stay on the floor—an attempt to go up the wall would end with him getting my trident in the side. But that meant the ceiling was clear.
Helmi and Peter dropped down behind him as Kirsi and Quentin started up the wall. They had less of a size difference between them. Quentin clung to her neck, and she kept one arm around his waist, keeping him from throwing her too severely off balance as they climbed. I swallowed my smile and stabbed at my opponent again.
“Hey! Asshole! That the best you got?”
He roared, fury and embarrassment and confusion all warring for ownership of his tone, and stabbed at me again.
Maybe it was carelessness or maybe it was exhaustion, but either way, this time, I didn’t get out of the way. The trident caught me right below the rib cage, slamming into the soft tissue of my body with sufficient force to pierce multiple internal organs. The pain was immense and dizzying, making the entire world flash momentarily white. I made a startled, agonized sound, unable to stop myself.
Above me, Quentin tensed. The Cephali man gloated, openly gloated, and began to twist his trident hard to the right.
“Not so cocky now, are you, vermin?” he asked, grinning widely enough to show me every single one of his teeth. “You should have known better than to challenge a Cephali warrior. You should have known better than to think that you were worthy.”
Things inside me were ripping and tearing. Behind the man, Peter stood, drawing himself to his full, if still-diminutive height. His eyes sparked, the air around him growing heavy with undefined magic, and for the first time, I could see the echoes of his mother in the lines of his face. If Dean was Patrick’s son, Peter was Dianda’s, perfectly matched to her quiet fury and unrelenting willingness to break the world to get her own way.
“Remember, Sir Daye,” he said, and every word was quiet, and every word carried down the hall like a proclamation of the end of days. “We’re at war right now.”
The Cephali man twisted his trident harder, so that I felt things rip and come loose inside of me. I ground my teeth, tasting blood, and did the only thing I had left to do.
I’m sorry, I thought, and shoved my trident into the Cephali’s throat.
He stopped moving, eyes going wide with a combination of shock and pain. Blood gushed from the wound, spilling everything he was and could ever have been onto the hallway floor. He made a strained gurgling sound before twisting his trident again, with less force this time, like he was determined to take me with him. Like he knew there was no winning, not anymore. There was only the chance, however slim, that he wasn’t going to lose alone.
Pain flared from the wound in my stomach, and before I could fully consider what I was doing, I twisted my own trident, opening the wound in his throat even further. He gasped, unable to get sufficient air to scream.
Then he collapsed, hands sliding off the shaft of the trident, leaving it embedded in my gut.
I dropped my weapon and fumbled to get a grip on the blood-drenched wood of his, grasping it tight and yanking it out of me, along with a great gout of blood and some shreds of flesh I didn’t want to think about too hard. The pain of removal was almost worse than the pain of insertion; I dropped to my knees in the gore, bracing myself on my hands as I waited for the world to stop spinning. The characteristic itch of mending flesh came from the wound. I knew if I looked, I would see my own body industriously knitting itself back together, ready to take more abuse.
Sometimes I wonder whether my general lack of self-preservation is a side effect of knowing that nothing can keep me down for very long, or whether it’s part and parcel of being Dóchas Sidhe. Even before I knew how powerful my body’s ability to heal itself was, I’d had a tendency to throw myself over the nearest cliff and try to pick a fight with gravity.
Chicken and egg questions give me a headache.
“Toby?” Quentin sounded awfully far away, but that was probably a consequence of all the blood loss. “Are you okay?”
“I will be in a second,” I said, trying to sound encouraging. I have fortunately had a great deal of practice sounding encouraging while covered in my own blood.