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| Details |
| Author: | Athena |
| Summary: | Finley has been looking for answers to the mystery of Quinn MacBride. He finds them, but at a steep cost. 6400~ words. Personal Plot. |
| Rating: | M for Mature 17+ |
Arc: The Bride Will Fall
March 6th – Quintessential
The air is as cold, rich, and clean as the sweet embersilk of the Rabbit charm. This hill has the same soft burnt umber of the main brown cloth, with the lifting notes of the sienna of the lighter brown in the rolling edge of the cliffside to match the brown of the rabbit’s ears. The water from the river nearby has the zinc white of the rabbit’s fur, and the deep abiding blue cobalt of its little cape.
It’s even money if he looks at the scenery or the charm more, even with the charm tucked safely at his waist. He leans his wrist against it again, just to touch it. The firmness is oddly comforting. Teak, he thinks, from the scent and weight of it, and from a peep between stitches pried open by a fingernail, like a peek behind tightly closed curtains.
“Though I have entertained the idea of leaving my curtains open for you.”
Don’t.
He raises his hand off the charm like it burns.
He mixes Payne’s grey into the white, dipping into the raw umber just enough for the depth of capturing the browns caught in waters’ brief reflections, and steadies his hand.
The charm makes him significantly faster when he wears it. He’s tested it out several times. With the right push, he can blur his speed past any of his usual limits. Hana spent far too much money on it. He has spent far too much time touching it. Unlike the broom or the song, he can take this one anywhere with him. Its softness is something of a torment. Sometimes, it’s like her hair, the touch of it over his wrist as he laid her down. Other times, it’s that patch of her bare skin around her knee where her skirt hadn’t covered her and his fingers had rested.
Those sorts of thoughts are why he’s here on this hill. Painting. Away from her.
He has a way to get even farther away from her. He could move the trip to Pandaria closer. Avrenne would certainly support it. She wants the artwork from it for her latest social project of shaping the world to her liking, and he is more than willing. Once there, he wouldn’t be able to see Hana at all. She might even hear of his departure. Maybe it would give them both a way to move on, with him gone.
“I thought I had truly lost you, a thought I am not yet ready to face. Please forgive my selfishness, for being unable to let you go.”
He stays.
More than that, he’s caught himself repeatedly trying to use the excuse of the odd trails of Quinn MacBride to stay in the Eastern Kingdoms. It is almost a reason. He has work to do here. There are things that aren’t explained, and he knows that even if she is in Pandaria herself, that’s not where the answers will be.
But, he can’t say that is really the whole of his reasons. He’s here because Hana is here. He needs to watch over her. Keep picking up his letters. That’s the part that makes him want to stay.
Which means he’s letting his personal feelings start to impact his duty, his work. So. A day without her. A test of willpower and a reminder of what he needs to do. It’s a single day. All he has to do is focus on painting and considering the latest information on Quinn MacBride. That is enough for a man’s mind.
Or it should be. It hasn’t felt calming or cleansing. If anything, his mind has been even more scattered for most of the day. Every time he tries not to think of her, the only thing he can do to control the thoughts is to go blanker and blanker inside. It becomes the entirety of his focus, this emptying of her from his mind, and he can’t concentrate on the rest. And all it takes is a single word, a stray thought, and it shatters the illusion entirely. She’s right there, under it all.
That tells him something about the experiment. If the only way to stop thinking about Hana is to stop thinking entirely, then he can’t do that. It’s like asking him to run, and telling him to hold his breath. There comes a point where he has to admit he needs to breathe. He can’t not think about her.
Noire d’ivoire softened with silver point for a stretching shadow of the hill, the dots of it against the rocks around the river – the color of her hair in the kitchen light of her house.
There, see? What’s the use of pretending he doesn’t see her in everything, as if she isn’t just a sliding thought away. Better to let it happen, so he can let it pass. Like trying to deny torture doesn’t hurt. Accept the pain. He loosens the grip in his mind. Let’s her back in with a rush of relief.
The way she held the teacup, breathed it in, set her pretty lips against the porcelain. His arms resting on the table so he wouldn’t be tempted to reach out to her, and yet putting himself closer to her. He hardly sees the world around him, consumed by the vision in his head. Here, he can talk to her about the latest development, one that he has no idea if he’s onto anything at all, or chasing ghosts.
“I want to talk to you. I want to write to you directly.”
Forbidden possibilities, except in his own mind, where there was nothing separating them.
