hallucinating.
“What choice? What choice did you make?” I take him by the shoulders, and he strikes out at random, catching my nose. A warm gush of blood flows over my hands, but I signal Sarah to leave me be. I was already in pretty bad shape after tonight’s attack. One more ache won’t change the score much.
“You’re all dead!” he screams. “And so am I!”
I can see now that he’s delirious with pain. There’s no making sense out of him.
Sarah is distraught. “Nicholas, please.”
“My father is coming!”
“Who is it, Nicholas? Who is your father?” I press him.
“The King of Shadows!” he screams, issuing a heartbreaking wail.
We still, remembering Niall and Winter’s words from only a few hours earlier. But what can he mean? There was no mention of a son of the King of Shadows?
He looks up for a long instant, his blind eyes open and staring, and then he shudders. Blood is flowing from his nostrils and his mouth, and, horribly, out of his eyes – it’s as if he’s exploding from the inside. In perfect silence, as if drowned in his own blood, he falls against the pillow, unconscious.
“Nicholas! No!” Sarah kneels on the floorboards beside the bed, clinging to him. “Oh my God, he’s dead! Nicholas! No!”
Elodie is shivering so violently that her teeth are chattering. “Nicholas,” she calls despairingly.
My hand is on his neck at once, checking his pulse. “He’s not dead.”
Sarah sobs in relief.
“Help me.”
We prop him up, peeling the drenched sheets from his body, wiping him clean, remaking the bed with fresh linen Sarah’s found in the cupboard.
“What’s happening to him? Sean, please help him,” Sarah begs.
“I don’t know what’s going on. This started during the battle, didn’t it? He was in pain while fighting the Mermen. I thought it was the attack, but maybe it’s something else?”
Sarah is wringing her fingers. “He kept shouting. He kept saying ‘I made my choice,’ as if he was talking to someone.”
“Sean.” There’s an edge to Elodie’s voice that makes me look up at once. “He might not be delirious.”
“What do you mean?”
“He told us the King of Shadows is his father.”
“Clearly he doesn’t know what he’s saying!” protests Sarah, an arm across Nicholas’s chest as if to defend him.
But Elodie is adamant. “This pain he’s suffering. This … burning up in his head. Where else have we seen it, Sean?”
I feel ill. “Members of the Valaya.”
Elodie nods.
“This makes no sense. You make no sense!” Sarah yells. “Get out! You always wanted him dead!” she screams at me, her face smeared with blood and tears.
“Sarah,” I begin, but all of a sudden Nicholas’s voice – the one we’re familiar with – interrupts me.
“Why am I alive?”
He has opened his eyes. They’re blacker than night, his face whiter than the sheets Sarah’s arranging around him. He looks like a man who has come back from the dead.
“Nicholas,” whispers Sarah, a hint of fear in her voice.
“The pain is gone. Why did he not kill me?”
“Who? Who are you talking about?”
“My father. The King of Shadows,” he murmurs.
Sarah’s face seems to crumple in despair, and then it turns expressionless, blank. She lifts her arm and stands back.
“Now or never, Nicholas Donal, if that is your name. Who are you?” I force the words out, almost scared to hear the response.
But Nicholas is beaten to the truth by Elodie.
“You are the Enemy’s son,” she says, anger seething from her voice.
“Yes.” Nicholas barely has the energy to speak. His battered, bloodied face could have been through the Apocalypse.
My hand is on my sgian-dubh at once. “You betrayed us. You just sat there while Niall and Winter told us all about the book they found in the library, and you said nothing! You let the demons come!” I spat.
“No. I saved you,” he whispers, barely audible. “And my father will kill me because of that. I thought he would have done so already, but I’m still alive,” he whispers, as if the fact surprises him.
“Why did you do it?” Elodie’s voice is as cold as the snow outside.
“Because I made a choice. You helped me make it, Elodie. I won’t help my father kill anymore.”
I fight the impulse to bury my sgian-dubh straight into his heart. This liar killed Mike as surely as if he’d shot him in the head.
“I know what you’re thinking, Sean. But I’m the only chance you have.”
I laugh. “How selfless you are. You want to be kept alive for our good! You pathetic bastard.” But I know