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Aidan sought to evade the guiding point of the sword, but every blow was parried. Every attack defended.
He stumbled upon the threshold. A wall of flame taking over his vision. Curtains of it running like water across every surface.
Lazarus took that one clumsy moment to pounce. Slammed his sword home. The bite of the blade like the kick of a horse. Or a heavy fist against Aidan’s chest.
He felt nothing but empty. With a final keening wail, the Unseelie fled. He was a man. Alone. Defenseless. Dying.
He dropped to the floor. Stared up into the red gold burn of the world. Locked on the behemoth in black. Waited for the enveloping darkness that would signal the end.
Cat flung herself between them. Stood her ground though her heart hammered against her ribs and every second within the gatehouse was like a second within hell. Flame. Smoke. Ash. She coughed, her lungs seared with the heat, her throat parched and sore. The horse’s screams had long since become one note among a symphony of destruction.
“It’s over! He’s dead! Just take the diary and go,” she croaked. “Go!”
Lazarus faltered. The inferno’s glow reflected in his dark, endless gaze.
“You’ve won!” She closed her eyes, averting her face from his. Shoulders back. Head up. Steeling herself for the sword thrust.
Let it be swift. Let it be clean. And let her find the ones she’d lost on the other side.
The mage energy held him. Crushed him. Tightened its serpent coils around him until he suffocated. Couldn’t think. It wanted to strike. Wanted blood. Wanted to swallow him whole until hate and killing and death were all he remembered. All he knew.
He hadn’t always been like this. Had once known more than murder. Had shared laughter with friends. Pleasured a woman. Honored a king.
The dark magics sustaining him doubled in force. Sank their fangs into him like spears to the brain. The Great One commanded. His orders had been clear—end it. No witnesses. No one left behind who knew the truth. Kill them all. He, Lazarus, was death undone. He must obey.
He cried out. Fought back. Fed the evil. And in the tiny cracks of his mind, a memory evolved. A night like this. Dark. Starless. Damp with rain and a wind off the sea. Men fighting for their lives. Dying around him as the ambush played itself out amid the summer cool of a Welsh wood.
He had slipped. Fallen. And a figure in steel helmet and leather hauberk—faceless behind a bent nose guard, ageless within the armor of war—had delivered the death blow. A killing stroke that tore through his belly. Another slashing his heart. He’d been dead before his last thought had floated on a frothy breath. Remember me. Remember me. . . .
He strained to capture that last crystal moment of another age. Another existence. But the name was gone. Her name. His link to a past that dissolved like cloud every time he reached for it.
Only the woman remained fresh in his mind.
Dark. Slight. Eyes blue as gentians.
He held her image like a talisman. Lowered his sword.
Offered the lovers before him a second chance. One he’d never been given.
Lazarus disappeared into the heart of the house. Through flame and rolling smoke.
What caused him to back down? What had she done to sway the ruthless mage-spawned creature? Or had it been something he’d done? A battle just as violent within that she’d not been privy to?
A beam snapped. Fell in a sheet of flame. Broke her from her useless musing. Did it matter? He was gone. She lived. For now. But every second sent new flames leaping high. New sparks igniting new fires throughout.
Cat gripped Aidan under the arms. Struggled against his deadweight as she slid him through ash thick as a carpet upon the floor. He caught upon a board. His coat snagged and tore against a nail. He never helped. Never made a sound. But his eyes, brown and gold and crackling with reflected light, burned through her.
Glass shattered. Smoke coated her lungs. Breathing became gasping became held breath.
And then
they were free. On the step. In the yard. A pyre blazing behind them. The diary gone. The horse’s screams no longer knifing the air.
She cradled his head in her lap. Brushed his hair from his brow. Kissed his soot-blackened face. Threaded her fingers through his.
“Aidan?” she choked through weeping. Tasting the salt of her tears as they curved into the corners of her mouth. “Please don’t die. Please don’t leave me.”
“Saved . . . saved me . . .”
