Wiping her face with both hands, Isabeau asked, “What are you talking about?”
“Ask him.” Modred nodded to Morgan. “Ask him why he showed up just in time to kill Valentin, after having been gone all these weeks. Ask him where he has been, and what he has been doing. Ask him to describe exactly how Warrick died, and why. Ask him to show you his wound, if that was really what kept him away for so long, and if he still has it, ask him why he hasn’t healed. And then order him to tell you the complete truth with no innuendoes, misdirection, ambiguity, or statements of supposition.”
Morgan couldn’t keep from glancing at Sidonie. Horror hollowed out her eyes. She opened her mouth. The gods only knew what she meant to say.
He forestalled her by saying in a harsh voice, “I killed Valentin. There is no ambiguity to that.”
“I hear you speak the truth, no question, and yet there is ambiguity laid out on the floor in front of us.” Modred knelt by the body and tilted his head back and forth. “His neck is broken,” he said matter-of-factly. “Oh, but look—his jugular has also been cut. How doubly unfortunate for him, and how unusually inefficient of you, Morgan. Your killings tend to be much more straightforward.”
Isabeau angled out her jaw as she turned in a circle, looking at each piece of the scene.
“What is going on here?” she hissed. Her eyes were sharper, more clearly focused. Modred had brought her back on point.
Striding over to Morgan, she tore open his shirt and yanked off his bandages. The site of the wound, with the dark thick scab turning to scar and the black lines radiating outward, made her pause.
Behind her, Sidonie’s eyes widened with horrified compassion. He had never let her see what lay underneath the bandages.
And all the while Modred took everything in with a sharp gaze that missed nothing. His attention snagged on Sidonie’s expression and lingered.
Every muscle in Morgan’s body tightened, straining with the need to kill Modred, to switch off that bright, unrelenting mind forever. His Power built while the geas held him locked in place. His body heated, and sweat trickled down his spine.
“Start asking him, Izzy,” Modred urged, rubbing the edge of his mouth as his gaze remained on Sidonie. “Let’s see what he has to say. Be sure to make him tell the complete truth. I feel certain the tale must be fascinating.”
“Do as he said,” Isabeau snapped at Morgan. “Tell me what you’ve done since I last ordered you away. Don’t lie. Don’t prevaricate, and don’t try to misdirect me. Tell me everything.”
Everything.
Everything would reveal how he had healed Sidonie when she had been held in prison, and how Sidonie had worked with him and Robin to break him free of the geas so they could escape.
If he told Isabeau everything, Isabeau would kill her. Morgan’s life held some value for Isabeau, but as much as she liked Sidonie’s music, Sidonie wasn’t indispensable.
Finally he came to the end of a very long and lonely road. There was no further turn to take, and no way to go back.
The tale that told everything came down to just one thing.
I fell in love, he thought, and smiled. It was a miracle, and despite everything he had been through, he felt blessed with having been given such a fortune.
As he remained silent, Isabeau’s face distorted with rage. Flying at him, she hit him over and over. “Tell me! Tell me what you’ve done!”
He grew hotter, his Power grinding against the geas, and blood thundered in his ears.
Gritting his teeth, he said, “No.”
“You have to!” she shouted, hitting and slapping his face, his chest. “You have to tell me!”
He barely felt the blows. The pressure built in his chest. It felt like a heart attack, radiating out his left arm, while the geas pounded in his brain. As it forced his mouth open, his Power rose to meet it, and he stopped the flood of words from flowing.
“No,” he gasped.
Dimly he was aware of Sidonie shouting. At some point Modred had grabbed her again, and she struggled against his hold. “Stop it—you’re killing him!”
He had fought before against the geas, many times, and lost. This time he couldn’t afford to lose. The geas tried to wrench the words out, and he clenched down harder. Desperately, as he reached for anything he could pull strength from, he connected to the earth magic.
Digging deep, he drew hard on it. Something shifted down below, and with a great, yawning noise the floor in the great hall cracked.
“You have to do what I say. I command you.” Isabeau’s face had purpled, and blood vessels burst in the corners of her eyes from the force of her scream. “Otherwise what has been the point of this whole bloody nightmare! I’ll make you tell me!”
He was blinded to almost everything from the forces tearing him apart, except for Isabeau.
With a wrenching cry, she dragged Azrael’s Athame from the scabbard and then fell to her knees, as if she had tried to lift an unimaginable weight. Hunching over, she dragged herself to her feet.
Tears spilled over. He couldn’t breathe. His chest was being crushed from within.
Still he managed to whisper, “No.”
His final act would be one of his own free will.
“Then what use are you anymore?” she cried.
Baring her teeth from the effort, Isabeau thrust the knife into his heart.
* * *
The black blade hit home.
There was no mistaking it for anything but a mortal blow. Morgan’s expression changed; it was obvious he knew it too. Isabeau froze, staring at what she’d done.
Sidonie heard herself scream as if from a long distance away. She felt like her heart was being cut out of her chest.
