Endless Knight(53)

A wall of murderous green towered above him like a tidal wave. He craned his head up and up.

I commanded the swell to break over this embankment, to swamp them all. With a yell, Death flashed out his swords. But he was not yet my focus—I had a plan for him. I tried to ignore the pain as he slashed through my battalion.

Lark sicced her wolves on me. If they caught me, they’d rip me to shreds, as they had those Bagmen. It would be my legs cracking beneath their fangs. Before they could reach me, vines snatched their paws, trapping the beasts upside down. Whimpers, howls. They couldn’t be killed until I took out Lark.

All in good time.

Ogen bellowed, leaping for me; a cypress crashed down on him. Pinned, he punched the trunk with fists like anvils. Agony racked my body. So I punished him with a larger toppling tree. His yell was cut short. Another tree, and another. To combat his strength, I sent poisoned thorn stalks to bind and kill him. Just to be safe, I ordered roots to suck him into the earth, wrenching him down.

Other plants were at work on a more insidious task. . . .

Eyes wide with horror, Lark abandoned her wolves, sprinting a retreat. My vines seized her, suspending her upside down as well, like the Hanging Man. As she dangled and screeched, I waved for her to be brought closer, until our faces were inches apart. “You’re worse than they are,” I murmured, canting my head at her. “We trusted you.”


“Wait, Evie! Please!” Her eyes were terrified. As Joules’s had been.

I enjoyed it just as much. “You’re going to die extra bad.”


I sensed there was little of that retention pond left, the surface replaced with a bed of writhing plants. Vines and slimy water strands. I waved my hand, and Lark was sent airborne, screaming as she sailed directly into that squirming green morass.

Trapped there. A nest of serpents. A nightmare.

One vine reared above her like a viper, plummeting down to gore her. She twisted and rolled, dodging it. Again the vine struck. She eluded it, but she was getting slower.

“There is no shame in surrender,” I told her, as a past Empress had once assured her victims.

Death had cut through the battalion I’d sent his way, and now was coming for me. All according to plan.

I watched him nearing, readying to take my head. Hatred, hatred, boiling. In the midst of this frenzy, another memory of my grandmother’s voice floated into my head: You take after Demeter, a goddess who was not to be crossed. When someone stole her daughter, she was so enraged, she refused to let crops grow, starving the entire world. Evie, there’s a viciousness in you that I must nurture. . . .

Flanked by protective thorns, I screamed with a godlike rage, and the whole world seemed to tremble.

I screamed for Jack and Matthew. For Finn, and even Selena. I screamed for my family and friends I’d lost. For this entire ruined planet.

I screamed because I was about to embrace the red witch once again.

I am the red witch! Would a future Empress see an image of this grisly scene and recoil? No. Because I’m going to win the entire game!

Kill them all? With pleasure.

When my scream ebbed, I motioned Death closer with both hands, nine wriggling fingers. He couldn’t know that my soldiers had bored out the side of this hill and the underpinning of the asphalt that stretched between him and me. A few steps closer, and he would plummet, hurtling through a chute to be trapped below with Lark.

“Afraid to strike? Come to me, Death. Touch me again.”


He approached as if in a trance. “Ease your wrath, and I won’t kill you today.”


I laughed, a throaty sound.

He reached my trap. The roadway crumbled; before he could escape, he dropped. At the last second, he stabbed one sword into the asphalt. He clung to his anchor as vines snaked up his body, curling around his shoulders and neck to drag him down. One of them struck his helmet free, revealing his perfect face, his grimly determined features. He showed no panic, not even when vines tangled over his head, across his mouth.

I stared into his glowing eyes. In a rush of dizziness, I remembered a time when they were bright in the night, looking down on me like stars. Just before his lips met mine—


Wham! Ogen tackled me with the force of a freight train. How?!

We crashed into the ground, with me breaking his fall. Ribs snapped. My head was flung back, cracking my skull. My vision wavered, my army stunned.

How had he escaped my poison and the pressure of those trees?

With the last of my strength, I sank my claws into the tough hide of his neck, injecting him with toxin until my fingers went numb.

He wrapped a hand around my throat, squeezing harder and harder. The Devil’s strength wasn’t fading?

As I stabbed Ogen frantically, I glimpsed Death with a blade between his teeth, climbing up from my trap.

Victorious.

Now it was Death’s turn to laugh. “Ogen is one of two players immune to your poisons. Come, Empress, ask yourself: why else would someone like me ally with someone like him?”


Under Ogen’s grip, something deep in my neck popped. My arms fell limp beside me. I couldn’t feel them. As my lids slid shut and consciousness faded once more, I heard Death grate words to Ogen in that foreign language.

What was the Reaper saying . . . ?

“To match your eyes.”


I gaze at the gift Death presents: a golden collar studded with emeralds. My sworn enemy is trying to woo me, has already declared his intention to take me to his bed.