Page 88 of Kill the Beast
He saved your life and you will end his.
She blinked, her mind sludgy and slow. The bowl was full now.
Rags knelt—slowly, her knees popping with the effort—to dip the cord she had prepared into the blood. “Send your emotions into the cord. Focus them there.”
But it was a struggle to maintain her anger. Her mind would not cooperate—she kept thinking of the anguish on Alderic’s face when he told her the truth, and how happy he had looked when he finally won Brandy over, and…
Lyssa gritted her teeth. Fine. If hating him wasn’t working, she could use the hatred she felt toward herself, instead.You are such a fucking idiot,she seethed, and felt the rage ratchet back up to a level Ragnhild could use.How could you not have known he was the Beast? You let this happen, and now you might lose everything you’ve worked towards. You absolute fool. The first time you’ve felt this way about someone in years, and you chose the fucking monster who killed your brother.
“Good! Good!” the old witch cried, as Lyssa pushed her guilt and self-loathing into the cord. It began to glow faintly, and after a moment, Rags plucked the cord out of the bowl and shoved it into a special jar she had prepared for it, stoppering it up with a cork carved with spells.
And then it was done. The power in the air seemed to fade, and Ragnhild’s shoulders sagged with the loss of it, as if it had been propping her up. She put a gnarled hand on Lyssa’s shoulder.
“Go punch something,” she whispered, her voice once again wobbly with age, and Lyssa shot to her feet, storming out of the smithy and into the woods.
But this wasn’t like any of the other blood-rituals they had done. She had no urge to punch something, no desire to stalk through the Gate to the nearest town and beat the ever-loving shit out of the first asshole she came across. No—the moment she was enveloped in trees, the cottage out of sight, she let out the scream she had been holding in during the ritual. She screamed until her throat burned with it, her heart and blood on fire with it. Andwhen the scream died, the sobs began, and she cried until she had nothing left within her.
It took days to forge the sword. Over a week in the mortal world.
Ragnhild began by preparing the items Lyssa and Alderic had collected together. The water from the lake and the ash twigs from Lyssa’s childhood home, the dirt from Eddie’s grave and the nails from Desmond’s coffin, the photograph of Lyssa’s family, and that fucking leaf—all of them were passed through heady clouds of incense smoke while the witch chanted in a language Lyssa didn’t know. After that, Rags chanted over the billet of Valdalian steel, the Beast’s claw, and the materials Lyssa planned to use for the quillons, hilt, and sheath, so that everything being used in every stage of the sword’s construction was imbued with magic.
By the time she was finished, the air in the smithy was syrupy with spellcraft, hard to breathe and acrid on the tongue, and the heat of the forge was already becoming unbearable in the enclosed space.
“Hammer true,” Ragnhild said, patting Lyssa’s shoulder absently as she stumbled out of the smithy. Lyssa knew that look on the old witch’s face—she was sapped of strength, in dire need of fresh air and a cup of tea—and knew, now, that it was because of the aelf-blood in her veins, the iron poisoning her the longer she was around it. Luckily, her work was done.
Lyssa’s was only just beginning.
Setting up her workspace held a magic of its own, a ritual that grounded her in a way nothing else could. She fetched the tools she would need from the wooden rack beside her worktable, arranging them so that they would be close at hand. Then she stripped down to her underthings, tied up her hair, and got to work.
She fed the twigs from her childhood home into the forge-fire, followed by the leaf that Alderic had pulled from her hair and the photograph of her family. When they had burned down, she scraped the ashes into her annealing bucket and stirred it alltogether with a stick. Next, she prepared her quench-tank, pouring the water Alderic had collected at the lake into the water she had drawn from the well out back and swirling it with her hand.
Making magical weapons required a patience that Lyssa rarely had for anything but this. After she heated the Valdalian steel and the coffin nails, she had to keep them in the forge for the right amount of time until they could be plunged into the ash-bucket. After that, they had to cool for hours before the softened metal could be worked—hours that Lyssa spent sketching the handle for the sword, braiding and oiling the leather she planned to use for the grip, and drilling a hole in the base of the Beast’s claw so that it could act as a pommel. Every step required focus, concentration, and precision, offering blessed relief from having to think about anything else, for a little while.
When the steel and nails had cooled, it was time to begin shaping the blade. Sweat dripped down her skin as she heated it all again and began to hammer the metal from the nails into the end of the billet that would become the sword’s tip—so that the iron could be driven straight into the Beast’s glyph. She inspected it and, satisfied that the weld was good, began to draw out the sword’s tang, which would eventually fit into the handle she had started making.
Ragnhild had told Lyssa to channel her intentions with every hammer-strike, to maintain the anger they had built up during their initial spellwork so that the energy of vengeance could be infused into the blade itself. It was easier to be irritated in the heat of the forge, at least, the itch of sweat collecting on her scalp and rolling down her temples, the temperature almost unbearable even for someone who craved warmth like she did. That irritation lent itself to sudden bouts of rage, when she accidentally burned herself or dropped her hammer. But it was hard to hold on to hate when the intrusive doubts continued to nag her.
Whenever they manifested themselves, Lyssa gritted her teeth and pounded harder with her hammer, trying to force Alderic’s voice—and whatever sympathy she’d had for him—out of herhead. There was no place for forgiveness, here. But they were relentless, those thoughts, throwing Alderic’s words back in her face whenever she let her guard down.
Why do you want to kill the Beast?she’d asked him when he hired her.
Because it deserves to die.
She scowled, gripping her hammer tighter. Hediddeserve to die, for all the innocent lives he had taken. Didn’t he?
As much as I loved them and thought that they loved me in equal measure, there was always that moment when my true self came out…
His true self. He thought of the Beast as his true self.
She gritted her teeth. Well, maybe itwashis true self. Clearly, she hadn’t known him like she thought she had.
I paid for that headstone—I paid for all of those headstones, like I’ve done for every one of the Beast’s victims. And I paid for your brother’s burial, too, since there was no one else to do it.
She faltered, slamming the edge of the anvil at a weird angle and breaking the head off her hammer. She roared in frustration, throwing the splintered handle at the wall before storming out of the smithy and practically running into the woods.
But she couldn’t run from her own thoughts.
Lyssa leaned against a tree and closed her eyes, remembering the look of devastation on Alderic’s face when she had killed the Hound-wardens. His reluctance to hit her when she was trying to teach him how to protect himself.It’s not because you’re a woman,he’d insisted.I don’t want to hitanyone.
