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what in the name of all that grows and lives are we doing here?"
It was enough. He moved and I could see what the queen had done to her Ravens,
to her men, and to mine.
CHAPTER 29
She was hacking at Frost. His dove-grey shirt was black with blood. He turned
as he fell, and the lower half of his long silver hair clung to his body,
scarlet with blood. He fell to all fours, head down. She raised the knife for
a two-handed heart strike, and Doyle's arm was there, sweeping her arms away
from
Frost's exposed back, bringing her murderous attention to himself. His skin
and clothing were so dark that it was harder to see the blood that was already
on him, but bone glinted white and red on his side, where she'd nearly cleaved
him to the heart.
I spoke his name, soft, a whisper. "Doyle."
Andais began to slash at him, and he guarded his body with his arms. Blood
flew from him as her blade tried to find bone, tried to find something to
kill. It was as if by not allowing her to slash at the main meat of his body,
he offended her. Even in her madness, this was not allowed. You did not fight
the queen and live. In truth, she could not kill him, but she drove him to his
knees with the fury of her blows. The knife was red with blood, the hilt slick
with it, so Andais had to change her grip as she drove the point downward. It
looked as if all her force was committed to plunging the knife into his chest.
He moved his hands to block it, and she moved, like dark lightning, a blur of
black and red, and plunged the blade into his face.
The force of the blow spun him around, and I watched his face split from chin
to the top of his cheekbone. She could not kill him with the knife she
wielded, but she could maim him.
Something inside me changed in that moment. I was still afraid, so afraid that
it sat like something stale and metal on my tongue, but they say that hatred
grows out of fear. Well, sometimes so does rage. The fear that had been a
small, cringing thing rose inside me, and found it had wings, and teeth, and
claws.
Hatred, not of Andais, but of the terrible waste of it all. This was wrong.
Even if I had not loved these men, it would still have been wrong.
Rhys darted in, took a blow that spurted blood from his arm, but it was as if
she had grown tired of playing. These were the best warriors the sidhe could
boast, but I watched her move like something liquid, faster than Rhys could
follow, as she'd been too fast for Doyle. I realized in that moment that they
weren't entirely playing; she was simply better than they were. She was the
Queen of Air and Darkness, the dark goddess of battle.
If the Ravens could not stand against her, then what could I do? The men were
all faster, stronger, better than I was. There was no weapon here that would
aid me, except in getting myself killed. But I could not stand and watch, and
do nothing. The anger translated into power, and I could not stop my skin from
beginning to glow. The beginnings of power that would be as nothing to Andais.
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Galen and Adair looked at me. Galen shook his head, "There is nothing you can
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do, Merry." His grip tightened almost painfully on my arm. "They won't die."
"No," Adair said in his bitter voice, "we will heal, as we have healed
before."
"Not this bad," and it was Mistral's voice, soft, but purring with thunder, so
that it called goose bumps up and down my body, and something about it made my
skin glow brighter. His strange, drowning deep eyes met mine, and he said,
"She's never slaughtered us like this. Something's wrong."
I looked back at Adair and Galen. "Is he right?"
"They'll heal," Galen said, but even he didn't seem sure.
"Mistral speaks truly." Adair looked away from the slaughter, and the face he
turned back to me held such pain, and shame. The Ravens came of a tradition in
which not to willingly take a death blow meant for your leader was the worst
of shames. But that loyalty was bought by being worthy of loyalty. We were not
always hereditary rulers; in fact, that was a human idea that we embraced, but
once the best of us had ruled, regardless of bloodline, so long as they were
sidhe.
Mistral turned his face from me, as if he could see my hesitation written
across my face, but he whispered, "Mother help us, for no one else will."
Andais's bare arms were slathered with blood, and as those smoothly muscled
arms wove through the air, drops of blood followed them. Not the blood of her
victims, but hers. She was bleeding. Bleeding from small wounds at her
shoulder, chest, and neck. The Queen of Air and Darkness had wounded her own
flesh in her battle frenzy. She feinted at Rhys's body, almost the same move
she'd used on Doyle.
Her arm flew out in an arc that I both knew was coming and could never have
avoided. It was like watching fate strike, no way to stop it.
I screamed his name, "Rhys!" as the blade plunged into his eye, his only eye.
She ground the knife into his face as if she'd cut that last blue orb from his
flesh.
Amatheon tried to lure her out, but it was as if she didn't see him. She saw
nothing but the ruin she was making of Rhys's face, heard nothing but the
screams she finally had torn from his throat.
My power came upon me like an invisible dagger spilling into my left hand. The
hand of blood, my second hand of power. Always before it had been a thing that
caused me pain to use, a pain so intense it doubled my vision, but not this
time. This time it came quietly, suddenly, and more completely than I'd ever
felt it. I'd used my hands of power, but until that moment I hadn't embraced
them. I was human enough to want pretty powers, not some of the most
frightening among us. But that was a child's wish, and it fell away from me. I
had one of those moments of clear sight when it is as if you can see through
to the heart of everything around you.
I didn't have to conjure the smell and taste of blood; the room stank of it.
As if someone had poured raw hamburger on the floor, and we had all stepped in
it. The taste not just of blood but of meat clung to the back of my throat.
Barinthus had thrown himself across Rhys, used his back as shield, while she
screamed and hacked at him. Rhys had thrown his head back, and his good eye
was a red ruin. He was still screaming, wordless, hopeless.
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I looked at the wounds in her shoulders, and with Galen and Adair still
holding my arms, I simply thought, Bleed.
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