Covenant's End - Ari Marmell Page 0,94

to earn himself a place as the very first newcomer, the 148th god, of the Hallowed Pact.”

No longer did the clash sound anything like the impact of steel on steel. So swiftly and furiously did the two women strike, parry, and riposte, it now seemed a single, continuous tone. Shins's rapier flew, murdering raindrops in its travels. The blade moved faster, her wrist flexed in more directions than were humanly possible. Sweat poured down her body; she felt it, in a layer somehow distinct from the rain.

If Lisette had tired at all, she did a masterful job of hiding it.

She stood almost at ground level, now, the shadowy limbs holding her perhaps a foot or so above the street. Night oozed down her face in ever thickening torrents; the phantom children laughed until they shouldn't have been able to breathe, then laughed longer; her sword and dagger never slowed, kept from Widdershins's innards by only the greatest efforts of thief and god.

And then even those efforts weren't enough.

Shins staggered and fell to one knee, crying out in agony as the tip of one blade ripped through her left arm. It was a shallow wound, a long gash across the bicep, hardly crippling in and of itself. It hurt, though, and was doubtless only the first of—

Something deep inside Widdershins tore. Not physically; this was nothing so simple, so benign, as a wounded body, no. Something mental. Emotional.

Spiritual.

She felt hollow, as if she'd been scooped out with a spoon. The dark of night was suddenly crushing, oppressive; each drop of rain a tiny thorn. She felt alone, alone as she could scarcely remember. Not since she'd lost her parents as a girl had she ever felt so alone.

It was a hurt that made her arm insignificant. It might almost have been the end of the world.

“Olgun?”

Impossible as it was, she could have sworn she heard her words echo in the newly emptied recesses of her mind.

“Olgun?!”

Nothing. Silence.

Widdershins sobbed once, a primal sound, wracking, despairing. Then, though her legs threatened to collapse at any instant, she placed a hand on the nearest wall and dragged herself to her feet.

Turning, she saw Lisette watching her, her grin so inhumanly wide that trickles of blood mixed with the black sludge at the corners of her lips.

Of course. Iruoch had been able to sense Olgun. The others probably could, too. Which meant they knew…

But he would live. And so would she, if only in his memories.

Remembered forever, literally. Not that bad, all things considered.

Sicard, Faustine…thank you.

Though her fist shook, her grip on the drenched hilt seemed terribly slick and unstable, Widdershins raised her rapier. Olgun or no, if she was going to fall at Lisette's hands, then by all the gods she'd go down fighting!

And celebrating, through her grief, the fact that she fell alone.

Nearly blinded by rain and tears, Shins dropped back into her most natural defensive stance and waited for the end to come.

It all happened so very fast.

In a matter of instants, he had been yanked away from, so far as he was concerned, the most important mortal since the beginning of time. The one, above all others, he had and would always love.

When he'd first felt the tug of new souls, new worshippers, he'd been stunned. Whole seconds were lost to his shock, his disbelief. The call of the others—no words, not even song, just a divine sharing, a bond such as he hadn't known since long before he'd come to Davillon—overwhelmed him. He couldn't think, couldn't act.

It was everything, everything he'd ever wanted, everything he'd missed, everything he'd been terrified he would never have again.

In that moment, he'd have chosen to die, to give it all up, if it meant another minute with her—but some things even the gods cannot have.

Other mortals believed—more than believed, had begun to revere. The gods of the Hallowed Pact, whatever the Church might or might not “formally” prefer, accepted him with open arms, aware of everything he and Adrienne had done for their people. Between his newly divided attentions and the laws of the Hallowed Pact itself, Olgun had no choice.

No matter how he fought, how he wished, how he even prayed, he couldn't stay. He had only one more second with her, no more.

A deity can do a lot, though, with one second.

For that one sliver of an instant of overlap, he had a foot in both worlds. A connection to Adrienne like no god had with any other mortal, and his first