into her skin, and the ground is littered with purple flecks and green gems as droplets of her blood sail through the air and harden.
She strikes, and I parry and riposte. Over and over, she swings. The air takes on a strange hue as if the sky is raining emeralds.
Yet despite the blood loss, the Beast of Brimmond does not slow.
My arms ache, and my shoulders feel like I might fracture. Small cuts decorate my own skin, and I feel blood drip from my arms to the earth. Every lesson I’ve ever had comes into play. Her weapon is a part of her, and so I cannot disarm her—short of severing a limb.
“Do you drink blood?” I ask between the next round of parry and riposte.
She scowls, briefly off kilter at my query. “No.”
“Why do you drain them?” I press with both my question and the blade in my hands. The steel of my weapon does not burn her, but it does seem to stop her wounds from closing. That is as much as it does on the strongest of faeries I’ve seen.
“A consequence of the beheading.” The beast’s claws rake over my dominant arm, and the pain of it is searing this time.
I keep my arm aloft, only making oberhau or mittelhau cuts now. The over and middle cuts keep my elbow bent, so they become my default. I do not want to straighten my elbow for any unterhau cuts; doing so will allow the blood to roll down my forearm onto my hand.
Slick hands drop swords,Father’s voice booms in my memory.
He has trained me for this fight. If I can stop her, if I can survive, Rylan will not be the Hunter tomorrow.
“I love Isabeau,” I announce. “The poison will not kill me.”
This time the beast steps back, as if she must find an opening to attack more ferociously.
“And she loves me,” I add, “just as my father loved my mother. You took him from her. Stole years from them.”
“He upset Isaac, telling him about my mistake.” The beast growls at me. “One dead man, and the Hunter comes here to upset my love. He upset my husband on our last day together. Isaac knew what I was, and he still loved me, but he was so angry about my mistake.”
“Killing people is not merely amistake. You nearly severed his head.” I cannot let myself think of her as Isabeau’s mother, as the duchess, as a person. She is the Beast of Brimmond. She killed my father.
“My husband was dying, and that wretched man was disrespecting marriages.” The beast growled. “Death should come to the evil, and good men like Isaac should live forever.”
“Myfather was a good man.”
“He stole almost an hour of my husband’s life with his prattle.” The beast charges at me again.
“And Emma? Girard? The nameless man at my house? Hugh?”
“The chit and the barkeep upset my daughter.” The beast stabs upward, and I barely block it. “The others ... one made a lecherous look my way, and the first made such looks at everyone in his path.”
“You cannot simplymurderpeople over these things.” The blood loss from the deep furrows in my arm is making me tired—or perhapsthat’s from two sleepless nights, riding all day, and fighting a monster. Either way, my reflexes slow just a little more.
She sees it, though, and again, she launches at me. “I can do whatever I please. My husband has abandoned me to this horrible place without him.”
I falter, but this time, the beast’s claws don’t sink as deep. The pain, though, is in my thigh. Stepping out as I parry and riposte, even standing, makes blood trickle down my leg.
A growling sound fills the air, and I think it’s her, the Beast of Brimmond, growing excited as she is prepared to kill me. Then a hairy blur charges to my side, and for a flicker of a moment, I think I will have to fight two beasts.
