“You lecture me?” R’hlem’s awed whisper began to develop into a powerful roar. “You sent me to hell.” He burst into flame, bright blue fire churning into the air, reflected upon the thousands of pieces of obsidian—it looked as if we were all in hell now. Mickelmas flinched.
With a furious cry, R’hlem shot a fireball at the magician, who dodged it. With a wave of his hand and some shouted words, Mickelmas made all the shards of black glass surge into the air. They formed sharp-winged, dagger-beaked little birds that circled and pecked at R’hlem. While the Skinless Man fought, Mickelmas vanished and reappeared by my side.
But then, with a scream of pain, his whole body went rigid. R’hlem had taken control of him as well. Instantly, the birds crashed to the floor, and R’hlem stormed over and ripped the multicolored coat from Mickelmas’s shoulders. As we watched in horror, R’hlem set the garment ablaze and tossed it to the floor. It burned quickly, reduced to a pile of ashes.
“Let’s see you hop about now.” R’hlem seized Mickelmas by the throat.
To my horror, Mickelmas began to cry. “Punish me, but leave the girl alone. She’s innocent.”
“Of course she is. In time, when she’s by my side and sees all of England spread out at her feet, she will appreciate all I’ve done,” R’hlem rasped. He slammed the older magician to the floor and leaned over him, blood dripping from his face and onto Mickelmas’s cheek. “You know what they did to me.”
“I can see,” Mickelmas gasped.
“Not my beauties, no. The sorcerers. You saw what they did to my brother. To Helen. You kept my girl away from me.” His voice shook with terrible feeling. “The last human piece of me; the final scrap of her mother. You turned that into one of them!” He roared that last word in Mickelmas’s face. “After everything they’ve done to our race, you bow like the servant you are.” There was nothing of the calm bloody king left in R’hlem. Over a decade of misery and blame flooded out of him. “I hate you.”
I’d said the same words in the same way to the same magician. Mickelmas was sobbing now, tears streaming into his gray beard.
My body screamed as I sat up, the pain finally ebbing. R’hlem was so fixated on Mickelmas he’d taken his attention off me. I knew now, beyond any doubt, I could not win against him. I wasn’t strong enough.
There was no way.
“I flayed Charles Blackwood from the top of his scalp to the bottom of his feet.” R’hlem bared his teeth in Mickelmas’s face. “What can I do to you?”
R’hlem made a fist, and Mickelmas howled as the flesh of his left hand began to twitch. With excruciating slowness, the skin tore apart with a dreadful rip. Blood ran down his arm. Mickelmas wailed and pounded his other fist into the floor, but he could do nothing. R’hlem was skinning him alive before my eyes.
“No, please!” I wept, crawling forward. “Please, Father!”
R’hlem paused. Slowly, he brought his arm down. Mickelmas keened, clutching his torn hand to his chest.
Wonderingly, R’hlem said, “Say that again.”
Shaking, I unsheathed Porridge and tossed it to the side. My dagger already lay by his feet. Then, broken, I collapsed and sobbed, “Father, please. I can’t bear it any longer.”
My cries reverberated in the space around us as I buried my face in my hands. My grief—for Dee, Whitechurch, London, Rook—all flooded out in one painful rush. I wept until I couldn’t breathe, until my stomach ached.
I could not fight him. Against such power, victory was impossible.
There was the crunch of a boot on glass, and the sense that someone stood before me. R’hlem knelt, and with a gentle shushing sound took my hands from my face. That metallic tang of magic all about him eased as he helped me stand.
“There, now.” He plucked a surprisingly unbloodied handkerchief from his breast pocket and wiped my eyes.
“Please just let him go,” I whimpered, my teeth chattering uncontrollably. He pressed me to his chest. The damp, cold feel of bloody silk met my cheek, but I didn’t flinch. He passed a gloved hand over my hair.
Despite everything, I let myself be folded against him. R’hlem rested his chin on top of my head, and then whispered, “Helena. Darling, I have her.”
I trembled at those words. And even with all this horror, for that moment, I let myself feel safe. I returned his embrace. With my eyes closed, I could picture us as we should have been: in a house in Devon, me at his knee growing up, him holding me when I cried. Fathers were supposed to keep your nightmares at bay. I let him wrap me in his protection, listened to him whisper my mother’s name, and cried. He hushed me, soothed me, stroked my hair.
“There, now. I’m sorry, sweetheart,” he murmured, pulling away and touching my cheek. His one eye shimmered with unshed tears. Here was the spark of goodness I had prayed for. Love revealed the man behind the monster’s facade. I trembled to see it. “Can you forgive me?”
“If you’ll forgive me.”
I made the one small dagger—the tiniest, most insignificant one I’d taken from Ralph Strangewayes’s house—shoot out of its wrist sheath and into my hand.
My father could not be defeated by strength of arms. His goodness, his love, was my only weapon against him.
I plunged the blade deep into his heart.
R’hlem went to the floor, and I went with him. I gripped the back of his neck, feeling every pulse and twitch of his muscle. He looked at me, shocked, as if trying to understand. Blood spurted onto the front of my gown as I fumbled with the blade’s handle. Ripping it out, I prepared to drive it once more into his body…but the betrayal burning in his eye paralyzed me.
I stabbed my father in his heart. The blade slipped from my hand, my fingers too numb to grip properly. No matter how much I saw the beast in front of me, I also saw the man.
R’hlem roared, the sound shaking the cathedral to its very foundation.
Shadow overwhelmed me, plunging me into pitch black between one heartbeat and the next. Rook threw me to the floor and straddled me, his knees pressing into my sides. One clawed hand to my throat, his lips pulled back to reveal wicked fangs. Lunging forward, he sank those sharp teeth into my shoulder.
Pain shredded muscle and bone. Darkness poured into me like the ocean crammed inside a thimble.
My vision failed, my screams becoming unnaturally thin. A void seemed to rupture in the air above me. If I looked into it, I would forget my name, my past, my friends, everything….
No. I fought against the void and lit myself on fire. Rook was engulfed as well, and he sprang away from me.
My whole body was warm and wet with blood; my shoulder gushed. The pain. A thousand hot needles jabbed into my flesh; a continuous river of acid flowed through my veins.
Rook threw his arms over his face and howled at my fire. I could now make out threads of black twisting in the blue flame. Why? Why should that be? With one last effort, I burned as brightly as I could.
Screeching, Rook flew to R’hlem and brought me back into the daylight. I lay there, every breath I drew like fire in my lungs.
Mickelmas, his hand still bleeding profusely, circled R’hlem. My father struggled to rise, slipping in his own blood. I’d done that to him.
Gore dripping from his fingers, he reached into the air. “Come! Korozoth!”
Rook swallowed his master in a flurry of shadowy wings and robes and dissolved them both like smoke on the wind. Mickelmas and I were alone.
The magician struggled for breath. “I brought this upon us all.” It sounded like a revelation. “And my coat. My beautiful coat.” He gazed mournfully upon the pile of ashes.
When I tried to sit up, the pain sank its claws deeper into me. My vision fractured—somewhere, as if from a distance, I heard my screams. Mickelmas was at my side, whispering words in my ear. As if by a miracle, the pain abated. It still had a tooth in me, but only one.