muddy shoes and move, barefooted, over the thick rug on the ground. I creep up behind the woman as she rummages through the trunk, the vial clutched in my hand.
She’s twenty feet away from me.
Then ten.
All I have to do is cross the distance between us, break the vial over her head, and run like the wind.
I can do this.
Five feet.
The woman tenses in her crouch, then whips around and looks at me, her eyes wide. I stand over her in my wench clothing, the vial clutched in my hand, and she stares up at me in shock. She looks so young, no more than eighteen or nineteen.
Her lower lip wobbles. “Please don’t kill me.”
Oh fuck. Every time I played this scenario in my head, the anchor never had a face. Staring down at this girl as she begs me to live? I hesitate. “I—”
She surges forward and in the next moment, plunges a knife into my belly.
I stagger. Pain rockets through me, overwhelming in its awfulness. Somewhere outside, I hear a distant unearthly scream as thunder crashes overhead. That would be Aron. Blood fills my mouth, and I clutch the dagger in my stomach even as the girl gets to her feet.
The look on her face is no longer helpless. It’s feral and cunning. My fingers curl around the cool handle of the metal knife and I realize the mirror off to the side let her know my every movement. I was so focused on getting to her, so distracted from Hedonism’s visit that I didn’t pay attention to it.
Fucking dumb, Faith.
The woman grins and approaches me as blood dribbles down my chin. She reaches for the knife, her hand covering mine. “Fuck you, cunt.” Her voice is low and cold.
I lift my hand—the one with the fragile vial—and smash it against the side of her face.
“That’s tart to you,” I choke out.
Flames erupt. It’s like she explodes into flame, and her shrieks fill the tent even as I stagger backward and collapse on the rug. She screams, high pitched and wailing, as she pours water on her face and the flames lick across her clothing and ignite. The smell of burned hair fills the room and people rush in.
They take one look at her, burning like a pillar, and me collapsed on the ground with a knife in my gut, blood pouring from my mouth—
And they run.
Blackness creeps in and out of my vision. Pain makes it hard to concentrate.
The girl’s still screaming, but it ebbs back and forth. Or maybe I’m the one screaming. It’s hard to tell.
Time passes.
I think.
Spots dance in front of my vision. My hand hurts. I squint to look at it, and even that’s difficult. My palm faces the ceiling of the tent, and I see that it’s entirely blackened, the last of the flames licking the charred remains of where the Godsfire touched me.
I lost a hand. Oh well.
My belly feels cold. I can’t even feel the knife in my gut. Not anymore. I can’t feel the pain, either. Everything just feels…really cold. And distant. I try to move my good hand, but it’s like trying to communicate with a block of ice. It doesn’t respond.
I fade in and out again. Right now, it’s not a question of which of us is going to die. We’re both going to die—the only question is which anchor will outlast the other in her death-throes. Will I bleed out before she burns to death? Who knows.
Who…cares. It suddenly seems to matter very little.
My heart throbs slowly. Painfully. My gut does, too. Belly wounds are bullshit.
I want to vomit, but I don’t have the energy. Oh god, everything hurts. I moan, and I can feel sweat on my skin. This is a horrible way to die. I think of the man with his throat cut. I think of the woman, burning alive under Godsfire. I think of poor Vitar. And Solat.
Fuck, there are no good ways to die, it seems. Just a lot of awful.
The woman. I turn my head, trying to look around the tent. One of the rugs is on fire, I notice belatedly, and her charred, unmoving corpse is atop it. She’s not screaming anymore. She’s utterly silent. The Godsfire keeps going, though, and as I watch, the bed lights up, the silks zooming with fire and crackling like they’re covered in gasoline.
Huh.
Won’t be long now, at least. If the gut wound doesn’t take me out, the fire will.