He was able to hold it when she offered it to him, already so much better than he’d been even a few hours earlier.
“How’s your pain?” she asked. “I can give you more blood.”
“Better than it was.” He pushed his hat back with fingers still gnarled and twisted from the breaks, and turned his face toward her. “I need my fucking eyes, Rune.”
She opened her mouth but said nothing. Pity squeezed her heart.
“Rune,” he insisted, as though she wasn’t listening. “I need my eyes.”
“I know,” she said, and punched her thigh. “I feel so helpless right now.”
He smiled, just a little.
“I’d be stark raving if I were you.” She shook her head. “How the fuck do you go through everything that’s been done to you and come back smiling?”
He took her fingers in his. “How do you?”
She caressed the bruised flesh of his hand with her thumb. “I saw what they did to you.”
He drew back. “What?”
“Brasque took my hand and I was in his memories. I was there.”
“I heard you,” he whispered, his voice raw. “I knew I fucking heard you.”
She cut off a sob before it escaped. “I couldn’t do anything. Just watch.”
“I imagine that watching was our shimmer lord’s way of punishing you. Even if he didn’t realize it at the time.”
“Not my shimmer lord,” she growled, then calmed herself. “He’s as bad as Damascus.”
“Don’t ever think that, Rune. No one is or ever will be as bad as Damascus.”
“I saw what he did to you,” she said, stubbornly.
“He believed he had a reason. The witch needs the suffering of others to thrive. She eats souls, Rune.”
She shuddered. She’d seen those souls when she’d fought Damascus in Rock County.
“You had your own agenda,” she said, needing to change the subject.
“Yes.” He turned his face away.
“Is it true, what Dray said?”
He took a deep breath and blew it out slowly. “Yes.”
“Elizabeth,” she said, and the pain from that particular death stabbed her heart. “Did you kill her?”
He was silent for a long moment. “No. Just listen,” he said, when she started to interrupt. “When we die in another world, we’re brought back to Skyll to heal and…reanimate. If things had gone as planned, Elizabeth would have died, slipped into Skyll, then would have hidden until she was reunited with Fie.”
“What happened?”
“Her lord Rand betrayed her. He never meant for her to come home. He’d already discovered that she had attached to Fie and wasn’t going to hand the child over to him, so he made other arrangements. He sent assassins to kill Elizabeth and take Fie.”
Rune frowned. “But Fie belongs to Death, not Blood.”
“Exactly. Blood is a secretive, strange shimmer. I don’t know what Rand planned to do with little Fie, and neither did Elizabeth. But she didn’t trust him with the girl. She wanted Fie to get to Death where she belonged.” He hesitated. “She knew if something went wrong, you would end up taking Fie to Skyll and all would be well.”
“Everyone seems to find me so predictable,” she grumbled.
Owen smiled.
She hesitated. “Are you positive that Elizabeth is really dead? Maybe she’s—”
He dashed her hopes quickly and brutally. “She’s dead, Rune, and her body remains in your world. We thought her lord had sent the men to steal Fie. She wanted me to get Fie to you. To protect the kid.” He paused to take a breath. “I was going to fight them. I told Fie to turn away and while I was still talking to her they killed Elizabeth. I knew right then Rand wasn’t allowing her to return to Skyll. He was finished with her. She’s truly dead.”
She nodded and let go of his hand.
He’d betrayed her and her crew, that wasn’t even a question.
And Elizabeth…
Her death had fucked with all of them, but Jack…Jack had been devastated. “Elizabeth belonged to Blood Shimmer. She belonged to Skyll.” She shook her head. “I don’t know anybody, not really. And trust? That’s a laugh.”
His sorrow came off his mangled body in waves. “I’m so sorry. I never wanted to hurt you. I wanted to possess you, to rule by your side, but I never wanted to hurt you.”
“You got the berserker to kill you,” she said, and she could feel the anger began a slow boil inside her as she remembered the awfulness of seeing Strad beat and shoot the cowboy. “Why not just let Rand’s assassins kill you when they killed Elizabeth?”
“Little Fie decimated them after they killed Elizabeth. Even