Page 103 of The Blood Queen

Another blow comes; I can’t deflect it. The great sword slices through the skin of my arm, and I bite back a cry, blood spattering on the clean white cobwebs around me. I lose my grip on one of my swords; it hits the floor with a clatter muted by the webs.

The High Blade smiles. Manic. Gruesome. She’s covered in thick globs of gore and spiders, all of them crawling over her, in her hair. She’s a monster through and through, and I stagger to my feet, my remaining sword held out, and—

Another blow. I catch the edge of it, but it still slices across my chest, ripping through my light leather armor. Pain lances deep. How deep? I can’t stop to check because the High Blade’s advancing, and I falter back.

The webs, the ones the spiders wove to close up Alyth’s path to the loom, are behind me.

My legs stick, my arms. I yank hard, but I’m fixed fast.

Thousands of voices hiss and ripple around the room, creeping up over me, consuming me.

“Death, death,” some of them say.

“Save us, save us all,” others beg.

“Now, now, now!”

The High Blade approaches, slower now, seeing me caught. A fly for her to feast on.

Was it long enough? Did Alyth have enough time? The High Blade should vanish if Alyth succeeded, right? Just like the Faerie Queen did?

I wait, watching, breath held, searing in my lungs. Because if the High Blade vanishes, then Alyth’s dead.

But the High Blade continues to draw closer. She lifts her massive sword, holding it out like a battering ram in front of her, and keeps walking. Walking.

The tip of the blade presses to my chest.

Alyth, I think or pray or cry out. I’m sorry, I’m sorry—

I didn’t give her enough time. I didn’t give her—

The sword cuts through my skin. Muscles. Lungs. Bones fracture.

I gasp, coldness swarming me. It isn’t pain; I expect pain. It’s just a shock ripping out like lightning flaring through darkness, something blinding and bright and harrowing.

The High Blade grins, teeth red, hair caught in bloody tangles around her face.

She keeps walking.

Pushing that sword deeper, deeper, skewering me entirely, until she’s right up against me, the hilt on my chest, and I’m choking. On air? On blood? On words. Alyth, I’m sorry. I love you. I’m sorry—

“What a waste,” the High Blade sneers.

She rips the sword straight up, and the last thing I know is a brush of cold on my cheek. The smell of snow and somehow greenery both. And a little voice, not the spiders. Kitty?

“It’s okay, Samson. We’re all with you now too.”

28 Alyth

The Damhan-Allaidh hefts her hulking body over the throne. Her black, shining shell swirled unnaturally with streaks of red dominates my vision, and I focus on her, not on the sounds of fighting behind me, of what may happen to Samson. He will live, I tell myself.

“You musssssst hurry,” the giant spider urges, two front legs tapping on the crimson throne.

The loom waits for me.

I drop to my knees before it, the needle with the High Blade’s blood pinched between my fingers.

A life for a life, I think.