Covenant's End - Ari Marmell Page 0,51

those wounds!” Robin shouted, standing up despite the obvious discomfort. “Not up close! You can't ask her to relive—”

“It's okay, Robin.” Shins could have hugged her about then, but …“Everyone needs to know everything, if we're going to figure this out. It's okay. I—”

Except it wasn't. It wasn't okay. The thief's throat seemed to squeeze itself shut, a vise of fear and flesh. She tried to think back to that room, that pain, that thing that had caused her so much agony. Tried, and failed. Her mind fled, screaming, from the images; she felt her breath coming fast and weak, her heart pounding like a thousand hoofbeats.

Then…Olgun. Of course. Always Olgun, no matter what. As sure as sunrise.

It flowed from her heart, first, not her head. A cloud of peace and calm, ink spreading in clear water. He held her, took her arm as she turned to face those memories. Lay a veil across the images, so the finer details blurred. Whispered assurances in her ear.

Reminded her—promised her—she was safe.

Her breathing slowed, enough for her to murmur under it. “I don't know what I'd do without you.”

One deliberately deep, languid breath, to steady herself; one deep gulp of brandy for a bit of extra steadiness. And it was time.

“What happened,” she said to her tiny but rapt audience, “is I got cocky.”

She paused, briefly, to allow for any of the expected gasps or comments of sarcastic surprise, but for a change, there were none.

“It's been a while since many people—human people—have been much of a threat to me, one on one. Not with the…help I have. And I'd already beaten Lisette once before. She knew exactly which nerves to strike to get me good and pissed and not remotely thinking. I…The things she did, before I was even back here…”

Again she'd have to omit Alexandre's name, much as it felt disrespectful to do so; most of the others didn't know Shins's history. But at least, once they'd learned the fae were involved (and had recovered from the various wounds they earned making that discovery), Olgun had been able to explain to her how Lisette knew. Creatures of spirit and passion, they'd probably managed to sniff out any number of people and places important to her; Lisette wouldn't have learned why the last patron of House Delacroix mattered to Widdershins, but she'd have easily learned that he did.

Digging her nails into her palms until she swore she was about to hit bone, Widdershins explained her gruesome discovery upon returning to her bolthole—and what she'd later discovered upon visiting the other graves, as well.

Robin wept openly by the time she was through, over this last indignity done to Genevieve, whom she'd loved as much as Shins had. Faustine held her, whispering, gently rocking her back and forth. Renard and Igraine had both paled, then adapted some new hues; he came over vaguely greenish-gray, as though struggling not be sick, while the priestess had flushed red with righteous indignation. And Evrard…

Well, one look at the twisted fury in his expression and the sheen of ice in his eyes, and Shins remembered why, even without a god or the fae at his side, he'd been a genuine threat when that wrath had been aimed her way.

And he was the only one, up to that moment, who hadn't already had a personal reason to despise Lisette Suvagne.

“I walked right into it,” Shins admitted. “It was so frog-hopping clearly exactly what she wanted, and I just strolled on in. I was so angry, so sure she was nothing.

“And then she…” Widdershins only then realized she was clutching her stomach, one arm held protectively over her wound.

Robin had gently disengaged herself from Faustine's arms, limped to her friend's side, and taken her hand, before the thief even realized she was there.

“Only when you're ready, Shins.”

Shins squeezed her fingers, forced a wan smile, and—still bolstered and protected by Olgun's own blanket-like embrace—recited the rest of what had occurred in Renard's former office.

“Embruchel,” Robin breathed from beside her.

“What?”

“The one who did…who hurt you. There aren't as many tales about him as about Iruoch, but I recognize the description. Embruchel.”

“I don't think I've heard of him.” Shins looked to the others, but Faustine and the two men appeared just as puzzled.

Igraine, however, was slowly nodding. “He's referred to by title more often than name. You would probably remember him as the Prince of Orphan's Tears.”

Widdershins shuddered. That name, she did remember from her childhood. She'd first heard the story from