Kelly Mendig - Three Days to Dead

I touched his shoulder. He jerked as though stung. I turned his face toward me. He avoided eye contact, looking everywhere but forward.

“Wyatt,” I said. “Look at me, damn you.”

He did. Some of the tension fled, but he remained pale and trembling. His eyes were obsidian pools, never-ending and full of uncertainty. I had never seen him so vulnerable, not even when I died the first time.

My heart pounded. Because sitting next to him, at the turning point of this entire freaking mystery, I finally remembered my death.

Nothing as dramatic as I’d hoped for—no remembrance of important words or necessary information. Just flinching away from the light, as I’d always done when the closet door opened. Numb, unable to move, and without the energy to do so. I’d hoped to bleed to death before anyone found me like that, broken and ruined.

I remembered Wyatt kneeling over me, releasing my hands from the cuffs that bound them. Unable to feel my arms or legs. Looking into his heartbreaking eyes, seeing the measure of his devastation. Hating myself for causing him so much pain. My tongue had been thick, my mouth dry. I couldn’t speak, couldn’t say I was sorry or that I loved him. I only managed a high-pitched keening sound. I had gazed at him until his face went dark and the agony was finally over.

He had looked much the same as he looked in Amalie’s home—ravaged, betrayed, alone. I wondered if my own expression was that much different.

“I didn’t say anything,” I said. “When I died, all I saw was you, and I never said a word. You couldn’t have known what I did or didn’t learn, could you?”

His head turned slowly left, right, back to center. A simple shake. An even simpler affirmation that left me cold. We had both been betrayed and manipulated by people we trusted. I had been rustled out of my afterlife and fed lies disguised as good intentions. He had been fooled into a fate worse than death, tricked into playing a pawn in Hell’s chess game.

But we weren’t done playing, and Knights knew how to sweep in sideways. “This is not your future,” I said. “If Tovin ever said one truthful thing to you, Wyatt Truman, it’s that we belong together. Whether it’s in life or in death, we’ll prove that one thing right. You hear me?”

He blinked. Some amount of recognition sparked. Bright circles of color flared in his cheeks. The lines in his face smoothed out, and determination replaced terror. “I hear you.” His voice was thick, not as convincing as his expression. “I feel like such a fool.”

“Tovin played on your emotions and manipulated you from the start. It wasn’t your fault.”

His left eye twitched. “Don’t patronize me, Evy.”

“Then quit feeling sorry for yourself and help me figure out how to fucking do something about it, okay?”

He pushed my hand away and faced the table.

Okay, fine. To Amalie, I asked, “Once this thing possesses a host, can it be expelled?”

“The death of the host body ejects the Tainted, yes,” Amalie said. “It will be momentarily weakened, rendering it vulnerable to expulsion beyond the Break. However, sending something back across, as bringing it forward, requires great knowledge of the inner workings of our oldest magic.”

“Can you do it?”

She shook her head, light sparkling off her jewels. “Few possess the knowledge, and I am acquainted with none of them, save Tovin.”

“What about the other elves?”

“At this late hour, attempting contact will take too much time, and there is no guarantee they will share their knowledge.”

I blew hard between clenched teeth. “Okay, so what about capture? Let’s say it infects someone and the host dies. Can we catch the Tainted before it finds another host? Like in a crystal or something?”

“I know of no such method of capture, but that does not mean none exist.”

Wyatt snorted. I glared, but he didn’t acknowledge me.

“Can you find out?” I asked the sprite leader.

“Of course.”

It wasn’t much, but it was a start. Only, Wyatt didn’t seem willing to acknowledge the hopeful information. I gave up. He could wallow for a while, but I didn’t want to see it. I put some food on a plate and poured another goblet of wine.

“Amalie, my apologies,” I said. “May I finish my meal in my room?”

The sprite nodded, her demeanor cool and calm, as if our argument had never happened. We’d figured it out. We knew who our enemies were. We just needed time to plan a counterattack and beat Tovin at his own twisted game.

At the door, I spared a look back at Wyatt. He didn’t turn around. I sighed and left.

23:25

My patience vanished with the last of the wine. The assortment of fruit, nuts, and raw vegetables had filled the ache in my stomach and refueled my energy, but could do nothing for a different ache. That went deeper, the wound more raw.

So many things had happened in the last two days that Tovin had never factored into his plan. I had woken up in a different body than planned—a fortuitous, if unexplainable, turn of events—so Wyatt and I hadn’t been imprisoned immediately and for the duration of the pact. Being out in the world, I’d managed to gather more evidence of the coming power shift and shown Tovin for the traitor he was. I had hurt people along the way—my heart still ached for Alex—but had it been worth it? All of the pain, both physical and emotional, in order to prevent the Break from being crossed?

I paced the length of the room, hands clasped behind my back. Melodies of harmony and peace, not quite real music, danced in the air. I hadn’t noticed it before, and yet it seemed like the background noise had always been there—part of the lives of the Fair Ones who lived in an underground cave and guarded the gate to Hell.

It sounded absurd, but no more so than the idea of a twenty-two-year-old who served unofficial warrants on vampires, goblins, half-Bloods, and weres for a living. Or a twenty-seven-year-old barista and part-time college student who committed suicide in time for a murdered girl’s soul to possess her body. Why this body? Why Chalice and not the Hunter Tovin chose?

The answer was probably in her past, but that had been erased—except for the hard copies Wyatt had requested. Was it worth getting her history? Did it really matter why Chalice? Not really, not when possessing her had been a stroke of sheer luck. The first wrench in Tovin’s wheel.

On one pass from the bed to the far wall, I spotted a shadow by the door and stopped. Wyatt stood just inside, half his body still covered by the curtain. His color was back to normal. He’d lost the shell shock and seemed almost sheepish, both in his half smile and the slump of his shoulders.

“Can I come in?” he asked.

“You’re already halfway in. Might as well come the rest of the way.”

He did, but stayed close to the door. Ten feet of empty air separated us, but it might as well have been ten miles. He shifted from foot to foot as he gazed around the room. My attention kept dropping to his chest—rippling with perfectly toned muscles, glistening with scented oil, the scars of the last few days washed away by gnome magic. Too bad the gnomes didn’t have an oil to heal the internal wounds, too.

“You were right,” he said. “Tovin manipulated all of this, and by sitting and wallowing in self-pity, I’m letting him manipulate me again. I won’t do that anymore, Evy. I may not see a way out of this yet, but if this really is our last day together, I want to spend every second of it with you.”

“Preferably not fighting?”

“Doing anything except fighting.”

“Did you have something else in mind?”