“Bless me, Merciful God, as I cross the waters toward you. Drag me up from the depths to your glories. Consider not my sins for they are many. Take instead this heart which I offer to you now. Bless me, Merciful God.”
It was a formal last prayer and I was supposed to say, “Amen,” but my tongue would not move. My breath sawed in my lungs as if it were fighting this, too.
Somewhere, far away, the clock had stopped bonging. Somewhere, in another world, I heard a shout of dismay and a scuffle.
I was supposed to press his face beneath the water. I was supposed to let him die beneath my weight. But I could not do it. Not even for this. Not even to save the whole world could I wound him, could I kill him. Instead, I kept my hands where they were but I turned my body so I might take his open lips violently in mine and slide a desperate last kiss over them.
They tasted terrible. Like evil and illness and misery.
But they were his.
His shuddering gasp was all the encouragement I needed, and his answering kiss was pained and hungry, but when he drew back, his mind had not changed. His eyes held in them a depth I could not reach.
“Please.”
And the word was so plain, so vulnerable, so open to me.
“Adalbrand.” His name seared my lips. His cinnamon eyes bored into mine. “Please don’t make me do this.”
“I’ve heard those words before.” His voice made it sound like I was ripping out his throat. “And I could no more save her than I can save you. Please, Victoriana.”
“But I love you,” I whispered, feeling the hot tears spill suddenly down my cheeks.
“Then love me enough to be faithful.”
I plunged his head beneath the holy water with a cry of despair and my eyes clenched shut. He tensed beneath my hands. I bit my own lip until I tasted blood.
And this wasn’t right. It wasn’t right. It —
He was torn from my grip without warning, dragged into the water so that his whole body tumbled into the fountain.
My eyes shot open. My empty hands flexed.
There was a sound half shout, half cry, half gurgle, and the waters swirled pink around the brindled muzzle buried in Adalbrand’s neck.
I heard shouts and feet pounding across the marble, but I didn’t look back. I threw myself into the fountain.
“Please. No. Please.” My words jumbled together as I grabbed for Brindle. All I could see in my mind’s eye was the empty gaze of Sir Owalan after his throat was torn out. And I should have been praying as he died. I knew it, but I couldn’t stop myself from thrashing through the water toward him.
And then suddenly Adalbrand was free, sputtering, coughing, heaving, finding his feet, dripping wet. Water streamed down his close-cropped hair and stubbled jaw, and his clothing clung to him. I was reminded suddenly that this man I had been about to murder had been the peak of life and health. His body almost sang with the joy of life returned to him.
His hand was clapped to his neck and my stomach rolled at the sight. When it came away, there was blood and three gashes I didn’t much like the look of, but compared to the ragged mess I was expecting, it was a relief.
He gasped, bright eyes meeting mine. Something had changed. They no longer glowed red.
He opened his mouth as if he would speak, and then there was a roar from behind us and Adalbrand leapt past me, drawing his sword while he was still in the air.
My head turned, confusion drawing my eyebrows down, but a voice in my head arrested me.
Eyes on me, my girl. Our time is short.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Poisoned Saint
I am staring down death — or rather, breathing it down. And it is nothing, not even the sting of a thorn, compared to the howling, aching emptiness at the depths in me.
Aching Monastery? Ha! Does it go down so far that the pit inside it reaches through the crust of the earth, through her roiling black veins filled with oil and water? Through the meat of her minerals and the bones of her rocks, down deeper still to the beating of her molten heart and through the other side to where there is no earth at all and only the cold, friendless darkness of howling nothing? Does it go to where the soul loses even the understanding of self? To the place where not even a memory of love can yet live?