He takes a breath.
Betty had been right. Primal Shadow was expensive, and it wasn’t found outside of Outland from its void tainted creatures, which meant looking at imports. Avrenne was able to tell him several names from her old records, and from pure memory. It eventually led him to finding an Ethereal he’d worked with enough times who remembered the gnome with the nickname, and his partner, an Al Qualls.
It was enough to make him suspect that Al wasn’t another player at all – but Quinn herself. The first names change, but three times she’s picked a last name that starts with Q. Something maybe in making it feel like her own, a truth in a lie, so she responds when she hears it?
On that hunch, he took it to the census office, applying for public records of people with a last name starting with Q with Avrenne’s request, opening doors Finley couldn’t. Five days of digging, and he produced four possibilities that can’t be accounted for as real people, or eliminated in age that there would be no way for Quinn to impersonate. He also struck out any men, but he isn’t completely sure of that one, if she’d pass as one more easily or worse with the enchantment.
Fara Quan.
Tilly Quindlen.
Riora Quarry.
Shirah Qasem.
Fara and Shirah are both unaccounted for entirely. No one has seen them since the attack on Theramore, though both list Stormwind as a residence, and while they are currently only listed as missing, it’s likely they’re dead. The fact that there is no cause of death listed makes it harder to assume either one might be another identity of Quinn’s, at least not one she’s burned yet. Fara has no profession listed, and Shirah works for a tailor on commission, which might be helpful for the MacBrides. Possibly.
Riora has a lot of what she might want in an identity, as a traveling saleswoman based currently in Ironforge. He can’t get a beat on her location, and no one he’s spoken to seems to have much memory of her. But that may be only that they talk about her as being soft-spoken and unremarkable. No one’s mentioned a long braid. Maybe she keeps it up while she works, or maybe she’s realized it’s a stand out feature.
Tilly, he can’t quite figure out, but he has a feeling about. According to records, she’s worked as a nanny for two families, merchants and traders from Lordaeron. One lost in the recent plague of a few years ago after traveling to Shattrath, and the other in the harbor wave in Stormwind at the docks. That alone made his hair stand up. Lots of people died in both, he knows. But what if.
As for Tilly herself, he has little to nothing. He can’t find friends or family or any trail at all to speak to someone about her. And he can’t think of why Quinn MacBride would want the identity for the MacBrides. The courier and the freelance financial advisor made sense. Those can be used to push an agenda, and no one needs to remember the faces of those types. But a nanny? The most she could hope for is embedding herself as a spy in a household, and to do that would mean taking off that enchantment that blurs her. She’d be known.
Maybe it’s why she hasn’t used it recently. Or she isn’t Tilly Quindlen. All of this might be Finley just grabbing at random straws.
The Hana in his mind listens, but she can’t say anything. He doesn’t know what she would say. He never really does, even when he has her right in front of him. He likes it more than he wants to admit. Especially now, after everything he’s learned. The training that makes him catalogue everything people do and say into boxes, the study of deception and reading people to have an effect. Hana is a wild card. Even when he thinks he knows what to expect, she’ll flip it around on him, bolder and shyer in turns. And with unexpected insight.
If he turned around, and faced the other direction, he’d be looking at her house. Which is why he’s not. Even a glimpse of the place is enough to send him into thoughts and then actions he can’t stop, because he has to check her curtains. He has to know if she’s left them open after all. He can’t leave his own open, tempting as it constantly is, just to see if she would come by the townhouse. That would be a strange sort of telling her that he’s been keeping tabs, to so alter his natural inclination off the letter.
He has to stay on his toes even more than before. His seeker has gotten a sense of him. Hasn’t seen him yet, and she won’t. He couldn’t help the swell of pride in her at the last letter.
“I feel as though someone is watching me.”
Atta girl.
In his memory, she smiles, a sweet blush over her cheeks, as she squeezes a pillow.
She’s going to make a hell of a scout someday. She already is.
He likes the precautions she’s taking. Even if they’re against him, unknowingly. Hiding the letters now. Paying closer attention to her surroundings. Watching for the watcher.
“I wish it was you.”
