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Before she could even scream, he was falling to the floor, and Ladrien stood behind him with a knife.
“Mortals!”Ladrienbellowed,ina voice half a scream, half a fearsome, desperate hiss. “Filthy, lying mortals! How dare you! How dare—“
His body seized, like his anger was a violent power trying to break out of him, some great swarm of poisonous insects. He gave a terrific roar and vanished from the spot, his body misting. Juliana ran forward, racing towards Dillon—
And straight into the blade of the re-forming Ladrien.
A pain both hot and cold spread through her middle as she fell backwards. Ladrien yanked the blade out of her, expression livid. Blood streamed through her fingertips as she clutched at her stomach. Dillon groaned in the snow nearby, and she raised one hand towards him, trying to move, realising she couldn’t.
This is bad, bad, very bad.
Ladrien took a deep breath, sliding the knife away. The violence seemed to have soothed him, though anger still peppered his voice. “Die here, you filthy rodents,” he hissed. “Freeze, bleed… I do not care. You may have destroyed most of my army, but I have decades to rebuild. You haven’t won…” He glared down at Juliana’s face, at the crude armour she’d attached to herself. He ripped off a piece of it, making her cry out. “Palace guard,” he said, seeing the blood-stained uniform beneath. “Juliana.I should have killed you when I had the chance.”
Juliana knew there was something she could hiss back, some retort, some venom she had stored somewhere… but she couldn’t find it. Her mind was collapsing. She was reminded of one time Aoife accidentally knocked over a bookcase in the great library, the way the books had spilled out, one by one, before crashing against the floor.
Aoife, Aoife.
The memory fell silent.
Ladrien spat on the ground, and then with a hiss and a groan, like he was fighting against the cold, he vanished in a trembling mist.
Dillon was lying not far away, eyes blinking upwards, circling. Blood stained the snow around him, and he was otherwise completely still.
Dillon.
She tried to roll, but pain split down her centre. She couldn’t reach him like this, and her thoughts were mush, spilling away from her.
Steady, steady. Think, think.
Fighting for a fragment of consciousness, her hands trembled as she plucked the vial of elixir from her pocket. There was so little of it left after her fight with the grindylows. She tried to measure it as she poured a few droplets on her wound, but her fingers were shaking too much to count.
She rolled onto her front, pain still lancing up her side, and crawled towards him.
“Dillon,” she whispered, reaching his side.
His face moved towards her, just a fraction, and she chanced a look at his wound. Parts of him were spilling out of his stomach, held in place only by his clothes.
It was probably beyond the elixir even if she had more of it.
“It’s bad, isn’t it?” he asked, his voice sounding gummy. He tried to move his head. “It feels bad. Jules, it feels really bad—”
“Ssh, ssh, don’t look—” Her voice caught on the word.
Once, when she was a child, she’d fallen from the rafters in the stable and had broken her arm. It was Dillon who raced towards her, Dillon who covered the protruding bone, who told her it was fine, who tugged her towards the healer’s before she could pass out, before she could realise the extent of her injury.
Dillon, who only ever lied to help people.
She took his face in her hands. “Look at me,” she whispered. “Listento me. You’re going to be fine. I have some more elixir. I just need to go back and get it…”
Dillon’s throat bobbed. Shaking fingers reached out to clasp hers, still glued tightly to his face. “Not fae,” he whispered.
“What?”
“I know… know a lie… when I hear one…”
“It’s not… it’s not that bad. I can fix it, I can…”
Dillon drew something on the back of her hand, daubed in his own blood. “Tunnel,” he said.