Then Morgan’s face sharped with such ferocity, he no longer looked human. Grasping Isabeau’s hands as she gripped the hilt, he bared his teeth and roared at her. Light shone out from the entry wound in his chest, and a blast of boiling heat blew out across the room. Struggling against his grip, Isabeau shrieked in agony.
Gradually the light and heat faded. As they dimmed, all expression faded from Morgan’s features, until he almost looked peaceful. He fell in a sprawl.
Still howling, Isabeau stumbled back, holding up her shaking hands. They were withered and blackened like claws.
Modred abandoned his grip on Sidonie and raced to the Queen. Scooping her into his arms, he ran from the hall.
Sid barely noticed. All her attention was on Morgan.
He lay so still. She knew he was dead.
Despite that, she ran to him, fell to her knees, and clawed at the knife protruding from his chest. It was wrong, so wrong, and she had to get it out of his body. Someone was sobbing. Wait, that was still her.
As she pulled out the knife, everything around her shifted and darkened. It was the heaviest thing she had ever held, both icy and burning at once.
The hall darkened further, and she looked up.
She still knelt over Morgan’s body, but they were no longer in the great hall of the castle in Avalon.
They were in another hall altogether. It seemed to go on forever. The floor was made of black and white marble, and there were rows of black marble pillars. Between the pillars, tall black marble stands held huge vases of onyx filled with bloodred roses.
Sidonie’s breath scraped in her raw throat. It was the only sound she heard. Utter silence filled the hall. There wasn’t even the sound of a breeze.
Then she heard quiet, measured footsteps approaching.
A tall, straight figure walked into view. He wore plain, elegant clothes, and his eyes were green like summer leaves.
His face. She saw his face.
His face was the answer to a question she didn’t know how to ask.
He knelt beside her and held out one hand. She didn’t even think of trying to keep the blade as her own and offered it to him immediately. When he took it from her, the relief was immense.
“I will have to make a new scabbard for it,�
�� Lord Death said as he turned the knife over in his hands. His voice was as gentle as before.
Sidonie sank her fists into the edges of Morgan’s shirt, tears spilling over. She had never known such pain. It was tearing her apart.
She whispered, “Give him back.”
Azrael raised an eyebrow. “But this is the answer to your prayer. Morgan is now free from bondage. The first blow the Queen struck was irreversible—death was the only way to release him.”
“I don’t care.” The words scraped in her throat. “You’re a god. You can find a way. Give him back to me. Please, I’m begging you.”
Azrael’s expression turned indifferent. He stood and, from his tall height above her, said, “I’ve heard begging before, countless times. The echoes go back through history. Some beg for death, others beg for more life.”
The tears wouldn’t stop falling. Wiping at them, she stood. “Then take me. He was a slave for so long. Let him live in peace for a while and take me.”
“I have heard bargaining too, and I will have you soon enough.” Death turned to walk away.
She was losing him. Desperation drove her to speak faster. “You’ll have my death,” she called after him. “I’m offering you my life.”
Azrael paused for an infinitesimal moment, head turned to one side, the line of his jaw sharp as a scythe.
In that infinitesimal moment, her mind raced at supersonic speed as she desperately scrambled to think of something else to offer him, something that would make him stay.
But she didn’t really have anything. She was nobody of importance, and she had no Power of her own. Her connections were all mortal.
All she’d had ever had was her music.
“I’ll play for you,” she said. Stepping over Morgan’s body, she walked toward Death. “Let me play for you. Please. You have your knife back because of me. Give me this one thing: if I am able to move you in any way with my music, you will give him back to me. If my music doesn’t touch you, then you’ve lost nothing but a few moments of time. And what is a few moments of time to a god?”
Azrael still stood with his back to her, head tilted as he listened. His lean cheek creased as he smiled.
“Very well, musician,” he said. Turning, he flung ravens at her. At a midway point in their flight, they turned into a violin and bow, tumbling end over end. Heart leaping, she tried to catch them, and they flew into her hands. “Play for me. Show me what you are made of.”
Shaking, she clasped the instrument to her. What could she play that could move the god of Death? She had fought with everything she had just for the chance to play, but now that it was presented to her, she felt hollow, small, and inadequate.
Mortal. She felt mortal.
Closing her eyes, she fit the violin under her chin, and set the bow to the strings. Faith had never been as blind as this.
The first thing that came to mind was the sound of her fingers breaking. Her life, as she knew it, dying. The shock and the pain of it, and the utter devastation.
They’ve killed me, she thought.
So she played it.
Next came the memory of warm, strong hands reaching for hers in the darkness. The unknown clasping her fingers, healing her, lending her strength and reassurance. It was the only thing in the world when she had nothing. It had been her lifeline.
And she played it.
Then came trust, the tentative unfurling, when she believed against all evidence that the person who came to her in the darkness would help her in any way he could. The impossibly intense adventure of his arm, sliding around her shoulders. The miracle of warmth when she had known nothing but coldness.
That first kiss, oh, the surprise of it! The agonizing uncertainty… was it all right to allow this? How could it feel so incredibly good?
Could she possibly kiss him again?
Oh, when could she kiss him again?