It’s permission, in a way, isn’t it? Like the curtains. It does something to him to know she wants this to be him. Dizzying. But, he knows he can’t slip, not at all now. If she does know it’s him, it will ruin all he’s done to put doubt in her mind. He wants to rip that doubt away, but it’s folly. He has no truth to offer her. If he slips now, willfully, he’d be breaching the trust placed in him. To not speak of the truth of his position is the core tenet. He can’t tell her it only because he’s heart sick. The urge to stop her hurting seizes him with every letter. But there’s nothing he could do now. There’s no lie he could weave that would fix this and keep his identity intact. He can’t stop picking up the letters. So, they go on. For now.
He has to prepare himself for when the letters do stop. When she does finally let him go.
Even if you let go of me, I won't let go of you.
She always brings out the truth in him, even when he’s lying.
So he has to be careful. The rumors of the mischief of those who touch his letters was a risk for her to notice, but it doesn’t point back at Finley. Nothing does, so long as he keeps himself out of view, as long as she doesn’t find a way to see him when no one else does. The rumors will fade as no more pick up his letters. He can’t risk anything else. No response in any way. It would defeat every single point of everything he has done to try to make sure she doesn’t know he is still watching.
Maybe that’s part of what gets to him about Quinn MacBride. The deaths of her identities. Why she would choose them. He understands the watching, maybe. They stole something from House Esprit, and sure, maybe they keep a cautionary eye out in case Avrenne was ever inclined to retaliate someday. But there is something so telling about the death certificates. Who would ever want to say something so badly to risk the link to be caught at the watching?
There’s a malice to it, he tells the Hana in his head, leaning forward in his mind and closer to the canvas. A cruelty. Like she took something personal, and she’s angry at House Esprit Fallon, enough to want to slap them with two terrible memories if they ever went looking.
It’s not directed at Finley. Or at least, not directed at him well if they were meant to be. Those wouldn’t have been the ones he’d have picked to torment him.
Avrenne still feels like the likelier target. Something about it that he can’t shake off a feeling about is the why those two. Why Daisy? Why Ralaea? What did they have in common, more than any other two wards? Was that it? Was that what he should have been looking at closer, the why Quinn might have focused on –
“Ooooh, somehow you’re making it look even more depressingly winter-gloomy on the canvas than it is in real life, and that’s saying something!”
The woman’s voice sends a skitter up his spine and he knows who it is even before he turns around. He’s better than he was three years ago. The Painter is perfectly in place, obscuring Finley pleasantly when he turns to smile at Quinn MacBride.
“I’m afraid I can’t render every seasonal setting as radiant as a lovely lady such as yourself. The hills don’t make as captivating a subject, but they do hold still.” The flirtations are automatic, pulled from a general pool.
His teeth feel strange in his mouth. Like they itch. It’s a creeping, crawling sensation that’s spreading throughout his entire skull the longer he puts his full attention on Quinn MacBride. He tries not to breathe too deeply. Shallower breaths through his mouth, mindful of the scent of perfume in the air. He can’t smell anything, but in the cold air he might not pick up on it if it’s subtle.
“Finley Boutille of House Esprit Fallon, if I may have the pleasure of the lady’s acquaintance.” The Painter’s bow, the one that allows him to keep his eyes on her with the courtier’s flourish. “You are?”
“So impressed,” she says. “Finley Boutille, from butler to painter, out of Lordaeron’s terrifying ashes into a big, bold colored birdie swooping around, getting his fingers in all sorts of pies, just like a blackbird in the rhyme. Where are the other twenty-three birds, I wonder, oh, I just do really wonder. Or are you all four and twenty birds yourself, and is that why you aren’t quite like you should be?”
Finley keeps the Painter’s smile, and pushes his brows for his mild confusion, slight amusement. His abs tense against the pit in his stomach.
“Only the one Finley,” he lies and he lies well. “More of a brown bird than a blackbird at that as well. Partial to the color, personally. And you can be sure that if you do be a maid in the garden, your nose is quite safe. I only peck at paint caps.”
Quinn’s laugh is a grating trill, as she claps. “Golly, how much fun we could have! Do you know, that’s the sad part of it all. Betty didn’t say a single thing about your quick wit.”
His stomach tightens further. He has a split second to decide, and it is going to be too difficult to pretend he doesn’t know what she’s talking about; he’s missed his window to conceal a blink.
“Betty?” He lets there be a moment’s consternation, before he deliberately clears it, to signal that he is acknowledging the gnome. “Oh, I did meet a gnome recently who asked me to call him that. Is this a follow up about those questions? Because he didn’t need to send such a lovely assistant, but I can’t complain that he has. I always appreciate the brightening of the countryside, no matter the reason.”
