Hegrir swung me down toward Yethyr’s heart, and desperately I threw myself off balance, made myself heavy, anything to set him off course. My control over Hegrir was weak. I could not stop the swing, but perhaps I could get him to miss Yethyr's heart. I only needed an inch, maybe two. He had killed twice with me. It would be enough. It had to be enough.
With all my will against him, my blade sank into Yethyr’s shoulder. I felt the blinding pain shoot down his arm through our bond, but the Prince didn’t so much as grunt. I wished he would scream. Even gagged, perhaps he could alert someone, if he would only make a sound.
Unfortunately, it would take nothing less than Spryne to make the First Prince of Brinn scream.
Hegrir pulled me out, and a spray of blood splattered Yethyr’s left arm. “Blasted Datrean metal,” he muttered irritably at me.
He was readjusting his grip, readying to swing again, when I felt Yethyr’s fingers begin to twitch.
Hegrir didn’t notice, but I sensed Yethyr trace deathsong notation blindly with his fingers, using the blood now dripping down his bound hand.
His own blood had become his ink.
I was baffled. That would do nothing. He himself had said that living blood could not be used for deathsong. For it to work, he would have to be dead. It could not stop Hegrir from killing him.
“I suppose I could leave you like this,” Hegrir grunted. “Let you bleed out like a hunted boar, but then again, forcing you to watch what I do to your Tezem seems cruel, even for me.”
At those words, Yethyr traced more furiously than before, and I was reminded of Jaetheiri's slow, drugged breathing in the room.
Oh.
Yethyr wasn't trying to save himself. The Prince had accepted he was going to die, and given sudden access to his blood, he intended to ensure Hegrir would die too, before he could even turn toward Jaetheiri.
That was all that mattered to him. He was losing blood fast. He could barely think; he could barely move, and yet, his fingers kept on tracing.
He fought through agony, bleeding from his shoulder, and poured all his will into this one last composition. At the moment of his death, his blood would sing, Hegrir would die, and Jaetheiri would live.
It would be the only deathsong his spirit sang before Spryne dragged him down to Hell.
And I could feel Yethyr’s vicious satisfaction at the very thought.
Hegrir raised me up again, and the Prince was calm, shockingly calm. I was startled he had become so suddenly at peace with his own death.
Or perhaps it wasn’t sudden at all. He had been a dying man long before this moment. He had at least a decade to prepare, and now that his death had come, he exhaled what I dared to call a sigh of relief.
Then Kettir crashed into Hegrir, knocking him off his feet.
The huntguard’s footsteps had been so light, I had not heard him come in, and neither had Hegrir. He was blindsided as he was knocked to the ground.
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In the distraction, I could hear Wes and Mandorias slip into the tent and start to untie Yethyr from his bonds.
Ah, Mandorias. I had forgotten about him. He could understand both Brinn and deathsong. He must have been the one to hear my warning.
Kettir landed on top of Hegrir and scrambled to hold him down. Hegrir tried to swing me, but Kettir shoved the arm holding me back into the dirt.
Kettir was not trying to take me, I realized in shock. In fact, he seemed to be trying to do everything in his power to hold Hegrir’s arm down without touching me.
Which was a losing battle. Hegrir writhed like he was Spryne himself. In the effort to wrestle him still, Kettir’s hand brushed my hilt, and a name rang through my steel.
Ayathir.
I startled, but there was no mistake. To hold Hegrir steady, the man I knew as Kettir bumped into me several more times, and each time, the name was the same.
Ayathir.
It was no wonder I didn’t remember hearing Kettir’s name when The Wily Seal hit the water. Kettir was not his real name. He must have given the Prince a false one, but why? Who was he?
There was no time to wonder. Kettir or Ayathir or whoever he was recoiled from touching me as if I burned.
Pure fear. That was what I sensed from him. He did not want to touch me. He did not want to ever touch me. I was so used to the burning desire of anyone who so much as glanced my way that his panicked revulsion was novelty.
He knew what I was. Somehow, he understood enough to know my touch was poison, but it was pointless to recoil now.
I remembered the name Ayathir. He had been in the lake. I had already touched him.
He was already cursed. He had been cursed for days now.
But I was hardly going to inform him of that. I stayed still and silent as he held down the hand wielding me.
Now properly pinned, Hegrir looked up at Yethyr. We had fallen right beside his sleeping bag, and the angle made every figure above looming and terrible in that dim light. The Prince needed to be supported by both Wes and Mandorias to sit up. His body was as limp as a corpse, and his blue eyes were lidded from the strain.
But Hegrir was struck dumb in terror. The gag had been pulled from his prince’s lips. A single word and Yethyr would kill him. A single syllable and Hegrir would meet the angels.
But Yethyr made no sound.
Weakly, as if moving through water, his hand crept out toward Hegrir. We all watched him as if in a trance. Wes, Mandorias, and false Kettir made no attempt to help. Hegrir and I didn’t even shy away as his hand grew ever nearer to my hilt.
It was as if time itself was the one moving slowly and not Yethyr himself.
“Hegrir,” he at last spoke, his voice hoarse. “Unhand my sword.”
Through Hegrir’s wild eyes, his prince seemed like my brief glimpse of the Conquering Fang on the beach, more shadow and nightmare than man.
His grip loosened from my hilt.
The moment Yethyr’s fingers touched me, I gave him strength, and he wrenched me from Hegrir’s loose grasp. I slipped back into Yethyr’s mind, and nearly gasped, for I almost didn’t recognize it.
Gone was his rigid restraint. Gone was his careful avoidance of my influence. Here and now, in this darkened tent, in his zealous rage, he embraced me, letting my strength fill him with open abandon. His killing intent became my killing intent. There was no point in stoking it further. It would have been like throwing a torch into the lava of Datrea’s forge and expecting it to do something to the heat.
“May Heaven punish all who threaten me,” Yethyr whispered. Through his eyes, I looked down upon Hegrir and saw him tremble. “But those who threaten my Tezem need not know Heaven.”
The first time we had killed together, Yethyr hadn’t known the consequences. The second time, he had been blinded by adrenaline. He swung me now of his own will, and he did so knowing exactly what it meant.
He knew he was trapping Hegrir in me forever. He knew he was denying the angels the taste of his life. He knew he was selling just a bit more of his own will to me.
He accepted it all.
I gorged on Hegrir’s life. Yethyr felt the blood forge a third link to the chain binding him to me, and for the first time, he did not fight it.
For a single moment, he embraced my shackles and felt only righteousness.
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Would you have swung Bonesong in that circumstance?
