Covenant's End - Ari Marmell Page 0,86
taunting peppering her words. It buzzed something in reply and came on once more. Only a few steps away, now.
“I live by my faith,” she continued, struggling to meet its terrible, cracked gaze. “I have faith, for instance, that he will guide me, prevent me from looking where I must not.”
A narrow, serrated limb stretched toward her. Still she hadn't so much as raised her dagger in defense.
“And that his curse, though meant for mortals, isn't something you can just ignore. Shall we see?”
Inches from the fae creature's grasp, Igraine reached up and yanked the hood from the idol of the Shrouded Lord.
Evrard d'Arras fell backward, tumbling awkwardly over the carpet. The ragged gashes in his cheek and his shoulder left a smeared trail of blood across the weave. It looked like a child's art project, compared to the delicate footprints, also a wet crimson, that had stained that carpet moments before.
He coughed, wincing as a ripping pain ran across his face. One hand on the wall, the other using a rapier as a cane, he forced himself to his feet. Not good for the blade, that, but given how horribly marred and scratched up it had become over the past few minutes, it hardly mattered.
Heralded by a gust of floral-scented air, she emerged from the hallway. Lithe, graceful, with hair of autumn, wardrobe of leaves, eyes of bark, and fingers of thorns. She laughed, and it was the airy rustling of wind through the branches.
Through the windows, thunder roared its deep counterpoint.
“At least tell me,” Evrard gasped, “that I get the most beautiful of you because I'm particularly worth it.”
Those rose-stem digits struck, wrapped around the sword he'd barely raised in time to parry, digging more creases into the steel. Skilled duelist as he was, he didn't even try to riposte; he knew from personal and painful experience that a normal blade would barely even inconvenience the creature.
Time for other options.
When those tendrils withdrew again, preparing for a new attack, he hurled the rapier along with them. By no means harmful, of course, but it startled her into retreating half a step. That extra instant was enough time for Evrard to reach the rack of swords he'd been steering them toward with every fall, every backstep.
The weapon he drew from it was too thick to qualify as a rapier; perhaps a particularly long and slender arming sword.
Even stranger, however, was the dull hue of the blade—very much not the glint of steel.
“Had this custom forged,” he told her, pausing to wipe blood from his lips, “after our little spat with Iruoch last year.”
The creature's hiss at the mention of that name was a cracking branch, slowed to a drawn-out breath.
“So yes, that is holy scripture etched down the blood groove. And yes, it's iron. Pure.”
He swung through a few muscle-loosening arcs, then dropped into an expert defensive stance. “Now…shall we try this again?”
The soaking rain transformed cinder and charred wood into thick paste, clinging to shoes or mixing with the mud in a distasteful slurry. Choked with soot, the rivulets running over the wooden skeleton—the portions of it still standing—came over black in the light of the overcast moon and streetlamps.
So thickly had they permeated the property over the years, the aromas of roasting meats and pungent alcohols remained detectable even over the much stronger, crisper stench of the more recent fire.
“We'll rebuild?” Robin asked for the hundredth time, forcing the words out between sniffles and slow, erratic steps.
Faustine, her arm already around her lover's waist, supporting her as she limped through the ruin of the Flippant Witch, squeezed Robin more closely to her. “Of course. You heard what Shins said. It'll be better than it was!”
“But it won't be the same!”
“No.” Faustine turned Robin so she could hug her with both arms, now. They gazed at one another, bedraggled, shivering, drenched to the bone and hair plastered flat by the rain, until they pulled themselves tightly together. “No, love, it won't. But nothing ever really is.”
Robin sniffled again in response but nodded against the other woman's shoulder.
At the far edge of the seared property, Shins waited, arms wrapped around herself, staring intently at nothing. It seemed awfully considerate of her, giving the young couple a few moments of privacy, but the truth was she'd almost forgotten they were there, forgotten where she herself was.
As much of her heart as the Witch occupied, she was currently deep in discussion about something far more important. Unlike her two friends nearby,