Melkin and I haven’t spoken since I demanded he choose a course of action. I’ve decided to take his silence as compliance, though it doesn’t matter to me one way or the other. My purpose is set. If he wants to give this device to the Commander, he’ll have to do it over my dead body.
Quinn and Willow are sleeping in the trees close by. I suppose in the morning they’ll return to wherever it is they live. That doesn’t matter to me either.
All that matters is that I finally have a way to force the Commander to pay for everything he’s done. The rage within me is viciously triumphant at the thought.
Leaving Melkin to keep the first watch, I unroll my travel mat over my father’s grave and lie down with my face beside the carved wooden cross. Moonlight gleams on its surface, gilding his name with a beauty that should wound me. I reach out and grasp the wood with my bare hand, holding it tight as slivers gouge my palm.
It’s a welcome pain, but it isn’t enough to relieve the silent weight crushing me from within. Letting go, I turn my face away from the cross, away from Melkin, away from everyone, and close my eyes.
The wind sighs along the treetops and whispers over my skin like a lullaby, but I can’t sleep. Soon, I’ll have justice. A life for a life. It won’t be enough to seal up the edges of everything that’s undone within me. It won’t be enough to shatter the silence and let me grieve in peace.
It won’t be enough, but it’s all I have, and I cling to it with desperate strength.
The wind dies down, and I hear a soft crunch on ash behind me. Tensing, I try to listen for it again, but I can’t hear anything beyond the sudden roar of fury-laced adrenalin screaming through me.
My knife slides free of its sheath without a sound, and I brace my left elbow beneath me, flip the knife blade-side out, and shove off the ground.
Melkin stands behind me, his knife down at his side, his eyes pits of rage and misery.
He means to take the device from me. Destroy any chance of justice. Make my Dad’s sacrifice worth nothing.
I raise my weapon. “Get back.” I snarl at him in a voice I barely recognize. Cold. Empty.
“You said he’d keep his word if I just did what he asked.”
His voice is cold and empty too.
“I lied.”
His face contorts, his body shakes, his legs tense.
“Get. Back,” I say.
He watches me, his knife hand trembling so badly that he’ll never be able to stab me with it before I disarm him, tie him up, and leave him for Quinn and Willow to deal with. Rolling to the balls of my feet, I lunge for his right arm.
His left flashes out, silver streaking through the moonlight, and I remember his ambidextrous sword work a millisecond before he can slice into me. Spinning to the side, I drop and roll forward, coming up several yards away.
He isn’t trying to take the device. He’s trying to kill me.
I crouch, blade out. Something feral tears through me, obliterating Eloise, his unborn child, the kind of girl I once dreamed I’d be, and every cautious word Logan ever spoke, leaving nothing but pure, scorching bloodlust in their wake.
Melkin swings his sword in dizzying circles and rushes at me. I wait until he’s almost on me, and then dive forward, low to the ground, crashing into his legs and sending him flying over the top of me. His blade nicks me as it goes by, but I can’t feel the pain, and he drops his sword as he lands on his side.
I’m screaming now. Raw, agonized wails that flay the air with their fury. Out of the corner of my eye I see Quinn and Willow hurrying toward us, but I have no time for them. Whirling, I lunge forward while Melkin is still reaching for his sword. He sees me and slashes out with his knife instead. The blade catches my cloak and tears into it, but I don’t slow down.
I can’t.
Driving my boot onto his wrist, I grind the small bones together. He yells and drops his knife.
I slam my knees onto his diaphragm and feel the air leave his lungs.
He whips his left arm up and punches me in the face, and I land in a pile of ash on my back. He’s already on his feet. Already coming for me. I can’t see his weapons. I don’t know which hand he’ll use. And I don’t have time to get up.
He’s in the air, long legs dropping down, his face a mask of murderous intent.
I broke his right wrist. The weapon must be in his left hand. I roll to his right as he lands beside me, his left arm already swinging forward. Flipping my blade around, I push myself off the ground and bury my knife deep into his chest.
He sags, deflating slowly onto the ash beside me, and reaches for the knife with his empty left hand.
He isn’t holding his sword. I scan the area and see it gleaming yards away from us. His knife lies beside it.
“I wanted to take it.” His eyes stare into mine like a child trying to understand what he’d done wrong. “That’s all.”
“You were trying to kill me!”
He was. I know it. I had to have known it. I didn’t just fatally wound an unarmed man who wanted nothing more than to steal from me.
His blood seeps along the knife hilt, thick and warm, and coats my hands.
“You tried to kill me.” My voice shakes.
“Disarm. To take it.” He coughs, a horrible wet sound that sprays me with blood.
“No. No.” I pull the knife free as he slides onto the ground. “No.”
My hands can’t stop the bleeding, but I try. Pressing against his wound, I try to make sense of him. Of myself. Of what we’ve done.
What I’ve done.
He raises a hand, long fingers gleaming white in the moonlight. “Eloise?”
I can’t look at him. I can’t. But I’ve lied to him before, and I can lie once more. “Yes.”
“Can’t save you.” His voice is nothing but a whisper straining against the blood filling up his throat.
“You just did.” I can barely speak past the suffocating guilt choking me. I killed him. A desperate man. A pawn of the Commander’s who wanted nothing more than to save his beloved wife.
He doesn’t speak again, and I cover his wound with my blood-stained hands until his chest falls quiet.