The Book Eaters(63)
“What are you doing?” Hester hissed, eyes on the road. “Duck down!”
“No.” Devon lunged across and wrenched the wheel to the right, ramming the knight at sixty miles an hour with their little gray Ford.
Bike hit car at a skewed angle with a brassy clang. Hester swore and stomped the brakes. Devon bruised her chest against the tight restraints of the seat belt, guts slamming against her ribs.
The knight cascaded up and over the windshield in a tornado of limbs before landing on the ground near the passenger’s side.
A single moment of stunned stillness and then he rolled over, trying to crawl away. Black blood streamed from his nostrils and from a ruined eye socket. One of his legs bent in the wrong direction, and he could only crawl a few inches.
Devon unclipped her seat belt and swung the car door open with all her strength. Door met knightly head with a dull clunk. It was one blow too many. He flopped back to the tarmac, stunned into unconsciousness.
A frustrated shout from Hester as Devon vaulted from the Ford, still barefoot like she had been in the forest all those years ago, running and hunted. For a moment she stood above the prone knight, spasmodic indecision holding her in place. Murder, much like the secondhand clothes she wore, never quite felt comfortable.
But she still remembered all too clearly the fear and horror of that first escape attempt. If the patriarchs had required her death, the knights would have delivered without a backward glance.
Besides, the only good knight was a dead knight.
Necks were hard to break so Devon took the easy option and, prying the knife from his belt, spiked his blade through the fifth left intercostal space. Straight to the heart.
He never regained consciousness. Thirty seconds of stillness, as winter sunlight slowly warmed the frost-limned road and the knight bled out inside his own chest cavity. She stepped back, breathing through her nose.
“At last, we meet the woman who killed Matley Easterbrook.” Hester leaned against the car. “I was beginning to wonder when you’d show yourself.”
“What about you?” Devon said. “When will you show yourself?”
The knight was already decaying, skin grown thin and brittle and pale like parchment as his veins dried up. Lines of inky blood traced uneven patterns across the exposed flesh.
“I won’t lose sleep over one dead knight,” Hester said, ignoring the question pointedly. “But for the record, I did not appreciate you snatching the wheel. That could have gone diabolically wrong.”
“Sorry. Split-second decision. It wasn’t fair of me.”
“I could have just driven past him. I’m not sure this was worth the fuss.”
“We’re still an hour from the border. He might have alerted the others.”
“You don’t think this murder would alert them?”
“Not if they don’t find the evidence.” Devon picked up the clothes, shaking out the ink-damp mess of paper. “I’ll hide the suit and motorbike. They’ll notice he’s missing eventually, but by then we’ll be out of their reach.”
Hester duly obliged. Devon dumped an armful of stained fabric into a ditch by the side of the road. Picking up the bike with both hands, she flung it into the hedge. A heavy thing to toss, though fun to watch it go flying.
Cai, meanwhile, observed them from the back with an expression Devon couldn’t read. She met his gaze briefly, held it for a few seconds before turning away. He’d seen worse. What was one more murder in his presence?
Inwardly, she was already rehearsing excuses to Ramsey. I couldn’t stop her. She was the one driving, because the Family never let me learn that skill and also because only Hester knew our end location. Of course, that was assuming he even asked—because he wouldn’t have the chance, if she had her way. By the time he thought to suspect anything, Devon planned to be long gone.
The idea that she might never see her brother again gave her a sudden kick of endorphins and she almost smiled.
Hester sank into the driver’s side. “I suppose we’re lucky Mr. Flying Knight here didn’t crack the windshield.”
“I’m always lucky,” Devon said, clipping in her seat belt. “This is what luck feels like.”
“You’re bloody weird, you know that? God almighty. Let’s just get to Innerleithen.” Hester put the car into gear and drove off, leaving the empty road well behind.
None of them looked back.
19
THE EXILE FORMERLY KNOWN AS PRINCE
FIVE YEARS AGO
The Prince was beside himself and, in his despair, he fell down from the tower. He escaped with his life, but the thorns into which he fell pierced his eyes. Then he wandered quite blind about the forest, ate nothing but roots and berries, and did nothing but weep over the loss of his dearest Rapunzel.
—Hans Christian Andersen, “Rapunzel”
Devon thought she would never love anyone as much as she’d loved Salem. Wounds healed into scars, the skin growing thick and rigid and protective, or so folk said. Along with once bitten, twice shy; time cures all; and other such clichés.
The clichés were wrong.
Devon was wrong.
When the time came, she birthed her second child on the games room couch of Easterbrook Manor, because even after her water broke she opted to keep playing Final Fantasy through the early contractions. Only when the pain ramped up too severely for her to hold a controller did she allow Jarrow to run off for help. By then, she was lying on her side and not fit to walk anywhere.