Her features distort into a mimicry of extreme sadness. “Noooo, no, no. I’m not his assistant, and never was, nope, not even when we worked together. Betty won’t be sending anything to anyone. Not ever again. I didn’t want to have to make him stop making things happening, you know, because we ever such good friends once, but if he’s going to blab blab blab about things, there’s not much more I can do except, well.” She tips her head to the side, wide eyed innocence like a poisoned empty well, and shrugs. “Stop him from doing that anymore.”
The gnome is definitely dead.
The Painter nods in understanding, without comprehension of the implications. “Ah, you must be Al then? I didn’t mean to dig into any industry secrets that would require you to issue a non-disclosure agreement. I am interested in unusual enchantments for parties. The trends do shift often, and I have some particular ladies of taste and refinement I do like to impress.”
The statements are true, if unrelated.
“Al. I always liked Al. I don’t get to have her though, because she wasn’t ever really real, and it was all tangled up with Betty. Now I really can’t, can I? Poor, poor Al. She’ll have to disappear, too, and be ever so silent as the grave. Sometimes I’ve thought of what I could do with her, and I thought running away forever sounded so romantic and mysterious. But I have thought of something very fun – what do you think about her being crushed under some rocks in an alley in Stormwind?”
The barrage is a strain on the Painter. He’s not equipped for this sort of insanity. The best he can do is confusion, and that’s not going to be enough to cover every twitch of his face. He drops to the Butler, erasing his emotional responses as if in shock from the bizarre turn of things.
“I’m afraid I really don’t understand what you’re saying,” Finley says with a grain of truth embedded in the lie.
She reminds him of something skittering, a spider or a millipede, something with too many legs shuddering up closer in frantic, quivering movements that makes him pull back a step.
“Don’t you? Oh, I rather think you must, you just must, because I know that you have been poke, poke, poking around that crooked little nose of yours into places it doesn’t belong, all feather ruffling,” she says as she circles around him. The longer he stares at her, the more that sensation in his head puts pressure on something. He catches a whiff of something acidic and familiar – vanishing powder. She shakes a finger at him like he’s been naughty. “For the longest time I thought you were very, very boring, and I didn’t like that at all, not a bit, because I don’t like when boring people get the better of me, but the more I’ve looked at you, the more interesting you become! That’s like the best possible type of interesting!”
He can hardly keep up with the lie, but he does. “I’m sure I’m pleased to be of entertaining service for such a fascinating young woman,” the Painter says through the Butler, uncomfortable but game, to mask Finley’s revulsion and deepening sense of being cornered. “If I’ve offended you in some way with my questions, I should most surely apologize.”
“You should! Yes, you should apologize,” Quinn says, stamping her foot in emphasis like a petulant child, but everything is too sharp, a threat he can feel more than see. “I’ve been in trouble ever since you poked me, and I’m not allowed to do anything fun, and instead I have to be here, on this boring little hill, catching all these blackbirds trying to ruin this perfect pie I’ve been baking.”
“Then I must apologize,” the Painter says. Finley tenses subtly for an attack.
“That’s not enough! No, no, say it properly, say how sorry you are that you went grabbing with your stained hands, touching my things, picking up poor little Tess and Sen like you had any right to be snooping there. That wasn’t for you to see, not ever, and now you’ve ruined all sorts of surprises, and all my careful planning, and all my fun.”
Fuck. Split second to decide. Deny, stall out. Admit, build rapport. Deny, keep this confined to the Painter and the Butler. Admit, reveal a damning truth that stretches the Painter’s persona cover. Sometimes, you have to give something to get something.
The Painter lifts his brows, not in surprise – too late to fake it now – but in understanding. “Ah, is that what this is all about? I had not realized it would have such an impact on you, Miss Al. I was following a curiosity of mine. Were they important to you?”
It buys him time to think. This obviously isn’t a chance meeting. She came here, and she followed the trail from him pulling the records of the deaths.
Painful understanding dawns on him, and he curses himself.
The only way she’d know about that is if someone in that office tipped her off. Which of course someone did. The only way she’d have been able to get those exact deaths would have been to either use a body and identifications, or more likely to have someone fake the reports. He should have doubled back. Checked out all the people on the papers, and in the office. Found out who it was that did it. Should have realized there was a leak then, and now. This isn’t like the parties and the events, where he follows the trail of the people in front of him. He needed the ones behind the papers. Fuck. Fuck.
