Page 83 of Kill the Beast
“No, I—”
“You tore my brother open, Alderic. You destroyed the one person I loved most in this world, and then you… you made me…”You made me care about you.She choked on a sob, feeling herself spiraling wildly out of control. But she couldn’t hold back the guilt, the self-hatred, the despair tearing her to shreds from the inside. She may as well have spit on Eddie’s grave, allowing herself to feel any affection, any fondness at all, for this… thisthing.
“I didn’t mean for this to happen,” he insisted. “All I wanted was to pay you and be done with it. I never wanted to involvemyself any further than that. If it weren’t for Ragnhild’s stupid bones…”
“You hired me to kill you,” she said, her voice breaking. It felt like her heart was breaking, too. Because some small part of her resisted the anger burning away her compassion. Some small part of her remembered how she had felt about him, only moments ago.
That he was her friend.
That she loved him.
“Fuck,” she spat again, covering her face with her hands. How had she let this happen?
“I didn’t know about your history with the… with me,” Alderic told her. “All I knew was that you can kill the unkillable. That you were my only chance at ending this.”
“You want me to end this?” She unholstered her pistol, aiming for the glyph carved into his chest. Alderic kept his hands at his sides, widening his stance as if ready to take whatever blow she dealt him.
“Shoot me if it’ll make you feel better. It’ll cause as much pain as it would to a mortal, if hurting me is what you want. But it won’t kill me—you know that.”
“I don’t care,” she said, cocking the pistol.
But she couldn’t do it.
Killing Hound-wardens was one thing. They were enemies of the Crown, and their bounties specified that the reward was valid even if they died resisting capture. But shooting Alderic would bring the groundskeeper running. There would be questions, and constables, and time in a cell—even if the man she’d shotwasan immortal who couldn’t be murdered with a simple bullet. Lyssa didn’t have any more time to waste, if she was going to forge ahead as planned.
She told herself that there was nothing more to her reluctance to hurt him than that.
Something dawned on her as she lowered her pistol. “So, Honoria…?”
“She was trying to protect me from you.”
“But her geas—”
“It doesn’t prevent her from speaking freely to a Hound,” he said.
“Why didn’t you go with her?” Lyssa asked, her voice a hoarse rasp barely above a whisper. “Why didn’t you let her save you?”
Alderic’s face hardened. “Because shecan’tsave me,” he said. “Her faerie mistress can’t break my curse any more than Ragnhild can. All she can do, according to Honoria, is hide me away somewhere I can live in peace, away from humans—away from you. Until recently, all I wanted was to die, so it was easy to decline her first offer ofother options.The second time she offered… well.” He refused to meet her eyes. “I was committed to you, by then. You never would have forgiven me for switching sides, therefore defeating the purpose of doing so.”
She gaped at him, stricken by what he was implying. “Does that mean…?”
The wretched look on his face was answer enough.
After centuries of being desperate to die, he finally wanted to live.
“I swore an oath that I would kill you,” she said, her vision blurring with tears, “and I intend to keep it.”
“I know.” There was no mistaking the sorrow on his face. The resignation in his voice.
Lyssa had killed for him, and now he would die for her.
For her oath.
She turned her back on him, hating that she still—still,even now—felt something for him. “I expect you to be in Bleakhaven for the equinox,” she said stiffly, trying to draw a Door on the wall; the lines were so shaky that she had to do it over again.
“I’ll be waiting for you at my manor,” he promised as she drew the knob. “Down in the dungeon. I… chain myself, now, to prevent any more accidents. I imagine you’ll have to get quite close in order to stab me, so you’ll need to be careful, but—”
“Don’t insult me.” She shouldered her pack, refusing to look athim as she knocked on the Door. “I’ve been waiting a long time to kill you, Al. I don’t want it to be too easy.”
