Seanan McGuire - Late Eclipses

“It’s good to want things. Don’t worry, it’s safe; you can laugh all you want,” she hissed. “I brewed the poison on her blade myself, and this wound might have been fatal even without it. I trained her well. I shape my tools in more than just bottles.”

I motioned for Connor to stay where he was and stepped forward, keeping my hand on the pommel of my sword. I didn’t care how wounded she was; if she moved, I’d kill her. “Do you want us to call for help?” I asked.

“No. No, I don’t think so.” She laughed, unwinding her arms from around her middle. The skin of her hands and forearms was dark and slippery with blood. “Look.”

There was a deep slash across the front of her tunic, lower than the wound we’d seen Raysel deliver. The edges parted as she moved, revealing a wound too long and deep to be anything but mortal. The last time I saw anyone cut that deeply it was January, Countess of Tamed Lightning, and she was already dead. Oleander’s black clothing kept the blood from showing until it hit the ground, but that didn’t matter. I could smell it.

“It could be healed if it were just a wound,” she said. “With the poison, all that’s left for me is dying. I’m good at what I do. Or I was. They’ll never forget my name. In a thousand years, they’ll still be whispering about me. The lives I took. The kingdoms I felled. I’m immortal.” And she smiled.

“Look out!” shouted Connor.

It was pure instinct—instinct, and long years spent walking the line between “impulsive” and “embalmed”—that caused me to respond to his cry by ducking, whirling around, and drawing my sword, holding it in front of my face the way I would normally hold my baseball bat. The real Oleander’s dagger glinted off the pommel, sending a spray of sparks into the air between us. She’d swapped herself for an illusion while we were distracted by Raysel’s disappearance. If her decoy had held my attention for just a few seconds longer …

Oleander pressed down, putting as much weight as she could onto the blade of her knife. “You’re coming with me,” she snarled. “I’m not leaving here without one last kill.” She pushed down a little harder with each word. Her eyes were glassy, the pupils huge. She was in shock and falling deeper as her body raced to see what would kill her: blood loss or the poison burning in the blood that remained. Only her age and the strength of her magic were still allowing her to throw illusions, and Maeve only knew how long that would last.

She was weak, and she was making one major, unavoidable mistake: she was applying the amount of pressure she’d need to knock down someone six inches shorter than I actually was. I gathered myself, tensing, and shoved her away as hard as I could. She staggered back about four feet, eyes widening with surprise, and disappeared.

“Oh, great,” I muttered, as I straightened and moved the sword into a defensive position. “It’s time for crazy bitch illusionary hide-and-go-seek.” The smell of her blood was still heavy in the air.

The smell of her blood. I closed my eyes, trying to relax. With as much as she was bleeding, she had to be the strongest blood marker in the area. Let her disappear. I’d still find her—there. I whirled, raising my sword back, and heard, again, the clank of metal on metal. She withdrew as quickly as she’d come, leaving me tense and waiting.

We repeated that pattern twice more—turn, parry, retreat. The fourth time, she came at me too fast for a simple block to stop. She’d been fighting for centuries, and I barely knew one end of a sword from the other. I didn’t know how else to stop her, and so I swung at the air as hard as I could, putting all my weight behind the blade.

It hit resistance. I opened my eyes.

Oleander was visible again, staring in wide-eyed amazement at the sword driven deep into her side, almost bisecting the older of her wounds. Her knife toppled from her fingers as she raised her head to stare at me, and she dropped to her knees on the hard-packed dirt, hands starting to scrabble uselessly against the hilt.

Connor stepped up behind her, the bow he’d taken from the armory in his hands. He had an arrow notched and ready to fire. Placing the tip against the back of her neck, he said, pleasantly, “Make one wrong move, and I swear to Maeve, I’ll shoot you.”

“There’s no more damage to be done,” she said, in a faint, almost thoughtful voice. “No more damage, no salvation. One more of Faerie’s glorious monsters lost.”

“If you’d left us alone—” I began.

“You’d have sent some hero after me, given time enough. I killed, I die. At least I killed like a monster kills, instead of with iron, and dying by inches. That’s Titania’s way, the Queen who stands in darkness and screams about her light. My poisons are kinder.” Oleander touched the sword’s pommel gently. “This is how it should end. They won’t remember the way I died, but they’ll remember how I lived, forever. I was the monster under your bed, wasn’t I? I’ll be the monster waiting for your children.”

“Be still,” I said. “Sylvester will be here soon.”

“I suppose you want me to think you told him where you were going?” Her laughter was harsh, punctuated by gasps. “I know better.”

“Why did you do this?” Grianne would have found the others by now, and she’d left us recently enough that her Merry Dancers would be able to lead her straight back to us. The cavalry was coming. That might not matter, because Oleander was fading fast.

“There’s only one person I’d tell, and neither of you is her.” She shuddered, her hand dropping away from the sword. “This ends here.”

“Who are you waiting for?” I asked. “The Duke?”

“That dandy fool? No.” She laughed again, bitterly. “I’ve finished my business with that one. I’m waiting for the one who got away.”

The one who … I froze. “You’re waiting for October.”

“Yes,” she said. “Bring her, and maybe I’ll tell you. Bring me Amandine’s heir.”

They always ask for the one thing you don’t want to give. “I’m here,” I said.

She opened her eyes and frowned, looking at me. “I’m dying. I’m not stupid.”

Scratch that idea. “I’m under an illusion spell.”

“So drop it.”

“I can’t. It’s Gwragen crafting.”

Her frown remained. “Liar.”

“I’m not lying! I just—”

“It’s her,” said Connor, quietly. “On my skin, it’s her.”

“Don’t make oaths for her sake, Connor,” I snapped. “She doesn’t deserve it.”

Oleander suddenly smiled. It was the kindest expression I’d ever seen on her face. “You are Amandine’s daughter. Only her children ever manage that sort of self-righteous disgust.”

“Children?” I echoed. “What are you talking about? Why are you here?”

“The Duke’s little daughter invited me.” Her smile didn’t waver. “Oh, I hurt her once, and it seems she held more of a grudge than I knew, but she still invited me, because I had something she wanted. I had the power to make the ones who failed her suffer. I may have helped to break her, but you, October, you and your kind … you’re the ones who let me do it.”

“It wasn’t like that.”

“Of course you can say that. You’re sane.” Oleander sighed. “Sometimes I wonder how that marshmallow of a man spawned someone so beautifully insane. But I really made her, didn’t I? Sylvester’s flesh, my heart. A fair return for what your mother stole from my Simon—what she stole from me .” Her voice was weakening. It wasn’t going to be much longer. Musingly, she added, “I should be grateful. Without her theft, without her desertion, he’d never have been mine to break.”