but a stubborn anger kept her body from giving out beneath her like an empty sack.
But in that single, liberating moment of fury, she didn't care.
Lisette and even the fae, almost comically astonished, seemed unable to react. Shins's fist closed tight around three of the creature's switches, squeezing them into a thick bundle, and yanked him off balance. Still shouting in a voice growing ever more hoarse, she allowed her entire body to follow her arm in a forceful spin, hauling as hard as she could. Her enemy stumbled as she pivoted, almost staggering into her from behind, when the elbow of her other arm shot backward, cracking him hard across the bridge of his nose.
The fae, she knew from her own experience, weren't particularly susceptible to injury. She knew, too, that her divine connection to Olgun made her a partial exception to that rule.
Howling in pain, the creature threw her off, launching her across the chamber. She slammed into the far wall and collapsed in a boneless heap, every nerve screaming, the whole world flashing, sparking, strobing. Still, she saw blood—or a thin liquid that was probably blood, though it more closely resembled a wet and runny water-based paint—trickling from her tormentor's nose.
And, she noted when her vision began to clear, from the noses of his various child-sized companions, as well.
The distant children ceased their laughter. The fae, masters and minions, stared at Widdershins as though not entirely sure what it was they were looking at. Lisette gawped, at a loss for words for the first time the young thief could ever recall.
Through a mask of blood, coating her lips, staining her chin, welling up through her teeth, Widdershins tossed them all a broad, unwavering smirk.
They were going to kill her; she couldn't even hope otherwise. She had absolutely nothing left to fight with. They might even break her, first.
But she'd tainted it for them. They'd hit her with everything, buried her under tortures and torments, and she'd still bloodied them. Their perfect vengeance, their easy victory, was neither. Not entirely.
It was, under the circumstances, the best she could ask for.
Apparently, Shins wasn't the only one in awe of her own efforts. After a moment's hissed discussion between Lisette and her allies, the fae faded away. Once more they were only shadows, collecting around the flame-haired thief, and then even that thin veil was gone. Just Lisette, again—albeit Lisette with a whole array of inhuman magics.
“I'm impressed,” she said, striding across the room, her steps a slow drumbeat as she neared. “Honestly, I am. I keep reminding myself not to underestimate you, and still you keep surprising me.”
A pace or two from where Shins lay, she stopped, dropping into a crouch so they might better see one another. “You're still more dangerous than you should be,” Lisette observed. “And while it's not exactly my usual way of doing things, even I think that degree of determination and sheer gutsiness should be rewarded.
“So no more torture, little scab. No more pain.” From the back of her belt, she produced a small flintlock. Beneath her thumb, the click of the hammer locking into place was deafening. “Time to end it. Maybe you can go see your little god.”
The barrel, so tiny from any other angle, gaped open like a darkened cave when viewed face-on. Battling every remaining instinct, Shins refused to shut her eyes.
Everything happened so fast, once the first bang! finally sounded, that it took Shins far more concentration than it should have to realize she wasn't dead.
The first was a gunshot from outside the chamber, echoed and amplified by the enclosed confines of the hallway. Lisette jolted back, startled, standing upright…
The second bang blew the heavy door to the Shrouded Lord's former sanctum clear from its frame.
Only Shins's position slumped against the wall, beside that door—or former door—saved her from the blast, as she was certainly in no condition to have avoided it. Already battered into uncertainty, her mind and senses threw an absolute fit. Her vision strobed again, offering only quick, still images of everything happening around her; her ears rocked from ringing to utter silence, allowing only the occasional sound in through their drunken staggering.
Dust and tiny shards of stone raining down, the petrified remains of a refreshing spring rain…
Plumes of smoke rolled through the empty doorway, a choking, searing cloud…
Lisette heaving herself back the length of the room, snagging the desk with one hand as she rolled across it, hauling it over with a strength she