The Drowned Woods (79)
The hesitation cost him. A third guard seized Fane, painfully wrenching his arms up behind his back. Fane made a soft sound of protest, but he dared not struggle. To do so would call upon the magic.
Two guards held Mer. One had Fane.
Three people. All it had taken to doom a kingdom was three people.
“Hari was right,” said the first guard, astonished. “She’s here. I never thought—”
“I have to see Garanhir,” said Mer tightly. The muscles strained in her neck; she was forced up onto her toes by the guard’s grip on her hair. “He has to know—”
“Oh, you’ll see him.” The guard gave her a shake, the way a hound might have shaken a rat. “He’ll come see your body. To make sure we’ve done our job.”
“You’re all fools,” snarled Mer. “This isn’t some assassination attempt. Renfrew’s dead and the whole city is in danger.”
The second guard slipped a knife from his belt. “None of that now.”
“We have to get to the prince,” said Mer, her voice fraying with panic.
She had not panicked once since Fane first met her. Not when water horses slaughtered a man standing an arm’s length from her, not when Renfrew betrayed her, not when a giant boar attacked, nor even when she told them all that the sea would come for them.
But caught in these guards’ armored hands, her eyes were wide as a snared hare’s. She threw her body against them, clawing and fighting to free herself, but the iron in the guards’ gloves kept her magic at bay.
She was no longer the water diviner who had confidently led them through sea caves and found an age-old wellspring of magic. Her face looked younger, tight with terror. And Fane knew who she was in that moment: She was the girl who’d been tortured and branded at the behest of a prince. The memories held her as securely as the grip of iron.
Fane couldn’t watch Mer die.
She was stubborn and angry, capable of drowning a man without so much as blinking. But she was also kind and good and braver than anyone he’d ever met. She had risked her life and freedom to save the lives of everyone in Caer Wyddno.
There was a single guard behind him, keeping Fane’s arms at his back. Were he to struggle, Fane knew that his curse would take control of him. All those years of restraint, of keeping himself at a distance—they would be rendered meaningless. He would become the very killer he promised himself he’d never be.
Fane wanted to say he made the choice because it was the only thing to do. If they did not reach the prince, thousands would perish. And if that meant that a few lives had to be forsaken, then someone had to do it.
But in his heart of hearts, Fane did not choose the city. He did not choose a kingdom.
He chose her.
This was why death should not have loved ones.
Because this was what came of it.
Fane threw his head back. He felt the back of his skull crack into the guard’s nose and heard a sickening crunch. The guard staggered back, but it was far too late. Fane felt the change, the shift in his perception as the blow connected. He closed his eyes, took a breath, then reopened them.
And he let the magic have him.
CHAPTER 26
WHEN THE FIGHT broke out, Mer could not turn her head. A guard had a painful grip on her hair, craning her neck back. But Mer saw the flicker of movement from the corner of her eye.
Fane drove the back of his head into his captor’s nose, breaking bone and cartilage with a stomach-churning crack. The guard cried out, releasing him. Fane whirled, and in one easy movement, pulled the guard’s sword from his scabbard.
Fane opened the guard’s throat with a slash of the blade, then turned on the two guards who held Mer. One of them shoved her into a wall, knocking the breath from her. There was a whisper of metal as they drew their own weapons. Fane flicked the blood from his sword in a contemptuous whirl, resting the flat of the blade against his forearm, the tip at eye level and pointed at his enemies.
“Run,” he snarled.
It took a heartbeat for her to realize that he spoke not to the guards, but to her.
One of the guards brought his sword down, and Fane parried the strike, only to turn and catch another on his blade. Every movement was fluid, as practiced as though he had been sword fighting for all of his life. It was the magic, taking hold within him as swiftly as a fire invaded dry tinder. He would not escape it until all of his enemies were dead—or he was. She wanted to thank him and to tell him she wasn’t worth it all in the same breath. But there was no time.
Mer scrambled to her feet, her heart hammering painfully against her breastbone. She threw herself in a clumsy sprint, hurtling around corners and colliding with walls when she could not slow herself. Her palms ached as she used her hands to haul herself up a circular stairway.
Another guard stepped in front of her, but Mer ducked under his arm and threw a kick at the back of his knee. His leg went out from under him and Mer bolted out of reach. She was so close. She could see the heavy double doors of the prince’s chambers. She had never been inside, but she had stood in the hallway as Renfrew conversed with Garanhir.
The doors were closing.
Mer snarled a wordless curse, raising one hand. Those wooden doors had traces of water in them—all wood did. The locks were reinforced with iron; once they were shut, she’d never get them open. So she couldn’t let them shut. She ignored the parched ache of her tongue and the sudden throb in her temples as she pulled at the water in the wood, holding the doors still.