“They were me,” Quinn stresses, pressing her hands on her chest so hard that it moves the dark green dress over her breasts, dragging the fabric tighter across them. He hadn’t really seen the clothing until just a second ago. It’s normally one of the first things he looks at, to gauge a person’s place. Aside from her face, he can tell he’s having trouble keeping the whole of her in his head. Already he can barely register the dress. Green? He tries to breathe even more shallowly. “I had to give up so many, many things, and I’ve been watching and watching, and I don’t like it, how it’s been so different for you and the big shot Fallons with their money and their places. We lost so much, and you’ve hardly lost anything at all!” She’s shaking with anger now.
Hardly lost anything?
Daisy, lured away to a darkness he couldn’t stop.
Geoff, turning back to die with Sophie.
Sophie, dying frightened and blind the townhouse.
Barbour. Alys. Marten. Milla.
All those ships, filled with Fallon’s people, lost to the wars House Esprit Fallon can’t not fight.
A rage so heavy it clings to his soul threatens to erupt past the Painter. He can’t hold it. “I don’t think anyone escaped the past few years unscathed,” he tries through the Butler’s blandness.
“No, no, it’s not just about what wasn’t taken. It’s what hasn’t been given. It’s not right that your little duchess keeps having baby after baby, and Brigitte doesn’t. That’s not fair, nope, nope, not even a little! She deserves those babies.” Quinn circles the canvas, skipping her fingers over the edge. It sends new skitters down Finley’s spine. “But, your duchess knows what to do when she wants more babies than she can make, doesn't she? That’s how she has you and Ralaea and Daisy and Otto and Isla. Snaps them right up! One, two, three, four, five!” Quinn reaches out both hands and makes snapping motions, biting at the air with each count.
Daisy and Ralaea. What did they have in common? Something there, something he almost –
“Annnnnd there’s going to be a new baby, isn’t there? Oh, isn’t that going to be just splendid? And of course there will need to be a new nanny for the little squealer, won’t there just? With me there, think how I’ll be able to fix it. Snap, snap, snap! Brigitte will finally get her babies. I’m so great with kids! Me and my sayaad, we know just what to say, all the time. I’ll make them like me better and better, until they want to go to their new mommy. I think I’ll be a perfect, quintessential fit!” Her smile pulls out the frame of her face, distorting the edges.
Finley’s entire body seizes.
“Keep the children safe!”
“No,” he denies. And his mind works only a second faster than his mouth. The words come out while he’s still thinking, realizing exactly the point. “You couldn’t. I know you.”
Oh.
That’s why she’s here. Why she’s telling him everything.
“Aw, you figured it out and everything, look at you!” she sings brightly.
The sayaad whip snaps maybe a moment before. The timing is blurred.
All he knows is that he didn’t make it completely out of the way in time. Didn’t figure out where the strike would come from fast enough. Left shoulder, outer edge. Cut through the cloth of his suit. Glancing, but he’s already wounded before he can process the start of the fight.
Warlock.
Against what?
He has no weapon on him. Suit, no armor. Hana’s charm. Options concealed in the paintbrushes. He just has to get to them.
The sayaad is a problem. Two enemies, two angles. If he kills the warlock, the sayaad will also fall. But if he targets the warlock and can’t get her down fast enough, the sayaad could get him. He can’t spend time deciding as he dashes back a step to take in both targets positions. Every second is –
Incubus.
Shit, not even an incubus. What is that? Archincubus?
Glowing red eyes that drip blood. Mesmerizing, don’t make eye contact. Focus on the shoulder wound. Pain breaks their hold if he does get caught.
Two barbed floggers. That’s what cut his shoulder. Short range, three braids, metal tips.
Incubi are stealth, low armor. Wings slow them down. Make them less agile in quick turns. But it adds what are like two more arms to guard against a strike. Center back is most vulnerable. He’s only going to have the one shot.
Quinn’s hands move right before the corruption hits him. That’s a good sign. Kinetic caster, needs to move to direct focus. It will give him some cues. The bad sign is that she’s a fucking warlock, and now he’s in even more pain.
He kicks out, hard and fast, onto the edge of the canvas, enough to knock the entire thing in a jumble into Quinn. It pulls most of the easel with it, tipping chaotically. The canvas pops out, goes wide. The linseed oil balanced on the edge spills out in an arc into the grass.
Finley vanishes into nothing.
