Fire Touched (Mercy Thompson, #9)(97)

The final fae, the male in gold, struck at me with his sword. This one had some magic in it; I could feel its hunger. It was a short sword and more agile than the broadsword had been.

The walking stick had, once before, used me to fight. This time it was more of an inspiration, using things I already knew. I wasn’t the walking stick’s puppet this time; I was its dance partner. It was like the hunt song, like a dance in which my partner was the more skilled of us, and I followed his lead. Step and duck and thrust and parry blended together as called for by our dance, in a syncopated rhythm that followed a random beat to keep our opponent from catching our dance step. It would have been fun—I could feel the walking stick’s joy—but I remembered Aiden’s crumpled form.

And then magic flashed. I stumbled but recovered in time to counter the sword and put my foot behind my opponent’s weight-bearing leg. When he tried to step back to regroup, he stumbled over my foot. I could have struck before he recovered, as the walking stick urged. But Adam’s agony, a direct result of the surge of magic that caused my misstep, flashed through our mating bond and made me take two steps away so I could center myself again for battle. It couldn’t matter, right now, how badly he was hurt. Or if he was worse than hurt.

Adam’s agony faded from our bond as the male attacked again, his mouth twisted in concentration. I fought with everything I had, focus possible only because of years of training with Sensei first, and later Adam. I set aside my fears and fought as coolly as I could manage, my attention on the here and now, and not on anything else. I couldn’t afford to make another misstep.

When the blade of the walking stick slid into the gold-clad male’s throat, it was just a part of our dance.

I could feel it when the walking stick called death to our enemy, felt the moment the male died of a wound he might have recovered from.

Adam lay still on the ground. I couldn’t see if he was breathing, and I couldn’t take the time to look. The Widow Queen, who, to defeat Adam, had broken her word to Underhill about using magic, crouched over Aiden, searching him, muttering to herself, “Where is it? What is it? It’s got to be somewhere.”

I tried to stab her with the spear, but she sensed us at the last moment. We danced, the walking stick and I, and between us we kept her busy, but she was slowly winning. Her armor was better than the armor of the man who’d died beneath our shining blade. I hit her hard with it, and she shrugged it off without the spear blade leaving even a surface scratch.

Magic, the stick told me. Magic armor.

She gathered magic as we danced, and there was nothing I could do about it. When she chose, because she was in control of the fight, she broke free of our dance by knocking me onto my side. I scrambled up, but it was awkward and too slow. It gave her the moment she needed to throw her spell at me.

The walking stick knew what it was, therefore so did I: a spell that would make it impossible to move, not even enough to breathe or for my heart to pump.

I felt the artifact make a decision as the magic came toward us, because Coyote had seen that it was becoming aware and coaxed it to free will. The stick twisted in my hands and intercepted the magic directed at me by a Gray Lord of the fae. Lugh’s walking stick ate the Gray Lord’s spell, and in doing so, it died.

To save me.

The Widow Queen had dropped her guard when she cast the spell. Confident, I think, that there was nothing someone like me could have done to save myself. And she was right. The walking stick bought me that moment of grace—and I launched into a spinning back kick, and felt it land with the precision of a move I must have done ten thousand times in practice. I heard the snapping of her neck, watched her body fall as quickly as mine. I rolled to my feet; she stayed in the awkward position she had fallen in, her breath rasping in and out.

I reached down and grabbed the spearhead of Lugh’s walking stick and thrust it under her chest and into her heart. She stopped breathing then.

The fight was over, and I was the only one standing. For a moment I hesitated, bewildered by the unexpectedness of my survival. But only for a moment because Adam was still down.

I ran to my mate but there was already someone there. Three someone elses.

The first was Aiden. He looked as though he’d crawled through the ashes of the female he’d killed. The expression on his face was very old.

The second was a child, about Aiden’s age. Her hair was bright red, short, and very curly, her face rounded with blue eyes and pretty but unremarkable features. Her bottom lip was stuck out in a pout. I had no trouble recognizing her from Aiden’s descriptions.

The third was Baba Yaga, wearing the guise she’d worn the last time I’d seen her.

I fell to my knees next to Aiden, who turned to me. “He’s dead,” he said starkly. “He died to keep me safe.”

“No,” I said because I could feel our mating bond. There was nothing useful coming through it, but it was still there, so he couldn’t be dead. Even though there was no breath in his body and his great heart was still under my shaking fingers.

“The Widow Queen always was good with death curses,” said Baba Yaga. “Fortunately, I’m better.”

“He was taking Aiden away again,” said the little girl belligerently. “He should die.”

“If he hadn’t helped me,” said Aiden in a very calm tone, “I would have died.”

“She promised not to kill you,” Underhill said. “I wouldn’t lead her to you until she promised.”