Page 176 of The Mirror of Beasts

Help me, I thought. Help me, please.

“What a disappointment you have revealed yourself to be,” Lord Death told Caitriona. He brought the point of his sword down to her throat.

Close your eyes, a voice whispered in my ears. The words were carried in the wind, in the mist. Let go of your fear. You know what must be done …

The tightness in my chest, the tremor that moved through my hands—it had a name now.

Fear.

Release it, the voice whispered. Release yourself.

My past. The powerlessness I’d felt as a little girl trying to cobble together the life I thought I wanted.

Release it.

My present. The dread that held me back, that clouded how I saw myself.

Release it.

The wall came crumbling down inside me, and I felt then what waited for me on the other side. The magic that was mine alone, sleeping in the darkness beneath the snow. The decay waiting to be transformed by the coming of spring.

The magic that existed in all natural things, in their life, was also the potential in death to transform into something else.

“This is your final chance,” Lord Death’s voice rumbled nearby.

In Avalon, there had only been one creature that lived beyond his control. One that had transformed herself.

The memories of High Priestess Viviane’s revenant flooded my mind, but there was none of the terror I’d felt as I faced her. She had remade herself from a rotting wasteland, reassembled a body out of dead bark, mud, long-withered grass. Her soul defiant to the end.

Now I dreamt her as she should have been, blooming with life. Her body regenerated, the roots defining her limbs renewed, becoming young and green, the crumpled wet leaves a blooming flower. I imagined others growing up from the decay littering the woods, standing beside her. Their bodies new, strong. Under my command.

I forced my eyes open.

“Kiss … iron … you … bastard …,” Caitriona ground out around the root. From her vantage point, something caught her eye and she froze.

A hand made of roots and green leaves rose from the dirt behind Lord Death’s feet, its long, sinewy fingers unfolding as ribbons of braided grass. The palm, then the wrist, an arm—and a head, crowned with flowers. The revenant had no face as she rose, but she glowed with some inner magic.

Concentrating, I imagined the hand flexing, then closing in a fist around Lord Death’s ankle. Through the tether of magic between me and the revenant, I pulled.

He stumbled back with a noise of surprise. The only thing more satisfying than the way his eyes widened was the sight of the other silhouettes rising from the earth, taking shape in the mist. One by one, my creatures blossomed up from the ground.

Lord Death hacked at the revenant with his sword. “Damn you—damn you—what devilry is this?”

The magical restraints binding my waist eased as his attention splintered. I scrambled to my feet, but the roots seized me again, punishing in their grip. The revenants’ bodies shuddered, threatening to fall to pieces without my focus to direct them.

Before I could center myself, to tighten my grip on the magical tethers, lights streaked around me, weaving through the tortured branches of the trees toward Lord Death.

No—not to him. To the revenants. To the bodies I’d created.

The tethers I’d been fighting to hold on to went slack, and instinctively, I released them. The spirits of the priestesses of Avalon streaked across the night air, sinking through the skin of leaves, mud, and roots of my revenants. The bodies I’d made turned iridescent as the souls settled into them, their forms stabilizing, steadying, even without my control.

With a furious howl, Lord Death flung Caitriona away, sending her soaring back through the trees.

The vines that were wrapped around my center jerked hard enough to knock the breath from me. They dragged me toward Lord Death as he sliced at the revenants with growing agitation. Each time he succeeded in severing a limb, it grew back, stronger and faster.

Digging my feet into the ground did nothing to slow Lord Death’s magic as he dragged me into his outstretched arm. One of the revenants grabbed me, tugging me back, but the force of his magic was such that it ripped the revenant’s arms from its body. New limbs grew from flecks of bark to replace them.

“You are under my command!” he bellowed at a revenant. The leaf-laden arm ripped the sword from his other hand, sending it scuttling into the forest.

---