Covenant's End - Ari Marmell Page 0,88

spirit after what had, thus far, been a difficult and terrifying night.

Word had spread quickly, faster even than rumor's normally swift wings, of the unnatural entity that had invaded the church, and the assembly of clergy who stood against it. By the time Sicard and the House priests had emerged from seclusion, their combined faith having finally banished their fae attacker back to the shadows whence it came, the Basilica of the Sacred Choir was already packed with enough people to raise a deafening cheer.

The crowd grew further still when the other priests sent word back to the noble Houses of what had just occurred. When midnight mass rolled around, the normally sparsely attended service was packed, so much so that the temperature in the great chapel had grown uncomfortably warm, and the sound of prayer and paean utterly dwarfed the thunder shaking the building from outside. Despite the deathly late hour and the pounding storm, the people had come to hear the word of, and lend support to, the voice of the Hallowed Pact in Davillon.

Had Sicard not been so drained, so exhausted, he might have realized—either through the faint intuitions that often came from the 147 gods to their most devout clergy, or simply via educated guesswork and deduction—that other such attacks must have occurred throughout the city. He might have attempted to do something; even though there seemed precious little he could have done, he would have wanted to try.

But exhausted he was, and what energy he could muster was devoted to delivering service and sermon at an hour to which he was unaccustomed even on normal days.

So, with the equally exhausted, aching, and worn House priests fanned out on the dais behind him, Sicard launched into the tale of what had occurred—and, to an extent, had been occurring recently throughout Davillon—assuring his flock that the situation was gradually coming under control, that the Church was with them, that there would soon be no more reason to fear…

She was afraid, terribly afraid, before she even knew why.

Although she could certainly guess.

For Olgun to panic that completely, that loudly, whatever was coming had to be something bad. Really bad, demon-bad, Iruoch-bad.

Lisette-bad.

So when she felt her god's power pulling her vision through the darkness, winding around the raindrops to the distant rooftop, she wasn't remotely surprised to spot the thick red hair or the bestial snarl on the otherwise shadow-veiled figure.

The world narrowed, so there was nothing but the rain, the cobblestones, the buildings before her and the burnt-out ruin behind. And Widdershins—brash, confident, defiant to a fault; thief and duelist and, no matter how she tried to avoid it, how she never would have accepted it, hero—had, for one instant, a single despairing thought. Foreign, even alien, and cold as the oldest glacier, but as absolutely certain as if it were written on the bedrock of creation.

I'm going to die tonight.

It wasn't fair. It wasn't right. After everything she'd been through, everything she'd done, she deserved better than this. She wanted to shriek at the injustice of it, kick the mud and spit in the rain, curse the world and the fates and the gods who would do this to her.

She did nothing of the sort, of course. She kept herself, on the surface, calm. Collected. She knew what Lisette could do, knew that no help of any significance would arrive, could possibly arrive, in time to do any good. She couldn't win. She couldn't escape. Not even Olgun could save her. Simple fact.

Even as her gut twisted like a dying snake, though, and her heart began to pound faster than the falling rain, Widdershins realized that that wasn't what scared her.

I'm going to die tonight.

But I'll be baked and breaded if anyone else is!

She continued to scan the street, as though still searching for the source of that horrid cry, as were Robin and Faustine—hand clasped in hand, until the skin went white as bone and not a trickle of the rain could squeeze between. In the process, Shins took a step back, nearly bumping into her confused and frightened friends.

“You need to run!” she hissed between her teeth.

“What? We're not leaving you alone!” Shins could hear the steel coalescing in Robin's voice, the stubbornness that she absolutely, positively couldn't afford to indulge right now. “There's no way we—!”

“Robin! There's no time for this. I need you to go. I need you to go!” The idea of lying to her best friend almost made her throw up