It was strange, for Demetri to have been smiling at me from way over there, but now, here he was, by my feet, his curls splayed over my toes. Still smiling.
But something was missing.
I raised my head.
He’d left his body behind, a body that Lycandor stood beside.
Something was wrong with that, too.
Above where his smile should have been hung the blade of a longsword, its edges steaming with the heat of fresh blood.Demetri’sblood, not Falstaff’s. It spouted from his neck like a fountain, just like the ones we’d thrown coins in for a wish in Dendra’s central piazza.
Wrong.
Wrong.
Wrong.
Reaching down, I gathered him into my arms, cradling his face to my chest, as the sister had done with the babe.
“Hush,”I whispered into his hair. “All will be well.” Carefully, so as not to pull, I threaded my fingers into the loops of his curls and brought him to the swell of my lips.
The red kiss of his blood painted my own, and I licked them, tasting the iron of him, the wet heat of his tongue. His essence was cool against my skin, even as it trickled down my wrists and into the crease of my arms.
Gods, I was burning. Hot. So hot.
I beamed at him, laughing into his mouth, kissing him, again and again and again, in front of the sanctum. In front of acolytes. In front of the druids.
But his lips were unresponsive, limp and pliable, despite my coaxing.
I didn’t mind. I didn’t care about anything, not when my chest was blossoming.
There you are.
“Took you long enough.” I giggled to my blessing, a glaze of happiness washing me in sunlight. “We have work to do,Wrath.”
Nestling Demetri into the crook of one arm, I glided over to Lycandor, skating through the blood like I used to with the first of the snows, in long, artful swirls. His sword still hung in the air, drip, drip, dripping. My toe tapped to the sound of its beat.
Demetri’s body, slumped on the floor as if sleeping, lay at my front. I stepped around him, mindful not to disturb his rest.
Pulled by some invisible vine, curling outward from the bloom in my chest, an urge grew alongside the glorious warmth.
With a wink, I dragged my hand down the curve of Lycandor’s waiting blade, parting the healed cut until blood welled, trickling to the floor to mingle with Demetri’s, Adelaide’s, a mire all our own.
A rumbling.
The walls shook, but this time, not with the feet, fists, or the anger of men, but with something far more precise. Far more acute. Far moredeadly.
The wrath of a laurel, the wrath of a woman…the wrath ofme.“You might want to cover your ears,Druid,for I’m about to make them scream.”
THE EPILOGUE
The first blood plague arrived in the spring.
From holes and cracks in the stones below Khloye’s tiny feet, viscous, red liquid bubbled and pooled. Sprawling in puddles, it surged along the grooves in the cobbles, reaching towards the rest of the piazza. In but a moment, a thick sheen carpeted the market, bleeding into the streets beyond, crawling towards the villas and homes of Ferrovia. The Thromarrians watched on as it reached the height of their ankles, realising the horror of the truth too late.
Then came the screams.
Those whose feet were submerged by the blood could not flee, their legs welded to the floor by a cast of rock. Rock the colour of rubies.
