Page 71 of Zel
Ulrich’s head lulled like he might pass out, and Zel swiftly lifted him, using his newfound strength that amazed him once he had Ulrich in his arms. He carried him with ease to the chaise and laid him down like Ulrich had laid down Zel when first exploring the truth beneath his skirts.
Violet eyes fluttered back to alertness, more a mauve-like brown now.
“I… will not die from this.”
“Thank God. Then what—”
“I will not die… until you remove my arm and let the curse consume me.” Ulrich tapped the dagger in the sheath on Zel’s belt.
“No.”
“You no longer have to fear the wrath of your guild master. You can live whatever life you want now, Zel, powerful,practically untouchable, but still mortal. And I am vulnerable enough to finally die.”
“I will not kill you.” Zel shook his head. “Please don’t ask that of me.”
“I wish I did not have to, but I am too weak to do it myself. It is why I needed an assassin to begin with. This is the only opportunity I will have to be set free. Take my arm, and the rest of me will rot.”
“Please…please.” Zel climbed onto the chaise with him, hating how the cursed arm was still mostly black and shriveled even with his hair wrapped around it. The arm dangled from the chaise as if useless. “Would immortality truly be a curse if it was with me? If we were together? Please, Ulrich. I love you.”
“And I love you, my little cabbage.” Ulrich lifted his head enough to press their foreheads together. “But you ask for forever after only a month in my company. What if you came to regret that choice?”
"Whether a life of twenty years or thousands, love can strike just as suddenly and is no less worthwhile. Or can you tell me you have ever felt for another as you feel for me?"
“I cannot.”
“Did you even truly miss another's touch until you had mine?”
“I did not.” Ulrich smiled softly.
“Then what I ask makes more sense than what you ask of me.Please, Ulrich. Stay.”
Ulrich’s eyes gazed at Zel with perhaps more wonder than ever before. “So clever for one so young. Perhaps with you, Zel, forever would not be a curse. But are you sure of what you ask of me—and of yourself?”
“Yes.” Zel nodded.
“If you are certain, if you have no doubts in you at all, then—”
The sing of a rotating blade cutting through the air came faster than Zel could react. As he sprung upright, shielding Ulrich fromwhatever was coming, it did not occur to him to protect the part of Ulrich hanging off the chaise.
A handaxe lodged into Ulrich’s cursed arm beneath his shoulder, severing everything beneath it.
“Noooooo!”
As the remaining blackness and violet veins began to spread throughout the rest of Ulrich’s body, the power in Zel unleashed with such a fury that he levitated off the chaise. His regrown hair spiraled around him like mythic snakes and lashed out at the attacker in the window, who Zel only realized wasRudyin the same instant that his hair threw him from the tower.
Zel swept forward to give chase like a streak of sunlight the same way Ulrich could move like shadows. Rudy had climbed the tower using a coil of Zel’s own severed hair left at the Thieves Guild and tied it to a grappling hook. That must have been what Zel had heard earlier—the hooks lodging into the stone.
As Rudy plummeted, slowing his descent by still haphazardly holding onto the rope of hair, Zel extracted the grappling hook just as Rudy landed, so his final descent was harsh enough to stun him. Zel leapt from the window, descending like a blazing star, hair wildly whipping around to grab hold of the perimeter wall and launch him over it to land where Rudy had fallen.
“Whyyyyy?” he demanded, imagining he must look as awesomely fearsome as Ulrich once appeared to all those who crossed him.
“He bewitched you!” Rudy coughed, holding his ribs like a few might be broken.Good. “He must have! He must have bewitched you! He’s a monster!”
“I love that monster!” Zel snarled. Outside at this hour, the area should have been cast in darkness, but Zel’s figure lit up the clearing as though it were midday. “Now I am one too. How could you have gotten here fast enough—?” he started to ask, butwith how Rudy had fallen, he noticed in the stretch of Rudy’s shirt the chain of a necklace beneath it—gold like Zel’s.
Zel fell upon Rudy and ripped the necklace out from under the fabric. It was an identical emerald pendant to the one Rudy had given to him.
“This lets you port to somewhere nearby wherever its twin is, doesn’t it?” he guessed.
