Swallowing Darkness   ::   Гамильтон Лорел

Galen writhed on the groundbeside me clutching the bloody front of his pants. I knew what wound had reappeared. Rhys's missing eye was a bloody hole again. Doyle lay on his side, fighting to try to get to his knees, but he was too hurt. They were all too hurt. There were cries in the distance, and it was not just my men. The Red Caps were back to being damaged. I understood in that moment what a terrible hand of power Cel possessed. I hadn't understood until that moment. I hadn't understood so very much until that moment.

Cel jerked me to my feet by my wrist. He pulled me in against his body, and turned me to gaze out at the field. Everyone was on the ground, everyone. Andais was just a dark heap on the frost-whitened grass. Her cloak of shadows had gone, which meant she was either unconscious or worse.

"Draw your sword," he hissed in my face. "Let me disarm you in front of them all, and drive it into that fertile womb of yours. Did you know that's why my mother turned against me? She made me take those human doctors' tests and found that I couldn't father children. That's when she called you home." He traced his free hand up the side of my neck, until he entwined his fingers in my hair. He stopped just short of where the crown still burned with its darkling flame on my head.

He let go of my wrist, and put his other hand on the other side of my face. He turned me to face him and cradled me oh so gently between his hands. "Draw your sword, Merry. Draw it, and let them see how weak you truly are." He whispered it against my face as he came in for a kiss.

I put my hands on his hands, bare skin to bare skin, as he kissed me. My arm that had been crippled by the original injury seemed a little less hurt. Was it the crown protecting me, or the fact that I was queen at last?

He laid a gentle kiss on my mouth, a good kiss, and not what I'd expected, but then he was full of surprises tonight.

He drew back from me, taking my hands in his. He smiled, and his eyes were completely mad. "I'm going to kill you now."

"I know," I said, and I used the hands of blood and flesh together. Where Holly and Ash and I had used them to heal, now I used them to destroy. I drove the hand of blood into him, not in search of wounds, but in search of blood. I used the hand of flesh to cut and tear his body from the inside out. As the hands of power had flowed over the battlefield in a wave of cleansing blood and smoothing flesh, now they filled this one man.

Cel's eyes went wide. "You can't," he whispered.