‘The Lord is my shepherd…’
“Not now, Grandma!” I scream out loud, and slash downward with all of my strength, slicing the imp in two from shoulder to hip. Both sides of it fall back into the ravine.
I shove Grandmother Charles into an empty room in my mental house and imagine locking the door tight so I can focus, then turn back to Fitz.
The last imp has sunk its claws deep into Fitz’s shoulders and hovers behind him where his sword can’t reach. He drops the blade and, face and chest bloody with gouges, reaches back behind his head to try and grab its ankles. It’s futile. Before I can take another step to help him, the imp laughs—a sound like nails on a board—and takes off, pulling Fitz up with him.
I watch, horrified, as Fitz’s feet leave the ground. The imp leans to the left, dragging Fitz’s weight toward the ravine. I run, only to end up standing right where he’d stood. Just in time to see the terror on his face when the imp extracts one foot.
“Fitz!” Evan screams, but it’s no use.
Fitz shouts. The imp lets go.
He falls.
There’s a heartbeat of silence, then a heavy, wet piercing sound—and silence again.
* * *
My brain has shut down.
It tries to process what it’s seeing in the ravine, but it can’t.
Fitz’s limbs, loose and limp, hang from his hips and shoulders, but his chest is gone. It’s gone. In its place is a shining red point of rock protruding up from his body like a spear.
I watch myself raise my sword again as if from a distance. The imp, still hovering, smiles with its double row of dagger teeth and dives again with claws extended.
My feet slide left. It misses me.
I swing the edge of my sword into its back, cutting it into two halves, a top and bottom. It dies against the wall with my blade sunk into the stone behind it.
I hold the hilt, my lungs heaving against my chest and my eyes burning with tears. I want to let go, but I can’t. I can’t yet. My knees hit the ground.
Evan slowly rises from his knees to his feet, his face stricken. “He’s—he’s gone.” The whites of his eyes shine as he casts a wild gaze at the bloody scene around us.
My brain clicks back into operation. I take a deep breath and unlock my fingers to pull my blade from the wall. The top half of the imp falls with a heavy splat that turns my stomach.
We both watch as his Scion’s sword shimmers, then fades to dust without its caster. A heartbeat later, and Evan’s sword, still on the ground, goes too.
Evan approaches, backlit against my still-fallen flashlight, and offers a hand. I take it automatically, and he pulls me to standing.
“He’s gone,” he repeats, stunned. His armor disappears before our eyes.
“I know,” I whisper, even though I don’t know. I don’t know what it would feel like to watch your Scion die right in front of you. Would his Oath punish him? Did he feel Fitz’s pain as well as his fear?
As I unstrap my scabbard and resheathe my sword, a cold certainty slides into my mind. Davis opened a Gate. He may not have killed my mother, but he did murder Fitz.
No more deaths.
52
EVAN HANDS ME my flashlight with a shaking hand. “We’ve got to keep moving.”
I meet his eyes, unwavering in his familiar face. I take the lead this time, flashlight in hand, although my hand trembles as I hold it.
We walk for another few minutes. It takes that long for my breathing to begin to slow, but nothing about the situation feels calm. My eyes and flashlight fly to every distant drip of water, every shadow of stone.
“Those were imps, right? Isels?” I ask, hoping to fill the quiet. Hoping that talking will keep my heart from racing right out of my chest.
“Yes,” Evan replies, his voice cracking.
“Why weren’t they invisible?”
“We’re underground. Aether is richest close to the earth. Down here every Shadowborn is more powerful than it is on the surface. Harder to kill.”
I nod, even though he can’t really see me do it. “That makes sense.”
Fifty feet ahead there’s another turn left. “Turn ahead,” I call back to Evan. I pitch my flashlight low to keep the path in sight so we don’t keep going straight and end up walking right over the edge. That’s how I see that the gravel on the path, which had been small and mostly flat, has changed over into heavier, round pieces. “Watch the ground, these rocks are loose.” I walk slowly, each step shifting the floor slightly before my foot settles. I pause to catch my breath and turn back to see Evan walking about six feet behind me.
It’s only when I turn back to keep going that I realize that while my feet send rocks shifting and crunching … Evan’s feet make no sound at all.
If the cave hadn’t been so silent, I’d never have noticed.
My next step falters, and I have to catch the wall to stay upright.
Goruchel.
Consummate mimics.
“You okay?” Evan asks.
When it facilitates their human ruse.
My heart pounds so hard that I can barely form the words to reply. And I am desperately certain that I have to reply. I push off the wall. “Yep, just slipped.” My voice sounds hollow and thin to my ears, but I hope he doesn’t detect the lie. I pray he doesn’t detect the lie.
I want to run. Run as fast as I can. But instead I walk forward, forcing myself to keep a steady pace and ignore the growing dread in my stomach. I’m so focused on not running, not revealing what I know, that I slip for real and land on one knee.
This time, when Evan reaches a hand toward me, my body flinches without my permission. An instinct. I look up into his dark blue eyes—and see the sliver of something canny move behind them.
“I’m good,” I say with a laugh. A laugh that sounds so fake that no one would believe it. I stand up and keep walking, this time a little faster.
He lets me go a few steps.
“Oh, Bree.”
“Yes?” I whimper, still moving quickly.
His mouth is suddenly at my ear. “You’re a little too smart,” he whispers in a voice like broken wind chimes falling on rocks.
I run then, feet sliding under each step. I don’t know if he chases me. I can’t hear him if he is. I only slow when I reach the turn. I make it without getting too close to the edge, but my left ankle twists sharply when I do it. I cry out in pain and drop the flashlight in my left hand, but keep moving.
Without the flashlight, the pitch black of the cave presses from all sides. I’m completely blind in the darkness. Can’t see my hand inches from my face.
I’d glimpsed the path ahead before my flashlight went flying. It had been straight, then a dip, then straight. I keep one hand against the wall and move as fast as I dare, straining for any sounds behind me. But I’ll never hear him coming.
Drawing my sword would be useless.
He could kill me here, and no one would know it was him.
When he speaks again, his voice is slightly muffled; he’s still on the path before the turn.
“Honestly, I have to thank you. If it wasn’t for you showing up tonight, I’d never have found the entrance to the ogof y ddraig. Well”—he pauses—“I’d have found it eventually, but my kind aren’t the most patient.”