Page 70 of Kill the Beast
Before Lyssa knew what was happening, Alderic shoved her, hard enough to knock her off her feet, and the arrows that had been meant for her thudded into his chest.
Time seemed to slow as his legs buckled beneath him and he collapsed.
CHAPTER
EIGHTEEN
LYSSA STARED ATAlderic’s body, clenching her teeth against the sting of tears in her eyes. Those arrows—one of them straight through his heart, buried almost to the fletching—had been meant for her.
“You fucking idiot,” she said, choking on a sob, because being angry meant she wouldn’t succumb to the grief clawing at her throat instead. She grabbed the sword still strapped to Alderic’s side and lurched to her feet. “You killed him,” she spat at the nearest Hound-warden archer. Birch. The gangly boy from the Morningstar. The one Alderic had referred to as his friend.
“Carnifex, wait,” Birch said, his eyes widening as he stumbled back a step, his palm out like one hand could save him from his fate. The geas carved into his wrist peeked out from beneath his sleeve. “It’s not what it—”
Lyssa roared, fury unleashing itself upon her. But as she swung for the boy’s neck, he tripped over his own feet, falling on his face, and her blade whistled through empty air.
“Stop!” Honoria screamed, clutching the wound in her shoulder as she struggled to her feet; the bullet had gone straight through her leather armor. She stuttered for a moment, fighting and failing against her own geas. “You don’t understand!”
Birch fled like a piss-soaked rabbit the moment Lyssa shifted her attention from him to the Hound-warden leader.
“Oh, I understand,Honey,” she growled, and the tide of rage broke against her heart, working its magic on her, singing in her blood. “You let that faerie whore turn you against me. Let her put that geas on you instead of killing her, like you should have. Shetook my friend away from me, and now you have done the same.” Her voice broke. As much as it scared her, as much as she had tried to deny it, that was what Alderic was. Her friend.
“He’s not dead,” Honoria blurted, gasping and red-faced like it had taken great effort to get the words out.
“In case you didn’t notice, your lackeysshot him through the heart,” Lyssa spat. “There’s no saving him now. And there’s no saving you, either.” Whatever she had once felt for Honoria, there would be no mercy for the leader of the Hound-wardens. Not after what she had done.
There would be no mercy for any of them.
Lyssa gripped the sword and advanced with a snarl of rage. Dimly, she felt an arrow thud into her thigh, another grazing her cheek as it flew past her head. As she closed in on Honoria, one of the other Hound-wardens stepped between them, slashing at her with his silver cutlass. Lyssa cut him down like he was wheat beneath the scythe of her sword. Another came between them, and she cut that one down, too. An arrow slammed into her forearm, and another into her calf, but she barely felt them through the battle-haze that had taken over her.
Honoria drew her own sword, the bronze blade glinting in the sunrise. She held up her geas-blighted palm and stammered something, but at the sight of the faerie-symbol carved into her flesh, the wave of Lyssa’s rage crashed over her, drowning out everything else. With a roar, she chopped off the Hound-warden’s hand, severing that disgusting sigil from the woman she had once loved.
Honoria staggered back, clutching the bleeding stump to her chest, words tumbling out of her. But Lyssa couldn’t hear her through the blood roaring in her ears. She raised her sword to end Honoria’s life, and—
“Stop!” Alderic’s voice broke through her fury, and Lyssa froze. The rage receded all at once, the battle-spell broken by a jolt of confusion and disbelief.
She turned to find him swaying on his feet behind her, easing the last arrow out of his chest with blood-slick fingers. The others were in a splintered pile beside him.
“How…?” She didn’t understand what she was seeing. Ragnhild had told her time and again that not even magic could raise the dead.
Alderic tossed aside the arrow and crossed the distance between them with long, furious strides. Lyssa stumbled backward, the color leeching from the world around her. Shock. She was in shock. And that shock was mirrored on Alderic’s face as he looked down at the two Hound-wardens she had slain.
“You… you killed them,” he said hoarsely.
“They hurt you,” she croaked, and shook her head to see if that might dispel the angry ghost in front of her. It didn’t. “I told you, no one hurts the ones I love and gets away with it.”
Alderic stiffened, his eyes going wide. “What did you say?”
“You are my friend, and they killed you,” she said. “So I killed them back.”
A wild emotion crossed his face. “Theydidn’t,Lyssa. They didn’t kill me. See for yourself.”
He reached out to her, and she took a step toward him.
And then something punched through her, her vision going white with pain as a bronze blade erupted from her abdomen.
Alderic screamed as the blade ripped back out of her.
The world tilted beneath Lyssa’s feet. She stumbled. Sank to her knees. Was somehow looking up at the sky without knowing how she had gotten onto her back. She heard shouting. Chaos. But she felt disconnected from it, like it was the roar of a distant ocean she couldn’t see from here.
