Serpent's Kiss (Elder Races #3)(111)

She watched Julian’s face undergo a drastic change even as she felt a sharp stabbing pain in her back. She arched and tried to turn away, to keep the blade that was sliding into her body from striking a critical, mortal blow to her heart.

But then Rhoswen’s arm came around her neck. The other Vampyre was so much younger than she, so much slower and weaker, but Rhoswen didn’t have to hold her in place for long. She just had to hold her in place for long enough.

“I loved you,” Rhoswen hissed in her ear. “I gave you everything.”

The blow hit home.

Rune, Carling said, and even though he was twenty feet away talking with two Councillors, he could still hear her.

He spun. The shock and horror that filled his face and emotions saddened her terribly.

She still had so many things to say to him. She reached toward him and watched her own hand dissolve.

She still had so many things . . .

Rune, Carling said.

And he turned to see the tip of a short sword burst through her chest, just like the spear he had once watched burst through her father’s body. Behind her, Rhoswen was crying even as she thrust the sword. Julian had lunged forward, but there was nothing the Nightkind King or anyone else could do.

All Carling had time to say was his name. She looked so sad, so loving, and it was Carling that looked that way. That was his look; that look was for him.

She had shone so brightly, for so long. Then she crumbled to dust. And everything in Rune’s fierce, remarkable soul began to scream.

Every little thing is going to be all right.

Except sometimes it wasn’t, Bob. Sometimes things got so f**ked up you couldn’t even send them home in a body bag.

Screaming.

Wait, I’m confused.

Hasn’t she died yet? Why have you not gone back to save her?

Have you seen Schrödinger’s Cat? Like Schrödinger’s Cat, I am both dead and alive.

Screaming.

I cannot live in this universe. I cannot live this way.

If you die, I will find you.

I will never leave you. I will never let you go. I will not let you fall, or fail. I will always come for you if you leave, always find you if you’re lost.

Always.

Each moment in time was the tiniest of things, the most precious of things. Each moment held the potential for change, a turnaround that led to a different page. It rested on a singular point that was so precise, it would be so easy to lose track of that one miniscule place, that single moment, in the infinite cascade of all the other moments in time. Each turnaround melted away, as every moment in the present slipped into the past.

Every moment slipped away until he reached back, not too far, just far enough, reached for the last definitive place when she was there instead of not there, and he threw all of his screaming soul at her.

And there it was.

The keystroke password to an unbreakable code.

As Carling turned away from Rhoswen, she said to Julian, “She’s your problem now.”

And suddenly the golden monster was in front of her. He was right there, even though Rune also stood twenty feet away talking to two Councillors.

The golden monster contained a nightmare that was so far beyond emotion, it whited out Carling’s senses. He yanked her to him while at the same time he lashed out with all his killing claws extended.

Rhoswen fell, her body in ribbons. Everyone in the clearing spun around to stare as she crumbled to dust, until all that was left was the short sword that had fallen from her hand.

Rune sank to his knees, dragging Carling down with him. He clenched her so tightly that if she had been human she would have been in trouble. His body shook with convulsive shudders. He breathed in great sobbing gulps of air, like a drowning victim who had just been rescued. Other than that, he made no sound.

“Rune,” Carling said. She framed his wet face in both hands. He wasn’t looking at her. He was staring at something else. He wore an expression of someone looking at damnation. She dared a quick sidelong glance around. Everyone was staring either at them or the place where Rhoswen had stood. Julian strode over to pick up the sword. He looked furious.

The other Rune had disappeared. Had she imagined what she had seen?

“It’s all right,” Rune whispered. “It’s all right now.”

“Bloody hell,” Dragos muttered from across the clearing. “I don’t know what the f**k that was, but something definitely happened.”

TWENTY-ONE

Two weeks later, Rune still couldn’t speak of what had happened.

She realized what had to have occurred, of course. The brief glimpse Carling had gotten of Rune in two places, the sword Rhoswen had hidden underneath her cloak, the appalling state he had been in after he had killed her. It did not take a huge stretch of imagination to figure out what that meant. Carling tried a couple of times to get him to talk, but he looked so haunted and sick, she didn’t have the heart to push it. Instead she held on to him tightly when he woke in a sweat, and she teased him gently whenever he had stared into space for too long.

As for Rune, it felt like part of his soul would always be caught in the horror of what happened, in the loop that went around like a serpent’s tail coiling in on itself. But gradually he began to see how he could reach a point where he could set it aside and get on with the business of living.

After much discussion, and more argument, it was decided that Rune had not broken the laws of sanctuary that were meant to protect the Oracle and all who came to petition her. While several people besides Dragos were well aware that “something” had indeed happened, and it made everyone uniformly unhappy, no one else admitted to seeing Rune in two places for that brief moment in time, so no one understood what really had transpired.