Page 73 of The Mirror of Beasts

“Why wouldn’t you listen to me before, then?” he said. His cold mask cracked, revealing the frustration simmering below.

“Before?” I asked, startled. “In Avalon?”

“I told you what he’s doing is to help all of us, to rid the world of creatures like the sorceresses,” he said. “Like the Hollowers who turned up their noses at us and would have let us starve.”

I stared. “You saw what the hunters did in there. How is that helping anyone but himself?”

“He only wants what the sorceresses kept from him,” Cabell said. “All of this will stop when he has it.”

“Will it?” I pressed, daring to take another step forward.

“Come with me,” Cabell said, an edge of pleading to the words. “We won’t be helpless ever again. We’ll never be the orphans hidden away in the attic, or prey to men like Wyrm ever again. Everything we need, we’ll have. Power. A home. Respect. We can have it—but only if you come with me.”

Until that moment, I’d seen the conversation going one way: me begging him to come with me. To hear him turn the question back on me flipped my world inside out. I couldn’t make sense of it. These weren’t Lord Death’s words. They were his.

Maybe … maybe I was breaking through. And if I just pushed a little harder—

“We don’t need Lord Death for any of that,” I said. “I know you think you’re in control of what’s happening, but the depths of his magic, Cab—what he’s given you isn’t power. He’s taken away your freedom.”

“Is that what you think?”

The words were a punch to my lungs. Panic raced through me, trembling and terrible. I reached out a hand to search for him. “Please. It’s not too late—it’s never too late. You can come back.”

I really was a fool, because I almost let myself believe that the silence that followed meant something. That I was starting to bring him around.

“There’s no going back. All I see now is what lies ahead.” His tone was rough and low, as if he didn’t quite trust the wind not to carry the words to more distant ears. “You can come with me now and see the truth of what’s unfolding around you, or you can stay here in the dark and die.”

“All of those people, Cab,” I said. “In Avalon, tonight—how can you stand it, knowing what he did? How could you stand there and do nothing to stop him? Some part of you, deep down, the part of you his magic can’t touch, knows all of this is wrong. Knows that what he’s doing to you, to everyone, is wrong.”

He scoffed, his laugh cruel and baiting. “Am I supposed to believe you actually care?”

When I didn’t answer, his boots crushed the gravel as he made to cross over the road. I had one last card to play, and I threw it down between us.

“Nash is alive,” I told him. “He came back.”

His steps stilled. I heard his sharp intake of breath. “You’re lying.”

“I’m not,” I told him. “We can go to him together. He’ll explain everything.”

I held my breath, as if any small movement might tip us off the knife’s edge we stood on.

Damn Nash, I thought. Damn him for leaving again. If he’d just stayed with us, if he had come here, if Cabell could have seen him with his own eyes …

If, if, if, my mind echoed, singing the refrain of my entire life.

“It’s too late for that,” Cabell said, barely a whisper.

“It’s never too late,” I told him again. So close. He was so close.

“In ages past, in a world that was full of darkness and curses, there were two children,” I said softly. “And all they had—all they ever had—was each other—”

“Stop it,” he hissed.

Cabell’s low noise of distress was almost too much to take. In a single, powerful move, he unsheathed his blade and whirled on me. Its cold steel point hovered over my heart, where my death mark still ached.

My eyes slid from his face, hollowed and pale, down to the unfamiliar sword. My agonized expression was mirrored back to me in the silver blade. An inkling of a thought dripped through my mind, only to disperse before it could take shape.

“There’s nothing you can do to stop what’s already begun,” Cabell snarled. “I’ll only warn you once—if I see you again, I’ll kill you myself.”

---