Gallant(60)

Olivia feels Matthew’s fingers closing over hers. A single squeeze, and he does not need to speak for her to understand.

Run.

He drops her hand, and she surges toward the wall, looks back to find him standing his ground, a frail young man with nothing but a dagger. She hesitates, unsure if she can really leave him.

But in the end, it doesn’t matter.

Olivia is halfway to the wall when the broad shadow steps into her path, armor srapped across his shoulder.

Her fingers twitch, and she wishes she had Edgar’s knife or a stick or a stone or anything sharp, though she’s not sure what good it would do against the soldier. She tries to dart out of his grip, to make it to the wall. He is large, but she is quick, under his arm and almost to the door before his hands close around her. Before the force of his grip nearly lifts her off her feet.

Help! thinks Olivia, calling on the ghouls, and they come, out of the withered orchard and up through the ruined garden. But at the sight of the grim figure in the tattered coat they stop and shrink away, dissolving again into the night.

Come back! she calls out, but this time, they do not answer. It is her will against his.

And here, the dead belong to me.

And so she fights against the soldier, bucks and kicks, desperate to get free.

“So much life for a thing half-dead,” says the master of the house, amused. “And speaking of half-dead . . .”

He turns to Matthew. Her cousin slashes out with his blade, but the wolfish soldier dodges lithely and kicks him in the chest. He collapses to his hands and knees, gasping for breath, and she draws her sword, gauntleted fingers flexing around the hilt.

“Two Priors in my garden,” purrs the demon in the dark. “And they said that it was barren.”

Matthew tries to get to his feet, but the soldier kicks out his knees. The master of the house strides forward.

“Your brother died for nothing, Matthew Prior. And so will you.”

The soldier lowers the dagger to his throat. Olivia lets out a panicked breath. But when Matthew meets her gaze, he doesn’t look afraid. He has been waiting for this. Waiting to lie down. To rest. He has not been afraid to die, not since his brother and father did. He is ready. He is willing.

But there is a question in his eyes. Are you?

Olivia Prior does not want to die.

She has only just begun to live.

But they are the only thing standing between the monster and the wall, between death and the living world. And so she nods, and he closes his eyes and swallows against the soldier’s blade, relieved. And when he speaks, there is no quaver in his voice.

“It does not matter,” he says. “You cannot take our blood by force, and we will not give it to you.”

The master does not seem surprised.

“Your honor is charming,” he says, approaching the wall. “And wasted. You say you refuse to open the door for me.” He smiles, fingers dancing over the stones. “But you already have. Or rather, you failed to close it.”

Matthew’s head jerks toward the gate, the sheen of his blood visible even in the low silver light. Olivia saw him seal the door. She heard him say the words.

Those long fingers lift to the old iron gate. The master’s hand hovers over the door.

“The thing about old houses is the upkeep. How quickly they fall into disrepair.” He speaks as if to the gate itself. “Everything decays. Iron rusts. Bodies rot. Leaves dry and break. And all of it turns to dust and ash. No wonder it’s hard to keep any surface clean.”

He brings a single bony finger to the surface of the door.

“Blood on iron,” he says. “Not blood on earth. Not blood on stone. Not blood on ivy. Blood on iron. That is the key.”

The master drags his nail down the bloody mark on the door, and the surface flakes away, debris crumbling to reveal the iron beneath, untouched.

“No,” whispers Matthew, the last color leaching from his face.

“And now,” says the monster, “for my final trick.”

He presses his hand to the door and gives it a gentle push.

It swings open.

Open onto a summer night. Onto a sprawling garden, a riot of blooms and leaves.

Onto Gallant.

“NO!” roars Matthew, lurching against the soldier’s blade, which cuts a shallow line along his throat. The soldier clucks her tongue, and Olivia watches, horrified, as the master of the house steps through the garden door. Even in the dark, she can see the shadows spill around him, can see them sprawl across the grass, can see them eating through land and life.

The master’s head falls back, chin tipping up to a sky with a moon and stars. He inhales deeply, as all around him the grass withers and dies, and as it does, his hair curls like night against his cheeks, and his skin looks less like paper than marble, and his tattered cloak turns to velvet, rich and smooth over his shoulders.

He is no longer wasted, but beautiful, horrible.

He is not a monster, not the master of the house, not a demon trapped behind a wall. In that moment, he is Death.

He glances back through the door, eyes as bright as moons, and looks at Olivia with something like fondness before he smiles and says, in a voice as rich as midnight:

“Kill them both.”





Chapter Twenty-Nine




The soldiers smile.

The broad one tightens his arms around Olivia’s chest, crushing the air from her lungs, and the short one threads her hand through Matthew’s hair and wrenches his head back as Death vanishes beyond the wall.