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There was no way to use a metal tool in this part either, which sucked. Instead, I had to go primitive.
The stone ax that Iggy had given me earlier to use was basically a vaguely pointy rock. I pulled it out of my pocket.
I scraped it over Chester’s skin as he glared up at me, motionless in the thrall of the spell. A smart assed part of me wanted to point out that I found his weapon, but an exhausted part just wanted to saw faster so he didn’t wake.
Saw. Slice. Bruise.
It was taking longer than a sloth stretch on a rainy day.
And my alchemical-hexen team was swaying from the exhaustion of holding him in stasis.
No metal,I thought.
Stone wasn’t cutting fast enough, even though I had arrogantly assumed my strength from my fae anddraugrheritage would make his skin slice like warm butter.
I had another tool, one I already knew would tear through his skin with ease.
I bent forward and bit a chunk out of Chester’s muscles. It was worse than biting his throat. I wasn’t sure how deeply Beatrice bit earlier, but I was not used to biting people at all, much less in the chest.
I tried to tell myself it was like eating steak—really undercooked stringy steak.
Never eating steak again.
I shoved the stone tool in the gap and worried it until I was closer to the heart.
Chester glared at me, not even wincing in pain. His eyes were alert. He was completely aware of what I was doing.
Again, I tore at his muscle, spitting the meat away as Nora stared at me in horror. I could finally see the glimmer of bones. I hammered at them with the stone ax, cracking them with the remains of my strength.
It shouldn’t be this hard to steal a heart.
Or maybe it should beexactlythis hard. This spell was a horrible sort of imprisonment. He would—as Gunnora had been for decades—be alert enough to know he wasn’t dead but trapped in a body that was as immobile as stone.
I wanted to shatter the heart once it was petrified.
Nora looked at me with such a turmoil of emotions that the spell slipped, and I remembered that she did hear more of my thoughts than I’d like.
In that instant, Chester grabbed my wrist, squeezing, shattering bones inside my wrist this time. He wasn’t free, but he was no longer motionless. I could see the wave of pain from his savaged chest and broken ribs, but even that wasn’t enough to keep him still.
I switched the stone ax to my other hand, tightening my grip on it and slamming it down as hard as I could.
At the same time Chester reached up, squeezed my throat, crushing my airway.
Within minutes, my eyes were blurring from lack of air, but I had my hand around his heart—squeezing it as I jerked it toward me.
I felt it turning to stone in my hand, but I heard Eli shout my name in what sounded like despair.
I wanted to tell him I was fine, bloody but fine.
Except . . . I couldn’t move. The last thing I knew, I was falling on top of Chester.
35
ELI
Geneviève fell, motionless atop the seemingly dead man. Eli knew she was alive because his own heart still beat.
Would it still beat if she were in stasis?