Grabs his supplies. Two injections. A stiletto. A palette knife that’s sharp and long enough as a real one. That’s all he has. He barely has time to get them. Move so fast his skin blurs over them.
It’s going to have to be enough.
A step through the shadows to ambush the archincubus, striking right between the bones of the ribs in through the back. Risky shot. Worth it when he feels the stiletto sink in. Got it. Wings moving already. Flogger coming up for a counterstrike. Finley injects the poison a fraction of an inhaled breath before the metal slices through where his hand was. It hits the archincubus instead, a self-inflicted wound.
It won’t take long for the paralysis to hit. But every second is another second for the shadows to eat away at him. Gives more time for the warlock to cast another spell. She’s going for something already.
The archincubus kicks out like a donkey. Hits right in the thigh, outer side. Sharp sting. Muscle pain, bone intact. Move light on his feet to get a hand on his palette, throw it at the warlock. Disrupt the cast. His left shoulder screams a shot of pain as the movement catches up. Don’t think. Just do.
He slips under the archincubus’ flogger, weaves to the outside. Crushes an elbow into the bend of the demon’s arm. Feels the crack even before the thing howls with pain and rage. A shadow lash of an invisible whip cuts something through Finley’s torso, a bruising force.
The paralysis hits. Stuns the archincubus. He has four seconds before it wears off. He can do so much in four seconds. His reach gets him to the throat. Slice through with the knife. Plunge the stiletto through the bleeding eye. Again. Demonic ichor spills out.
And then it's gone. Banished back to the Nether.
Now, it’s just the warlock.
Her teeth are bared like an animal. He watches as she reaches up into thin air, grabs something. Purple, glowing. A soul shard? He’s seen Mrs. Shine carry them, but not like that. Quinn shatters the soul shard, pulls a demon out of the thin air instantly.
It’s a fucking shivarra.
With four swords. And six arms. Against his two small knives, and one injection. He’s already wounded.
You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.
He needs to reassess this.
Between the demon and her powers, she has all the advantages. Except for one. She needs to win this. Her plan only succeeds if she walks away from this.
Finley doesn’t have to walk away to win this. He just has to make sure she doesn’t.
And that changes everything.
I’m sorry.
She can tell something’s changed in his tactics. Something shows maybe even in his face, because she pulls back, and there’s fear in her eyes even before he starts his advance.
The shivarra is even taller than he is, and has more reach. Can’t take a knife to a sword fight like this. Which means taking out the swords. Which means stunning her. Just need to get close enough the once.
Light, she’s going to cut him to ribbons.
Don’t think about it. Just do it. Going to get hit. Accept it.
He steps far off line, ensuring half her attacks will have much farther to travel, and will have weak structure. The other two are going to hurt.
She brings them down.
He has a moment to decide what the sacrifice will be. Left arm. He can get the top along with a non-lethal strike to his forearm. The other blade he catches harder in the crevice of his elbow. It’s going to slice deeply enough that it might hit a tendon.
He may lose the whole arm function on the wrong twist. Don’t think about it.
Twist. Blood.
Less than a second to inject her into the wrist with the caught sword.
Drop the syringe.
Parry off the first incoming other blade with the knife. He’s not going to make it for the other, too fast. Turn into it. It cuts down his back, straight into the muscle. Pulls the blade with his caught arm, slices it deeper.
Kick out to sweep for an ankle, get her stumbling, twist up in her arms.
Knife on the upturn, cutting across her closest arm. She’s slowing.
Agony bursts through his soul. Crackles down his limbs hard enough he nearly drops the knife. Shit. The warlock. He inhales, holds it, focuses his attention to the air. Not the pain. The air.
The shivarra twitches, and then goes paralytically still. His only chance. Left arm close to the body, staunch the bleeding, buy time. The shadows grow long around him. Step, cut. Step, cut. Arteries, tendons.
The demon is already recovering. Muscles building tension. Cut, faster. Faster. Finally, through the throat. Deep enough to sever the important line. Her sword swings down into him. Still not dead. Another cut through across his chest. Something gives in his control over his left arm. A chest muscle.
Corner of his eye, the warlock moving her hands. A red tether from her to the demon. Fuck.
He sacrifices the stiletto, throwing it in a direct shot straight at the warlock. It lands on her upper shoulder, sinks in only an inch or two. But it’s enough to make her scream and lose the cast. It’s enough for him to plunge the dagger up into the shivarra’s face.
