I would kill him.
I know this. It is a certainty that lies within my bones. Red Cap blood or not, if he attacked, I would defend, and Iwouldwin.
But just as sure inside me is the knowledge that he would not attack me.
I drop the magic holding him in place. Samson lands on the floor with a thud and an audibleoof.
Moyra stares me, not quite gaping but still surprised. “You would doom two worlds for one man?” she asks in a voice so low, Samson can’t hear it as he scrambles to get up.
I meet her eyes without hesitation. “Yes.”
I have spent my entire life following duty. Bolstering the wall, vigilant against the threat of Red Caps.
But I don’t want to choose duty anymore.
I want to choose him.
26
Samson
My legs are wobbly, like the floor’s gone to sand, and I hold myself up against the plaster wall of the witch’s hut. There’s a dent here, and my shoulder’s aching something fierce, but other details come at me stronger:
Alyth, tears streaking down her face.
Moyra, grabbing a potion vial from her table and taking an attack stance.
I don’t move. My heart’s throbbing in my neck and fingertips, and I don’t think I’ve taken a full breath yet. But I stay rigid, half slumped against the wall.
“What did I do?” I whisper.
But I already know.
Because I recognize this moment.
It’s Oskar and Hal in Southwark. It’s dozens of moments layering one atop the other across my life: coming back to consciousness with people cowering away from me.
I blacked out.
Did I attack Alyth?
My eyes race over her, but she’s not injured. Neither is Moyra. And the room’s not trashed, except for the cracked wall and bits of plaster on the floor. So—did they manage to restrain me? ’Course they did. Alyth, powerful as she is, and Moyra too. They handled me.
But they’re still gawking at me with terror in their eyes, and it’s all I can do not to launch myself out of this hut and run off into the bog.
I thought I was close to a solution here. I thought Moyra couldhelp me.
She can’t, can she?
No one’s looked at me like that in Scotland. Alyth, Callum, even Mary—not one person has looked at me like that. And seeing that expression on Alyth’s face, fear, has my stomach lurching up into my throat, and I topple forward, landing hard on my knees.
“I’m sorry,” I say, tears heating my eyes, tears of hatred and hurt and exhaustion. “I blacked out, didn’t I? I blacked out, and you saw my curse? Christ, I’m so sorry, I—”
“No, Samson.”
Alyth’s voice doesn’t bear any of the fear I saw in her eyes. Through my own watery gaze, I realize it isn’t terror on her face.
It’s grief.
