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Events happened with that drawn-out pulse of only one or two heartbeats that lasted a lifetime. Claude was dragging on the leash; Sebastian was snapping his jaws at her, overtaken with the need to kill.
And she was hurling the few golden pieces she could grab right into the flame.
I sold my soul for that gold once. Destroy it . . . me. Free me.
Claude rushed forward, seizing hold of both her wrists. “He is mine!” he snarled, but he moved too late. The gold began bubbling and hissing against the wooden floorboards.
The clock struck midnight then, ringing its antique chimes. Claude shoved her aside, taking hold of the leash once again.
But Sebastian vanished from the space between them. Gone, dissolved as effortlessly as he’d seemingly emerged from the puzzle. Claude rounded on her, eyes beady red and scales massing across his enlarging form. Leathery appendages fanned out from his back, scaled like wings but covered in barbs.
A devil. Truly.
And now he would kill her, she thought numbly, but she would never let him own her, not the way he’d owned Sebastian.
“Do you know how many years I’ve sought him?” His words bubbled like the melting Templar gold. The sound was dry and chafing, and she pictured a parched brook filled with dry stones. . . . The voice of hell itself.
But another voice murmured in her ear. I am free, and for that, I thank you humbly. But your knight’s duty is not finished.
Sebastian was alive somehow, still. Was he in the remaining bits of her puzzle?
I am free. But you must vanquish this evil.
“I . . . I . . .” I’m not a knight!
This is your destiny; ours together. Look to the gold that bought my soul.
The dragon beast that she might have called Claude—if she were being generous—advanced upon her with a menacing curl of lips over distending fangs.
It took every bit of strength inside her soul, but she searched around her for Sebastian’s gold. And there it was, slithering. Snakelike. Enlarging so boldly that she shrieked. The gold that previously had purred beneath her touch began morphing into something as voracious as the beast who stalked toward her. Was the precious metal merely an extension of Claude’s will? Was it not obedient to Sebastian, after all?
Except the metal wasn’t finished with its fiery transformation. It rose off the floor, as alive as she was; forming into a gleaming sword, it flew into her hand.
She didn’t bother thinking or hesitating; she grasped its heavy weight and rose upward, plunging the weapon into the center of the beast’s chest. It swiped deathly claws at her, and she ducked backward, shoving the sword deeper into its body. The sword made a vibrating hum, the same pleasured sound the gold had made in her palm, and seemed to assume the task on her behalf.
She dropped to her knees heavily, watching as the sword forced its own way deeper into the creature’s chest. Until the monster fell, blood gurgling from between its thin, monstrous lips.
Until, like Sebastian, the devil vanished entirely, protruding golden sword along with it.
She spent the next week praying for a dream or a sign—any instruction at all as to what she, a strange latter-day female knight, was supposed to do. Surely Sebastian wanted her to mop up the proverbial mess. The studio remained as it had after that last battle moment: a bloodstain on her floor, a scorched mark nearby, the burner overturned. The puzzle pieces sat on her work desk, heaped in an incomplete mound, missing several bits of canvas—and all of the gold she’d applied.
After the seventh dreamless night, she sat at the table, switched on the light, and began working the pieces back together.
“Okay, nothing to be scared of,” she reassured herself. Truth be told, she was terrified to assimilate the scene again, unsure of what image the puzzle might now reveal.
So she worked very slowly, methodically, fitting each swirled line back together. It became apparent early on that the picture was indeed altered, but she forged ahead, refusing to flinch or doubt. When she finished, three pieces were missing—the ones she’d tossed into the flame—but that wasn’t all that had vanished.
A knight stood in the field, brandishing a sword in his grasp, but the lion was no more. She stared down, wishing she could see Sebastian’s face, praying that he was truly free.
That was the last time the heavy blanket of sleep overcame her. Laying her head atop the assembled puzzle, she closed her eyes, vaguely aware that the clock on her wall chimed three.
She felt his touch before she saw him or even heard his voice. A warm, strong hand too
k hold of her shoulder, turning her toward him. Sebastian’s eyes were golden for the first time, his gaze lighter than it had ever been in any dream or painting.
He smiled, reaching a hand to her cheek. “You wield a sword with the strength I knew you possessed,” he said admiringly.
She flung herself against his chest, crying for the first time since the odyssey had begun. “Sebastian,” she murmured, relieved simply to speak his name. “You’re free now?”