The burning that took hold, the incandescent light that shone despite all the shadows stacked around them. The unbearable, delicious hunger that was the sweetest pain… that she would give anything, anything, if only she could feel it again…
Always before, when she had played, she’d had the awareness of the violin and the bow as instruments in her craft. Her music had been self-conscious, aware.
Now, as she played, she went somewhere she had never gone before. She lost awareness of the violin altogether.
She became the music.
She was the story, the vibration.
She became the story of love, the notes written in kisses and caresses on her skin. She felt the symphony, the swelling highs in the lifts, and the terrible lows in the falls, and hope was the cruelest note of all, the devastation that came afterward, utterly intolerable.
She poured it all out, all the emotion, the experience, the exquisite delight along with the terror. There was no hiding any of it from a god anyway. The only other being she had been so naked with was Morgan, and he was gone.
Gone, while the love she felt for him had become the very breath of life to her.
Give him back to me, she begged with her music.
Give him back.
When the last note speared through the air, she had nothing left to give. Lowering the violin, she stared pleadingly at the back of the one who held her future in his hands, whatever that future might be.
When he turned, there were tears on his cheeks.
Death whispered, “I knew a love like that, once.”
Her lips formed the words she no longer had the energy to say. Give him back.
Azrael strode to her, and she braced herself to bear the onslaught of his proximity.
Tilting her chin up with long fingers, he said, “You have moved me, musician. You’ve won your wager. But as I told you, the first blow Morgan took with my blade was irreversible, and Isabeau cast a spell with that blow that cannot be undone. Only death releases him from the geas.”
Despair crushed down, bending her spine.
Before she could crumple, he added, “The only way I can give him more time on this Earth is if someone else holds the handle of his chain, so you must claim it. But you must give me your life in return. Your life, not your death, which I already own. That is the only bargain I am willing to make. Do you have the courage to take it?”
She swayed as she tried to absorb the enormity of what Death offered. Morgan would never be free of the geas. If there was one thing she could do that he would never be able to accept, it was this.
She whispered, “He’ll never forgive me.”
“You did not ask for forgiveness,” Azrael said. “He’ll have life, which is what you begged for.”
“Dealing with you is going to be the death of me,” she breathed.
His answering smile was a blade. “Of course.”
Two tears slipped out of the corners of her eyes. “What do you want me to do for you?”
“You will control Morgan’s geas, but he will remain as leader of my pack,” Azrael told her. His green gaze gleamed with fierce light. “At the end of each year he and the other Hounds will join me on my Hunt. I always claim what is mine. Together we will chase down any souls who have sought to cheat Death. At this year’s end, we will have plenty of prey, as it has been quite some time since I’ve sounded the Hunt. As for the rest of the year, he may live it as he chooses. And as for you… you will be Death’s musician. Your music will be mine. Whenever you find yourself alone, and you remember what has happened, play for me. And wherever you are, I will hear you.”
“Yes,” she said. “I’ll do it.”
His smile widened. “A sacrifice made of your free will, with the gift of life made in return. My brother god will be pleased. Now I will offer one more gift, if you have the will to take it. You may become one of my Hounds, if you wish. The Hounds born of my blade are subject to no other leader. The sorcerer will command his pack, but you would be sovereign in your own right and may walk your own solitary path, wherever the muse may lead you. It will give you lo
nger to wander this Earth you care so much about, and you will be faster, stronger, and immune to human disease. Perhaps most importantly, you will no longer be Powerless in a Powerful world. But be very sure of your answer, Sidonie Martel. Remember, the first blow from my blade is irreversible.”
“I’m sure. I’ll take it.”
She closed her eyes, so she wouldn’t have to see the strike coming.
A thin, sharp pain pierced her heart. The pain grew into a gigantic wave of agony that reformed her flesh and bones. She would have screamed if she could, but she had no breath. After an eternity, it began to fade, until at last she could see and think again.
Panting, she looked around. She was no longer in the black and white hall. Instead, she was back in the great hall, on her hands and knees.
Morgan lay nearby. He still looked peaceful, but that would change soon enough. The shreds of his shirt lay to either side of his torso. There was a silver scar where Isabeau had stabbed him, and another one where his other wound had healed completely.
All the smells and sounds were a cacophony in her head. In the distance, she heard shouts and people engaged in urgent movement. From the snatches of what she heard, she gathered the foundation of the castle had cracked, and the Queen had suffered a terrible injury. The court was evacuating to the summer palace, wherever that was.
Reeling from the deluge of information, she clapped her hands over her ears. Becoming a lycanthrope would take some getting used to.
On the cracked floor beside her lay an open violin case. The ebony violin she had played for Death rested inside, along with the bow. The golden strings gleamed in the torchlight. Of all the instruments that were famous works of art, this one was the most exquisite she had ever seen.
And of all the instruments in the world, there would never be a more expensive one she could acquire. She had paid for it with an endless lifetime of service.
Carefully, as she closed the lid and latched it, she thought, I was broken, and broken again, until I became someone else.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Morgan stirred.
Instantly abandoning the violin, she leaped to his side. The boundless power in her muscles flowed effortlessly. That would take some getting used to as well.
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