Covenant's End - Ari Marmell Page 0,25

around a core of jagged iron. “Had to walk away from someone who counted on you, someone who'd seen just as bad? Had to make sure that she lost someone, too?”

Shins felt Olgun stepping in again, ready to calm her down despite the ever-heating furnace of his own anger, but this time it wouldn't prove necessary. Faustine's words were a thick coat of frost filling Shins's, heart and throat, ice that even her lingering fury couldn't melt.

“Who are you?” she demanded when she finally could choke out a few words. “Why are you even here?”

It was Robin, however, who answered. Very deliberately, like a performer on stage, she transferred her cane to her other hand so she could wrap her right arm around Faustine's waist. “Faustine, this is Widdershins. You kind of figured that out. Shins, this is Faustine. My girlfriend.” The words were an announcement, yes, but also a challenge, a gauntlet thrown at Widdershins's feet.

Shins, by this point, was beginning to feel as though she and her language skills had perhaps become separated, having lost track of one another back when they were being pursued by the guards. Her eyes blinked, her jaw went slack—or maybe it was the other way around; she was befuddled enough that it could have been—and yet another moment passed while she struggled to remember what her voice was for and how to use it.

“Girlf…what do you mean, girlfriend?”

“What does it usually mean?” Robin retorted. Then, as Shins continued to stare, unable to absorb so much at once, the younger girl sighed, wrapped her arms around Faustine's neck, and pulled her down until their lips met. Faustine stiffened, at first, quivering as though she wanted to run, then all but melted into the kiss.

“Sorry,” Faustine muttered as they finally came up for air. Her face was flushed so deeply she looked more floral than animal. “I'm…still not used to other people seeing…”

“Shh. I know.” Robin, still holding the other woman tight, turned again toward Widdershins. “Is that clear enough?” she demanded, somehow defiant. “Or do I need to slide her hand up my skirts?”

“Robin!” Faustine shouldn't have been able to go any redder, but she managed. It was a miracle enough blood remained in the rest of her body to keep her standing.

Widdershins's own shock and bewilderment, however, blew violently apart, a heap of leaves and twigs in a gale. She'd overplayed it, Robin had; she was too challenging, too hostile.

“You want me to have a problem with this,” Shins accused. “You want me to be upset. Why? So you have another reason to be angry with me?”

“That's horseshit!” Robin's expression twisted, angry and ugly, but she also blushed faintly and couldn't quite seem to meet her friend's gaze.

With a final off-kilter frown at Robin, Faustine said, “It's not like she needs another reason, Widdershins.”

“Why?! Look, just because I—!” Gently, perhaps even tentatively, Olgun directed her thoughts back to Robin's cane.

“I'm an idiot,” Shins whispered. This time, Olgun didn't even make the obvious retort. “What happened, Robin?”

The girl wilted. Eyes downcast, she shuffled backward to sit in, almost fall into, the nearest chair. Still studying the floor, she hiked up her skirt—that skirt Widdershins had thought, from the moment she arrived, was so out of character—practically to her waist.

“Gods…” Hardly helpful, but Shins had no idea what else to say.

Robin's right thigh bore a grotesque wound, one Shins knew even at a glance must have been inflicted by some sort of blade. For all that it had scarred over, it clearly wasn't terribly old. The flesh, still faintly reddened, puckered and wrinkled around it, somehow obscene in its contours and bulges. The whole patch of flesh cratered inward a bit, as though a bit of the tissue beneath had just given up entirely and atrophied away.

“For days, nobody could tell us if I would live or die.” Her words were bitter, throat-stinging and eye-watering, equal parts rotten horseradish and bile. “It was weeks before I could even start to walk. I'm never going to run again, Shins. I can't stand through a full shift downstairs. It burns with the slightest touch or change in the weather. They tell me that'll probably fade one day. Probably. One day.”

“Oh, Robin. I'm so—”

“Don't you dare. Don't you dare!” She was on her feet again, however shaky, and Shins honestly expected the cane to come hurtling at her any second. “This is your fault!”

“That's not fair! I know that if I'd been here—!”

“Fair?! Gods dammit, Shins, this