Tempest Reborn (Jane True) - By Nicole Peeler Page 0,106

at me with hate in her eyes as we stood above her prone figure.

The barghest took the stone from where it hung at my belly and pressed it into my hands.

‘You must do this!’ he shouted over Morrigan’s angry shouts and the commotion of the battle still raging around us.

I met his eyes, and it was like time stopped. Wanting to memorize every plane of his beautiful, rough-hewn face, I raised a trembling hand and brushed it down over his cheek.

‘I will always love you,’ I told him. ‘Never forget that.’

‘And I you. I’m doing this for you. You must live without me; live for both of us.’

I nodded, pulling him down to me in a kiss. He tasted of love, and regret, and so much life.

Before we had even pulled away, my hand found the haft of the labrys. I’d have to do this quickly, as once the labrys was out, Morrigan would heal herself in seconds and we wouldn’t be able to keep her on the ground.

Anyan’s hand fisted itself in my hair as his forehead met mine.

‘God, I love you. I love you, I love you,’ he chanted, his eyes frightened but determined.

And that’s when I pulled the ax from Morrigan’s chest with a great sucking sound. It took me a second to adjust the grip on the haft, and then I struck.

Anyan’s eyes widened as he screamed, a single, piercing ‘No!’ His power rent the air around him.

The pain, of course, was excruciating. There was a reason shamed samurai ended their lives by self-evisceration. It was a horrible way to die.

My knees buckled as my blood bubbled from my gut. The labrys still pulsing in my hand, I used the dregs of my physical strength to push the silver stone into the wound I’d made.

When bright red splashed against silver, the stone and the labrys began to pulse the same shade of coppery gold. I could feel Anyan’s magic trying to close the wounds I’d made, but they’d been made to serve a magic far older than his, and would not answer the throaty pleas he shouted into the air above me.

With bloody hands, I raised the stone above Morrigan, where it glowed down on her, raising her body up an inch in the air. Her green eyes, slit like a cat’s, met mine. After the first shock of fear had passed from them, they seemed pleased.

‘Now you die,’ I told Morrigan, plunging the stone back into the wash of my fresh blood. Her dragon’s face smiled at me, her expression almost serene. Her hand reached up to the stone, as if accepting her fate. Then she spoke.

‘And so do you, little halfling. My life for yours.’

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Dying hurt, and dying the way I’d chosen to, hurt a lot. But I’d known it had to be me, for a lot of reasons.

After all, it had never made any sense that Anyan would have to die to complete the ritual. He wasn’t the White, after all – not anymore. The White was the stone I was bleeding all over. There had been that pesky ‘again’ in the poem, as well as the male pronoun. But everything was a male pronoun back in those days, and as for dying twice – well, I had that covered after dying once over Jason.

And that’s what I’d realized the night at the club. All of the niggling hints and things that had never made sense came together for me as I watched over the crowd like a god. Things like why the creature didn’t just tell us what we needed to do; why it was important I figure things out for myself.

It also answered that bigger question: Why make me the champion? I’d joked a number of times that I was a lover, not a fighter. It had never made any sense that I’d be chosen over someone like Blondie, who’d already made such a good warrior-champion.

But that was the whole point. This job, killing the Red and the White for real, didn’t require a fighter. It required a lover.

What I’d seen that night, arcing above the crowded nightclub, hadn’t really been destiny, although that had been a good enough word. More accurately, I’d seen a really good choice. I’d figured out the motivation behind the universe’s actions, and realized what I had to do. I was the sacrifice – the Green Man – not the May Queen who would bring renewal to the land. I had to die before that