Then he’s stumbling forward – the shivarra banished. He drops to one knee, kicks back up. Can’t stop. Blood soaks into his shirt. Heavier.
Corruption and agony swirl through him. She’s already casting another. Sprint at – a shadow hits him so hard it he gasps, muscles locked. Slides in the grass, damn wrong shoes. Another cast. Something that bites deeper. He can hardly breathe.
“I love you.”
Hana.
He drags in air. Drags on a cloak of shadow from the deepest recesses. Relief sings as he’s released from the pain. All that remains is the blood he’s losing with each second. He still has enough. The sprint forward is everything that’s left.
The front kick hits her hard in the chest. She’s knocked back, stumbles. Keeps her feet, but the next cast is lost. Finley rushes the gap between them. Lunges for the liver shot with the knife. She hadn’t dislodged the stiletto. He drives it in deeper, blood running down his left arm. She’s shocked by the pain. He knows. It shuts down her brain for a moment.
That’s all he needs.
“I’m not going to teach you how to fight. I’m going to teach you how to kill.”
Knife up through the stomach, under the ribs. He can feel the warmth of her body on his hand, the blood over his knuckles. Her eyes are so wide. Alterac brown ochre base. Flecks of yellow ochre. Scarlet lake blood red freckles under her lashes. Betrayal and surprise. He can smell the vanishing powder. Her ribcage presses down against his wrist, as her body shudders and contracts around the knife.
“You… can’t. This isn’t…how I die.” She sounds small, and fragile. The tremble of her lips reminds him of Isla, a sickening jolt that has him locked in her gaze. She’s not any older than he is. No wrinkles. Never will, now. He can’t look away. She slides off the knife away from him, and he doesn’t follow through with another. He knows he’s watching her die. She whimpers, hands over her stomach. He didn’t make it all the way to her heart. She’s dying too slow. A keening wheeze tells him he punctured a lung.
End it.
End it, now.
He can’t. He watches as she takes horrible infinity seconds to die, shocked and pained, his own blood dripping down to mingle with hers on the cold brown grass.
And then she’s gone. He watches it happen, the moment her features go too still. Her eyes go flat and fixed.
He breathes, hard enough that each draw hurts. Bruised ribs? Maybe. He killed her. He did that. She’s a body now. He has to deal with a body of someone he’s killed. The thought is heavy in his head. The adrenaline is still coursing through him, and he wants to drop the knife.
Wait.
No. A warlock. There’s something – he remembers. He tightens his grip on the knife, refuses to let himself relax. Prepares himself for another burst.
It’s barely with enough time as Quinn’s eyes flood once again with life. The soul stone shatters. The sound is delayed. He’s moving too fast for the order to strike him properly. Into the vanishing shadows, step through them. Behind her. Plunge the knife straight in through the back. Once, twice. Liver. Kidney. Pull her hair, head back. Throat exposed. Drag the knife over the skin. The red spray tells him he’s hit the right spot.
She shakes, hands around her own throat. Whispers and gasps. “No. No no no no no. It…it can't… end like this.”
But it does.
The blood slows. Her heart stops beating. She's limp, slumping down to the ground. Tiny and crumpled.
She’s dead. Really dead this time.
The ground reaches up and grabs him. Face on the bloody grass. His ribs scream. He can’t breathe.
He has to get up. No one is coming. No one knows he’s here. If he can just get up, if he can get…
A healthstone. She might have had a healthstone.
It takes every ounce of something in him to push onto his side. Blood flows faster out of him. Colder. A lot colder. Dizzy. Healthstone, he needs the healthstone. Pockets. He drags a hand onto her clothes. Not a gentleman. Dead body, moving her is heavy, but she was never a lady. Green, yes. That’s the –
Crushed.
She used it. Or fell, broke. It’s not… he rubs it between his fingers. Something? Was that…
On his back. The sky. He’s losing light. That’s not good for art.
Art?
He can’t…think. Tired. Avrenne will be… he needs to warn her about… children. The MacBrides.
Oh. Isla. She’s going to be so… mad at him. He’s missing the…book.
Hana.
Fuck. No, no. Sweetheart. His Arched Harper. Get up. Get up. Look after her. His letters, what if someone…else… She doesn’t know. He never told her that he…
The sky is so dark. He can’t open his eyes. No. It’s not…his eyes.
Geoff.
Avrenne…
He kept the children safe.