Page 70 of Beds and Blades

His command voice had returned. Flat. Final. The hook ready.

“I can see that you will be difficult,” Mira said.

Her eyes moved from him to me. Something in her expression resolved.

“But I can see how you look at this Earth woman. If she joins us, your position may become more flexible.”

She turned fully toward me.

Everything Skip had taught me arrived at once.

Pain slows them. Throw the sword. Buy seconds.

My hand moved before fear could finish its argument.

I threw the sword.

It hit. The blade sank through leather and flesh. Mira stopped. Only for one second.

One second while pain traveled through whatever remained of her body faster than her mind could dismiss it. One second while her red eyes widened.

Skip crossed the corridor in four strides.

The hook completed its arc. The head fell from the body.

I was shaking. Violently.

The corridor filled with the smell of blood and something colder beneath it, something old and sealed and suddenly opened.

Whatever Mira had been before Morvanna found her in that field, whatever had remained of her frozen and waiting, finally left the prison of her body.

She was gone. Properly, finally gone.

I felt it.

I felt her leave the way I felt pressure change before a storm.

Mira’s soul was free. The thing that had stood in the corridor belonged to Morvanna, but the actual Mira—the woman Skip had loved and lost in a field two years ago—had escaped Morvanna’s reach.

Whatever held her had lost its grip. Mira had gone somewhere beyond the corridor and beyond the dark bond.

I had never considered myself a spiritual person. I had considered myself an empiricist. Standing in that corridor, shaking so hard my teeth nearly touched, I began to think those two things were not mutually exclusive.

The corridor was quiet. The body on the floor was no longer a threat.

Skip crossed the remaining distance to me. His arms came around me, and I went into them.

For a moment we stood there in the wreckage of what had just happened, holding on to each other with the wordless urgency of two people confirming the same fact.

Still here. Both of us. Alive.

He pulled back enough to look at my face.

His eyes were wet. He did not seem to be managing that fact.

Neither of us said anything. There was nothing in me capable of language.

I held him tighter.