Mistrals Kiss   ::   Гамильтон Лорел

“I tried to share life with you, Meredith, but I am King of theSluagh, and death is all I have to offer.”

I squeezed his hand. “We are both sidhe, Sholto, and that is a thing of life. We are Unseelie sidhe, and that is a thing of death, but Rhys reminded me what I’d forgotten.”

“What had you forgotten?”

“That the deities among us who brought death also once brought life. We are not meant to be split apart like this. We are not light and dark, evil and good; we are both and neither. We have all forgotten what we are.”

“What I am in this moment,” said Sholto, “is a man who is about to slay a woman who was my lover, and my friend. I can think of nothing beyond this moment — as if when she dies at my hand, I will die with her.”

I shook my head. “You won’t die, but you may wish you could, for a moment.”

“Only for a moment?” he asked.

“Life is a selfish thing,” I said. “If you pass through the sorrow, outrun the horror, you will begin to want to live again. You will be glad you didn’t die.”

He swallowed hard enough for me to hear it. “I don’t want to pass through this.”

“I’ll help you.”

He almost smiled, and it was like a ghost flitting across his face. “I think you’ve helped enough.” With that he let go of my hand and eased himself over the edge, using his good hand to keep himself from sliding through the bones.

I didn’t look back at anyone. I just eased myself over the edge and followed. Looking back wouldn’t make me feel better. Looking back would simply make me want to ask for help. Some things you have to do yourself. Sometimes what it means to lead is simply that you can’t ask for help.

I found that the bones weren’t sharp on every point — it was mostly the spines on the tops that were vicious. I grasped softer, rounder-looking bones, using them as handholds. It took all my concentration to get down to the water without losing my grip or cutting my hand.

The water was surprisingly warm, like bathwater. The soil underneath it was soft, and mushy, silt rather than mud. The footing was uncertain, and again I let myself sink into concentration on the task at hand. I focused on finding footing, avoiding anything that felt like a bone. I did not want to think about what I was about to do.

Segna had tried to kill me twice now, but I couldn’t hate her. It would have been so much easier if I could have hated her.



CHAPTER 13

IF I HADN’T BEEN AFRAID OF GETTING STABBED ON THE BONES, I would have swum out to where Sholto and Agnes stood holding Segna.