An Enchantment of Ravens(76)
“Listen to me,” he croaked. “Both of us need not die tonight. Isobel, you cannot break the Good Law alone. If the fair folk sense I am no more—”
I seized the dagger from him. Having no idea what to do with it afterward, I lifted the cushion I was lying on and shoved it underneath, then threw my weight back on top. “Stop being melodramatic! I am not going to kill you in my parlor!”
He stared at me in disbelief. “Did you just sit on it?”
“Yes,” I said mutinously.
“But there is no other way.”
I must have gotten quite a ferocious look on my face, because he leaned back a little. “Have you considered what it would be like for me to go on with my life after murdering you? Imagine if it were the other way around!”
He paused, and looked ill.
“Exactly!”
“No—yes—you are right. I should not have asked it of you.” His eyes flicked toward the hallway. Emma. A vise squeezed the air out of my lungs. If Rook asked Emma, she would certainly slay him to spare me, just as she would have killed the fairy beast to save her sister, if only she had had the strength. She wouldn’t let another family member die because of the fair folk.
My pulse roared in my ears. I no longer felt the settee’s cushions or the tears drying on my face. In the stories, maidens drank poison and jumped from high towers upon hearing of their princes’ deaths. But I wasn’t one of them. I still wanted to live, and in fact I had lived seventeen perfectly functional years before I’d ever met Rook. I had a family who loved me and needed me. I couldn’t ask Emma and the twins to suffer through the pain of my loss. If this was the only option . . . if this was what we had to do . . . but I couldn’t countenance it; I ached to think of him gone, a vast empty ache I couldn’t face head-on for fear of drowning in it.
His fingers stroked a strand of hair behind my ear. “It would not be like a mortal dying,” he said. “You have seen it. I will leave no body behind. There will be a tree, perhaps. A bigger one than that absurd little oak outside your kitchen.”
I couldn’t stand it. I choked on a laugh. “Show-off.”
“Yes.” He gave me half a smile. “Always.”
I twisted and dragged the dagger back out from under the cushions. I closed my eyes, squeezing the blade so tightly I almost drew blood. I pictured a version of myself, perhaps a year or two from now, walking up the hill to my house. Still grieving, but getting better every day. In my mind March and May ran out of the kitchen door to wrap themselves around my legs—no, around my waist, for surely they’d grown taller. A majestic tree dropped leaves that painted one side of the roof scarlet year-round, demonstrating an arrogant disregard for the state of our gutters. Clouds scudded across a blue sky. Heat simmered. Grasshoppers buzzed in a ceaseless, mind-numbing chorus.
I recoiled from the image. No. I couldn’t accept that world, a world where we had lost and the Alder King had won, a world where nothing ever changed, and the evidence of it surrounded me every day.
My palm stung. I blinked and the dagger came into focus, silvery against my red dress, light shivering over its surface like water. For the first time I truly understood what I had been given, and what it could do. Or rather, what it would do. Because with this understanding, I made a decision.
The dagger would kill a fair one.
Just not the fair one Gadfly had in mind.
Twenty-two
BRING ME vermilion. And indigo, please. May, I know you aren’t talking to me right now, but you can still carry things, can’t you? Emma, would you mind finding something I can use to prop up my arm while I work? Rook, that’s not a paint palette, that’s a serving tray. Oh—never mind, bring it here. I suppose it’ll do.”
My parlor had transformed into a whirlwind of activity. I’d toppled over the second I tried to stand, so I was enthroned on the settee, propped up by half a dozen pillows, as everyone waited on me hand and foot, which would have been nice if they hadn’t all been tasks I’d rather have been doing myself. To their credit, no one tried arguing me out of my unhinged-sounding scheme. Emma and Rook had taken one look at the glint in my eyes, glanced at each other in sudden communion, and started fetching brushes.
I’d never done work like this before. I didn’t have time to draft it, for one. Morning light already stole across the room, setting my linseed oil jar aglow and casting a pink rectangle on the wallpaper. I’d decided not to look over my shoulder, because once I started I wouldn’t be able to stop, but Emma kept peeking out the window, and it wasn’t long before she gasped and dropped a pillow.
“What did you see?” I asked.
“Nothing.” She hurried over to stick the pillow under my elbow. “My nerves just got the better of me.” A blatant lie—Emma could mix deadly chemicals with someone playing the cymbals next to her head.
May stood on her toes and looked. “There’s something running around in the field,” she announced in a would-be-casual voice. She turned around with an exaggerated shrug to show she wasn’t afraid, even though I could see her shaking from across the room. “I bet it’s the Alder King and he’s here to kill you and eat you because you’re stupid.”
Emma reared up, clutching another pillow. “May, you will not speak to your sister like that!”