Winter’s heart pummeled against her rib cage, Aimery’s words echoing inside her frazzled skull. Strangle. Impale. Plunge.
He would. Not yet. But he would.
A chill crawled over her skin from the pure hatred she saw in Aimery’s face.
“You should have accepted me when you had the chance,” he said.
She tried to swallow, but her saliva felt like paste. “I could have,” she said, “but it would have been no more real than the visions that plague me.”
“So you chose a pathetic guard.”
Her lips quivered. “You don’t understand. He is the only thing that is real.”
Aimery’s expression darkened. “And soon he will be dead, little princess.” He spat the title like an insult. “Real or not, I will have you. If not as a wife or a willing mistress, then as a possession to be displayed in a pretty bejeweled case.” His eyes took on a hint of madness. “I have waited too many years to let you go now.”
Jacin’s back was to Winter, his shoulders knotted. A line of blood curled down his elbow and dripped along his wrist. Splattered to the ground below. He was powerless to do anything but stand there and say cold and callous things and hope no one detected how afraid and frustrated he really was.
But Winter knew. She had lived her life with that fear too.
Aimery looked pleased as he focused again on Jacin. “I have been waiting for this since you were brought before the court. I should have watched you bleed on the throne room floor that day.”
Winter convulsed.
“That must have been such a disappointment for you,” said Jacin.
“It was,” agreed Aimery, “but I do think I will enjoy this moment even more.” His cheek twitched. “How shall it be done? By my hand? By your own?” His eyes glistened. “By hers? Ah—how inconsolable she would be then, to be the instrument of her own beloved’s death. Perhaps I will have her bash in your skull with a rock. Perhaps I will have her choke you with her pretty fingers.”
Nausea rolled over her.
Jacin—
Jacin.
“I rather like that idea,” Aimery mused.
Winter’s hands stirred. She did not know if they would be strangling or choking or bashing or impaling. She knew Aimery had her now and Jacin was in danger and this was the end. There was no gray area. There were no winners. She was a fool, a fool, a fool.
Winter kept her eyes open against the hot tears.
Jacin turned to face her as her hands wrapped around his neck. Her thumbs pressed into the flesh of his throat. There was a gasp, and if he wanted to push her away, Aimery wouldn’t let him.
Winter couldn’t look. Couldn’t watch. She was crying uncontrollably and the awful feel of Jacin’s throat under her thumbs was too awful, too fragile, too—
A flash of red sparked through the pooling tears.
Scarlet, creeping behind Aimery. Inching over the fallen bodies. A knife in her hand.
Seeing that Winter had spotted her, Scarlet raised a finger to her lips.
Aimery turned his head.
Not toward Scarlet, but toward an enormous, roaring figure.
Aimery laughed, waving one hand through the air. Wolf was steps away when he collapsed, howling in pain. “I am the queen’s own thaumaturge!” Aimery yelled, eyes blazing as he snarled down at Wolf’s twitching body. “You think I cannot feel you sneaking up on me? You think I cannot handle one pathetic mutant and a weak-minded guard and an Earthen?”
He pivoted to face Scarlet. She was still half a dozen paces away from him and she froze, her knuckles clenched around the knife handle.
Aimery’s smile faded. His brow twitched as he realized that the bioelectricity around Scarlet’s body was already claimed.
His eyes narrowed and he searched the graveyard they stood on, but there was no one there to be controlling Scarlet. No one who could have undermined his own powers. Except …
Scarlet lumbered closer to him. Her gait was stunted and awkward. Her arm trembling as she raised the knife.
Aimery stepped back and his attention turned and locked on to Winter. In the moment he’d been distracted by Wolf—poor, tortured Wolf—he had released Winter’s hands and mind. Jacin was still rubbing his throat and struggling for breath and Winter …
Winter was staring at Scarlet. Horrified. Trembling. But fierce.
Jacin’s hand whipped out, backhanding Winter across her face. She crashed against the building wall, but didn’t feel the force of it. Her focus was on Scarlet, only Scarlet, Scarlet and her knife.
Winter was crying and hating herself. She was wretched and cruel but she didn’t relent as she forced Scarlet into battle. Aimery stumbled back again and raised his hands to his own defense. Scarlet hurled herself at him. Aimery tripped over the leg of a dead civilian man and sprawled backward. Scarlet landed on her knees beside him and scrambled forward. Her eyes were confused, her mouth slack with disbelief, but her body was vicious and determined and sure as she plunged the knife into his flesh.
Eighty-Seven
Reality disintegrated. The world was a thousand cumbersome pixels tearing apart, leaving black spaces in between, then smashing back together in blinding sparks.
Winter had made herself as small as she could, huddled in the shop’s doorway off the main thoroughfare of Artemisia. Her own shaking arms made for a protective shield around her body and her feet were pulled in tight. She’d lost a shoe. She didn’t know how or when.
Aimery was dead.
Scarlet-friend had stabbed him nine times.
Winter had stabbed him nine times.
Dear Scarlet. Vicious, stubborn, weak-minded Scarlet.
Once she had started, Winter couldn’t make it stop. Nine times. It had been years since she’d manipulated anyone and never with violent intentions. Aimery, in his determination to subdue them all with his gift, had not tried to get away until after the second stab. By that time Winter was already lost. She couldn’t make it stop. She thought only of erasing forever that awful, charming grin. Of destroying his mind so she would not be forced to wrap her hands around Jacin’s neck again and finish what she’d started.
Now Aimery was dead.
The streets were full of his blood. They reeked with the stench of it.
“What’s wrong with her?” some far-off voice shrieked. “Why is she acting this way?”
“Give her some space.” This command was followed by a grunt. Jacin? Could it be her guard, so near, always so near?
Jacin had been the one to tackle Scarlet and rip the knife away, snapping the hold Winter had taken over her. Otherwise she knew she would have kept stabbing and stabbing and stabbing and stabbing and stabbing until Aimery was nothing but chopped bits of flesh and smiles.
Winter’s head was full of distraction, too much to comprehend. The shop’s sign overhead swung on its hinges. There was a torn curtain behind broken glass. Bullet holes in the walls. Roofs caving in. Glass shattered beneath her feet.
“We have to find Cinder.” The voice was insistent, but terrified. “We have to make sure she’s okay, but I can’t … I don’t want to leave Winter…”
Winter arched her back and clawed her hands into her hair, gasping from an onslaught of sensation. Every inch of her skin was a hive of stinging bees.
Arms circled around her. Or maybe they had been there for a long time. She could hardly feel them outside of the cocoon she’d erected, even though it was covered in hairline fractures. “It’s all right. I’ve got Winter. Go.”