Thomas tries to dislodge my hand from his only working weapon, but its newfound power within me is strong enough to root my stance. And Pratterman, perhaps not trusting Thomas while he didn’t yet have him isolated and in debt, hadn’t granted him access to the power directly. Excruciatingly slowly, I turn my arm until the blade twists out of his cowardly hand. I slide the blade’s length back until it falls out of me to the soft ground, black with blood.
Thomas may be cruelty, but I’m terror.
And terror doesn’t require cruelty.
Only commitment.
I don’t scream as I plunge my kitchen knife under his ribs. He’ll see no passion in my eyes. None of the fire he covets, fears, needs. Onlymy brown eyes reflecting his horror. No devils. No force beyond the woman he betrayed. He doesn’t deserve a mercy strike or a clean slice across the gullet. He will bleed out watching everything burn.
He will die in ashes, choking on blood and vicious desire.
I remove the knife and stab again, and again, and again. He grips me, claws at my arms, and grabs blindly for the sword I tossed. He backs up, finally wrapping his hand around the hilt as a dozen stains bloom across his shirt. He kneels, a shadow against the flames.
“Elle,” he chokes out, “please…”
A ploy. But he’s a dying man now. There’s no surviving what I did to him. It doesn’t matter what mercies I give him. We’re both doomed. At one time that conclusion would lead me to abandon him. Nothing in it for me, no change to the world, why bother?
Soon he’ll be one more pile of bones on a forsaken island. But now, in front of me, he’s a man in pain. And I’ve learned the cost of ignoring pain. I’m doing it now as my insides turn molten and the nerve endings offer relief only as they die.
The surge from the sword’s power has already waned. Now hot embers remain deep in my belly, burning me from the inside out. Where once was rot now there’s ash. My hands are shriveled claws, red and blistered. I’ve never looked more monstrous or felt less so.
I kneel before him. It’s as though we were in prayer. Like we were on an altar in the sacrament of marriage that was planned for us. A dark marriage here, wounds swapped instead of rings.
“I was promised that power,” he whispers. Blood reddens his lips. “Give it to me.Saveme.”
“The Devil doesn’t play fair,” I whisper back. “Don’t you know that?”
He coughs out a laugh, gurgling at the end. He doesn’t have long.
“At least I won’t be alone in hell.” He thrusts forward, and the sword, not cursed but plenty sharp, impales me.
I gasp out, the pain no longer dulled. My skin and muscle screamagainst the metal.
His hand doesn’t leave the hilt until the light dims from his eyes. He dies laughing. He falls aside, now only meat and bone and the shadow of misery. Pain and relief mix into a euphoric burn that goes through me.
It’s done. The roar of the forest fire engulfs my ears. Tears well in my eyes. When they fall, I can’t feel them.
No more Thomas. Liney on her way to land.
And here, finally, my end.
No. I won’t die beside him. That would’ve been my fate. A twin grave with his surname over my bones. No archaeologist will find us collapsed together and believe us lovers. I don’t care if I have to crawl into the sea.
I throw aside my knife. The sword remains inside me. He punctured clean through. Easier not to move it.
There’s a surge of something—not power exactly, at least not the same as what’s burning the forest. It’s the souls. Their presence seeping through where my knees touch the grass. They can’t save me, the pain of rot and sword doesn’t dull. But their energy fills my muscles like bellows. I can move. I must.
I raise one leg, then push up to stand. The fire approaches the clearing, and the shimmering black oil stretched across it. I don’t have long before it reaches the lighthouse. The souls have done their part. I thank them. No words. Only a rush of gratitude that mingles with their energy as they leave this world for the final time.
I limp back to the front door.
With no power left inside me, it’s not only the piercing injury that slows me. My calves burn without support, my lungs barely breathe in enough air to keep me alert. Every step punishes me across our old home, up the short steps to the storeroom, across its newly full racks of food.
I’m not afraid. Fear’s control is one more tool I don’t require. Theworld won’t remember me, but Liney will. In her escape I can find a kind of peace.
Only one more person requires my help before I can accept this end.
The climb up the blasted ladder nearly breaks me. There’s no one left to pray to, no souls left in me to ask for help. My muscles hold nothing special in them anymore, but they must finish this.
