Igniting Darkness (Courting Darkness Duology #2) - Robin LaFevers Page 0,202

fall back to the floor.

I scramble down the stairs, nimbly avoiding the stunned and grumbling remains of Cassel’s garrison. Beast is battered, bruised, bleeding, and that is not even counting the damage to his heart this day. Not caring who sees, I throw myself at him, forcing him to hold on to me lest we both tumble to the ground.

“Thank you,” he murmurs against my hair, his arms forming a protective shield around me.

“You did not even need our help,” I say, dangerously close to weeping in front of all these vile men. I now understand precisely how Genevieve felt, standing outside Givrand.

“Now who has straw for brains?” He takes my face in his hands, forcing me to look him in the eyes. “Just seeing you—knowing you were here and not locked away in Pierre’s holding—heartened me. If not for the sound of your voice calling me back, I would have lost myself, and he would have won.” He places his forehead against mine. Then he sniffs. “You smell like the inside of a chimney.”

“You’re a fine one to talk.” I close my eyes and wallow in relief like a hog in mud. I want to roll my entire body in it and splash it all around, but instead, I thank every one of the saints who had a hand in bringing us through this.

In the next moment, General Cassel ceases his struggle against the inevitability of his wound and passes into death, his soul erupting from his body, a hurtling projectile of force and velocity looking for a target.

It seizes on me. I have only a moment to reinforce my mental shields before I feel its impact. Beast grips my hands, as if he can physically protect me from Cassel’s avenging soul.

After a moment of withstanding the battering, I realize it is not anger that propels the soul, but vigor. As he was in life, so he is in death. Once he has swirled around me with fierce curiosity, the soul shifts its attention to Beast, and its entire manner changes.

“What is happening?” Beast’s voice is naught but a rumble that I feel in my chest.

“Your father’s soul,” I whisper. “It . . . he . . .” I cannot keep the amazement from my voice. “Was proud of you.”

Beast looks at me as if I’ve offered Cassel’s liver to him for supper.

I shake my head—in wonder, in disbelief, in order to keep Beast from pulling away. “In his own brutally twisted way, he was. You were everything he refused to believe in, but in the end you proved him wrong.” I pause, trying to understand the rest of the sensations coming from the soul as they nearly overwhelm me. It is as if every feeling he denied himself in life has been let loose upon his death.

“He was glad,” I say at last. “Glad that honor existed. And that you wielded it more gloriously than most.”

The general is filled with pride that his son has more honor than any man he has ever met, feels that it exonerates him in some way. I do not share that with Beast. I will save it for some less fraught day. Say, when he is nearing his dotage.

 Chapter 118

Genevieve

I watch Maraud staring down at the general’s body. He looks like one of the statues the Church is so fond of, both beautiful and terrible in the same moment. The righteousness of his anger, the pain of his loss, the depth of his grief, the solemnity of what he has just witnessed all writ plainly on his face. In truth, he and Beast could not have given the king a better showing of honor.

Would that the king could have a painting of that to hang on his wall to guide him.

It seems to even have impressed the souls of the dead, who have been hovering and pulsing along the upper reaches of the room. Seeing Sybella in Beast’s arms, jealousy courses through me. I long to run to Maraud. Throw myself in his arms, laughing and weeping with relief that his long nightmare is over. But I am not willing to trust the limits of the king’s newfound tolerance. His face is a pale mask of horrified revulsion, and so I must stand here like a lump, my own paltry gifts of no help at all.

When the general’s men begin to move, making ominous rumbling noises, I brighten. Mayhap I will get to skewer one of them.

The king finally bestirs himself. “I