A Strange Hymn by Laura Thalassa

Chapter 52

I choke, my skin flaring even brighter.

So much pain!

From behind us, Mara gasps, her vines loosening. “What are you doing?” she asks, aghast.

Rather than answering, the Thief yanks up on the hilt. My body jerks as he cuts through vines, flesh, and organs. I let out a scream, my glamour making the cry sound lyrical.

In the distance, Des roars, the sound eclipsing all others. In an instant he’s there in that forest with us, bloody and broken and angry.

He drags the Thief of Souls away from me, throwing him to the ground with an enraged cry.

I feel Mara’s vines release me, and I fall to my knees.

My surroundings are darkening, and I can’t tell if it’s the Bargainer’s doing, or if I’m just that close to blacking out.

Cannot black out.

Dimly, I’m aware that Mara is watching the scene unfold, and that Galleghar, wherever he is, has not joined the group of us. But more than anything, I’m aware of my mate and the Thief of Souls.

The Bargainer stomps on the Thief’s calve, snapping the bone.

“I could scalp you alive, or remove your entrails and make you eat them,” Des says as he breaks the Thief’s other calf. “Or perhaps I should start with your teeth and nails?”

Mara screams. “Please Des, no more!”

“He harmed my mate,” Des snarls. “By law I’m entitled to retribution—and I shall have it!” His battered wings flare out.

The Bargainer looks like some dark god; never has he seemed quite so Otherworldly. And I can barely see him through my dimming vision.

I clutch the gash on my stomach, blood pouring from it. I can feel myself weakening with each breath I take.

Mortally wounded. I might have minutes left.

And the agony! I squeeze my eyes shut and swallow down my bile.

Des circles the fairy, staring down at the Thief. He lifts his hand, the land darkening.

I know what happens now. It’s the same thing that happened when Karnon faced down my mate.

Utter annihilation.

“Stop!” Mara cries.

She knows it too. She’s a far cry from the haughty queen I met a week ago, her clothes ruined, her face confused, her pride in tatters.

I pick myself up, holding my stomach. Each step is pure agony, but I force myself onwards. I wrap my hand around the hilt of the dagger buried inside me.

Don’t think about it.

Des’s eyes widen when he sees what I’m about to do. “Callypso, no—”

I yank the blade out, gagging on the pain, the nausea, and the screams that should be rising out of me. A torrent of blood gushes out of the wound, making me sway on my feet.

Some of the shadows—Des’s shadows—are receding, but a different sort of darkness tugs on the edges of my vision.

Death.

My mate is at my side in an instant, relinquishing his vengeance for love. He presses a hand to my stomach. Within seconds his fingers are coated with my blood.

“Cherub, what are you doing?” he asks, his voice torn up.

I meet his crushed gaze. He’s a man who’s watching everything he’s lived for slip through his grasp.

Even he fears I’m going to die.

I can see him desperately grasping at his anger, because if he lets it go … it’s a long way to fall, and the abyss that would swallow him up—it would be world-ruining.

“Let go of me, Des.” There’s steel in my words.

Wordlessly, reluctantly, he releases me.

I stagger forward, right up to where the Thief lays sprawled on the ground. He’s managed to flip himself over, onto his back. His eyes move to my wound.

I kneel next to him. “You robbed thousands of soldiers of their lives. You robbed them and their families and their friends.” All those soldiers who became victims just like me, their bodies buried in the hearts of trees or laid to rest inside glass coffins.

He swallows, a bit of blood leaking out the corner of his lips. “You’re not going to—”

In one swift motion, I draw my arm back and plunge my dagger deep into the Thief of Soul’s heart.

Mara shrieks somewhere behind me, sounding as though with that one blow, I stabbed her as well.

The Thief of Souls laughs, even as blood seeps out of his wound. “You can’t kill me,” he says.

His face changes from that of the Green Man, earning another shriek from Mara. The queen didn’t even know the man she slept next to wasn’t her husband.

Raven dark hair and inky black eyes replace the Green Man’s evergreen hair and amber irises.

“Want to know a secret?” he whispers. “Janus had a twin, a twin who died. The first time you met him, you were really meeting me.”

I reel back. Whether it’s from pain or blood loss, I can’t seem to put his words together.

“Ask yourself this:” he says, “do the dead ever really die?”

I stare down at the monster who’s already ruined so many lives, feeling my own life force seep out of me.

He reaches for a lock of my hair. “Utterly singular …” he breathes.

He smiles at me. “This is our little game—and trust me, enchantress, it’s far from over.”

A gust of wind sweeps through the forest, a dust devil rising around him.

“I’m still coming for you,” he promises me. “Your life is mine.”