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The problem was that I was unarmed and it was from behind, and that sort of thing—
Wakes the beast.
It happened in an instant, as it always did. Rage spiraling up out of nowhere, red haze descending, my heart threatening to beat out of my chest. But this time, it didn’t come from her.
This time, it came from me.
I felt her start to rise—the familiar, hateful rush—and something in me snapped. I’d spent most of my life containing my anger, trying to tamp it down, to beat it back. I’d spent years learning techniques to quiet the beast.
But not this time.
This time, for the first time, my rage matched her own.
I saw again the puckered skin, the bloody wounds, the glittering pieces of shrapnel Louis-Cesare was going to have to dig out of his healed flesh at some point, yet more pain. Like all the rest he’d suffered for me, but because of her! She’d hamstrung me in battle, almost gotten him killed, like she’d taken over time and time again, blacking me out and using my body to do unspeakable things.
Not this time!
I threw everything I had at her: five hundred years of pain and fear and hate, a storm of fury with all the raging wildness of a hurricane. And it felt good—God it did! To let go for once, and let her know how it felt for a change!
And it was a change.
Because, instead of everything going black, the sunlit room merely darkened. Instead of gutting the fey with the knife that my hand had decided—on its own—to pluck from his boot, I drove it into the floor. And instead of passing out, and leaving my body in Dorina’s hands, it felt like there were suddenly two captains on this ship, each fighting for control.
And I wasn’t finished yet!
But the fey almost was. He was trying to scramble away, after my leg swept his out from under him and we followed him to the floor. But Dorina was faster, grabbing the still-quivering knife out of the floorboards and—shit.
The knife was a blur even to my eyes, hitting down a dozen more times in a staccato beat, as she ripped it out of the floor and I drove it back in, over and over, trying to bury it. That didn’t work, and it was everything I could do to keep it out of the fey’s flesh. Which wasn’t helped by his twisting and turning—and squealing, when the latest strike sliced through his trousers in a particularly vulnerable area.
It didn’t slice through anything else, but it was close. I needed to get rid of the damned thing—now—and started struggling to throw it out the window. But all that did was screw up my vision, making it look like someone was flipping a switch on and off, on and off, while the damned fey yelled and rolled around some more instead of taking the chance to—
Finally! He’d made it to his feet, but he didn’t run. And then things got interesting.
Darkness: She tripped him, grabbed his hair, used it like a handle to bare his throat—
Light: I twisted the knife at the last second, slammed the hilt into his temple, tried to knock him out, hoping that would end this.
Darkness: But he stayed conscious and she latched onto the idea, jackhammering the thick wooden handle repeatedly into his face.
Light: I shoved him away, toward the wall, and ran for the stairs—
Darkness: She spun us around and lunged for him, catching him before the paneling did, and then crashing his head through it—
Light: So I threw him at the stairs, hoping he’d take the hint and run, goddamn it!
Instead, he snarled and whirled, face a bloody mess, but eyes flashing, and unsheathed a sword. Immediately, a wave of heightened rage flooded my body, tingled my fingertips, sapped my control. And sucked all the light out of the room in a split second, leaving me fumbling in the dark.
But not unconscious; not yet.
But I was left trying to stop a fight by hearing alone, because she had my eyes now and she wasn’t giving them back. And the idiot had a weapon, and if the fey’s reputation was anything to go by, he knew how to use it. And his buddies weren’t interfering, despite their earlier attitude. I didn’t know why; I just knew—
Fuck.
I heard the fey curse, my own voice snarl, and a sword go clattering. Felt my hand closing on a long, pale throat, a pulse beating rapidly in my palm as I squeezed. Felt it start to slow, weakening his attempts to free himself, which weren’t working anyway, because Dorina had a hand free.
I could track his movements by her responses: blow blocked, foot sweep denied and turned against him, his own momentum sending him to the floor again, half the job done right there. Gut punch arrested before it could land simply by grabbing his hand and pressing the bones until they crunched and he cried out, a barely there gasp for mercy he wouldn’t get, and I couldn’t help. Suddenly, I couldn’t do anything.
And that made it worse than all those other times. She was using my body to murder someone, and I was going to feel every second of it, a captive audience to savagery I couldn’t control any more than I’d ever managed to control her. A useless appendage that couldn’t do anything but rage, so I did.
