Page 107 of Curse of Darkness
I catch a glimpse of thorns lashing toward me and hit the stone cobbles.
Malakhai lifts his sword high, and this time I know I won’t be able to escape that blow—
Something blurs over my head.
A meaty splat sounds, and Malakhai gasps, frozen in place as he slowly looks down at the thorny javelin that’s pierced his upper chest.
Another vine stabs through him, the thorns on it almost as long as my forearm.
And then another.
“You dare walk into my kingdom and threaten my daughter?” Vi hisses, limping toward us with her black skirts and hair blowing behind her in the wind. Thunder rumbles behind her. There’s a cut on her face and bruises on her arms, but she looks like a warrior queen, defiant until the end. “You dare try and kill my husband?”
Malakhai shoots her a bloodless look, then cuts the vines in half with a single swing of his sword. The wounds heal, and he bares his teeth at her in a scarlet smile. “Death falls for no mortal wound.”
It’s impossible.
And yet, there’s not even a single mark on him.
I can’t stop him.
Shecan’t even stop him.
I eye him grimly, staring at the sky behind him. It’s a long fall to the bottom of the cliff. If I pin his wings….
“Vi, get out of here,” I whisper to her, staggering to my feet.
Vi doesn’t dare take her eyes off him.
“Death falls for no mortal wound,” Vi repeats, clenching her fist against her abdomen. There’s something merciless about the look in her eyes. “Only the Erlking can face Death and walk free. Because he is fierce and full of fight and laughter. He is sex and singing and mirth. And I remembered something: He islife. Death cannot be killed. But I wonder…. A queen is bound to her lands. She brings the summer, and she brings the crops. She grows the forests with a whim, and she blesses her people with fertility and bountiful harvests. Maybe I don’t need to kill you. Maybe I just need to consume you.”
She curls her fingers into claws, and Malakhai gasps, his spine arching. The flesh on his body crawls, as if something seethes inside him.
A thorn lashes through his skin, as if the monstrous tangle growswithinhim.
Another joins it, and they tear his abdomen apart.
Malakhai screams, driven to his knees as Vi yanks her hands through the air, her thorns ripping and tearing through my father’s body with each jerk of her wrist.
Flowers bloom in his hair. One punches through his eye, sprouting into a bright yellow daisy.
He screams and thorns crawl out of his throat as if he’s vomiting them.
I can’t help scrambling back, flipping to my feet as the enormous nest of brambles erupts from within him. I’ve seen a thousand different kinds of death, but I’ve never seen anything like this. He fights it. Ripping at the thorns, tearing them free and trying to heal himself; but Vi keeps advancing, her teeth bared and her fingers slowly curling into a fist.
The shock wears off.
I lunge forward, driving a dagger through his gut, right up to the hilt. The second I get a hand around his throat, I hear the roar of all those voices within him. Souls that splintered away from Death becoming hundreds, and yet the song they sing is a chorus. A thousand voices singing the same song, until they almost meld together.
Mine.
I close my eyes and suck the first soul from his body. A shiver of ice runs through me, and then another joins it. One after the other. Faster. Dozens at a time.
“Yes,” exults Death.
“Nargh!” Malakhai screams as he grabs my wrist. He goes to his knees, the tattoos bleeding off his skin and pouring toward where my hand circles his throat. His right eye sprouts a half dozen daisies.
All these years, I’ve imagined this moment.
