Page 178 of The Mirror of Beasts

For a moment, the grip on me eased. I tried to reach my brother—only to collide with Lord Death’s fist as he punched it through my chest.

Agony seared my every sense, billowing out from the center of my chest like a dying star.

I was distantly aware of Cabell’s cry of “No!”

My gaze drifted down slowly and I choked on my breath. There was no blood. Lord Death hadn’t pierced the skin or broken through my ribs, but his hand was inside me, gripping something. Not my heart. Not my lungs or any other organ, but something vital all the same.

His face leered at me. The revenants were tearing at his skin, leaving the cuts to weep blood. He seemed oblivious to the gashes, even as he licked at the gore trailing over his lips.

I couldn’t speak. The moment he shifted his fist to pull it free, it was like my skin was being flayed from the inside. Nothing existed outside that pain.

“Harvesting a soul is quick work,” he snarled at me. “But you—you will suffer.”

His hand pulled back slowly, so slowly, as if trying not to tear the delicate substance as he peeled.

The revenants encircled me, trying to pull me free of him, but it only made the suffering that much sharper. Then Caitriona and Olwen were there, each gripping my arms, desperately trying to pull me free, shouting something I couldn’t hear above the roar of pain in my skull.

At the darkening edge of my vision, a small girl appeared. Her short white-blond hair fluttered around her face. Her knees and shins were bruised, her shoes dusted with old grass and burrs. A too-big plaid raincoat hung from her shoulders. The fear and pain on her face were so sharp, it cut my heart.

Me.

I looked at her, not at the monster.

You’re safe, I told her. Don’t be afraid.

Creiddylad had faced him alone, but I wasn’t.

I felt it now. The decay, not just in his soul, but the physical body he wore. King Arthur had died, and though magic had preserved his body, the traces of that death still lingered in him. And now those faint threads of rot were mine to seize. And through the haze of torment, I imagined it—I saw it so clearly—his organs hardening with bark, his bones turning to vines.

“I was Creiddylad,” I gasped out. “You stole her life, but I’m alive. We are alive.”

Lord Death’s eyes bulged as he felt it. The vines that were spreading from his ribs, wrapping around his lungs, threading through soft viscera and muscle. He opened his mouth to speak, only to gag on the branches crawling up his throat. Blood poured from his mouth, his nose. The roots and branches bulged sickeningly beneath his skin, tearing through at his shoulder, pushing his icy breastplate into me. Branches broke his teeth as he leered down at me.

Not enough! my mind cried.

Even in the throes of his mortal body’s death, his soul still had its grip on mine. I saw it in his eyes, that triumph of death as he pulled harder, harder—

Olwen wrapped her arms around my center. Caitriona plunged her sister’s dagger into his face, his neck, wherever she could reach.

My thoughts shattered. I couldn’t tell if I was hallucinating the light that flared suddenly behind him. If Neve was really standing there, clutching Excalibur’s hilt in her hand, her face glowing in the radiance of her magic.

A single thought blazed through my mind.

Together, to the end.

“Strike true!” Caitriona roared.

I lunged up and forward, ripping the horned crown from Lord Death’s head and flinging it away just as Neve surged forward with what remained of Excalibur.

The blade broke through his armor. His back arched as it sliced into his spine, as that blue-white light billowed inside him. Lord Death’s breath came as a gurgling gasp. Blackened blood, now foul and rancid, spilled over his lips. The vines I’d made hardened like stone.

His hands twisted in the fabric of my coat, fingers bruising as they clamped around my arm. Trying, with his last breaths, to drag me to hell with him. His lips formed the same word, the same demand, over and over.

“Crei … ddy … lad …”

The skin of his face turned as purple as a bruise, shriveling against the bone. Sheaths of skin melted from his arms and neck, their edges burning away with molten silver fire. He gasped, his burning lips seeming to seek mine.

“Crei … ddy …” His expression was horrible, a pale mimicry of love. The obsession had festered in him so long, it became a fever that burned away any other path he might have taken.

---