As I let the thought come all the way up to the front of my mind, I didn’t know whether to laugh, or weep. I didn’t want to kill one hag, and had hated killing the first, yet I was already planning the death of the third.
Frost and Doyle lifted me over the hidden ridge of bones. They half floated me to Sholto, where he cried over the hag. They tried to let me go, but I sank to my chin when they released me. They grabbed me in the same moment, both fishing me higher above the black water.
“She must stand on her own two feet for this kill,” Agnes said, her voice holding some of the deadly heat of her look.
“I don’t know if I’m tall enough,” I said.
“I have to agree with the hag,” Fyfe said. “The princess must stand on her own for the kill to be hers.”
Frost and Doyle exchanged glances, still holding me between them. “Let me down slowly,” I said. “I think I can touch bottom.”
They did what I asked. If I kept my chin pointed up, I could just barely keep the dirty water out of my mouth.
“We have no weapons with us that will kill the immortal,” Doyle said.
“Nor we,” Ivar said.
Sholto looked at me, his face raw with grief, and I fought to meet that look. He moved, and a tiny wave slapped my face. I began treading water, so I could keep my head above the surface. As I did so, my leg brushed something — I thought it was a bone, but it moved. It was Segna’s arm, limp in the water. My leg brushed it again, and the arm convulsed.
“The bones are a killing thing,” I said.
Then Segna said in a rattling voice, thick with things that should never be in the throat of the living, “Kiss me one…last…time.”
Sholto leaned over her with a sob.
Ivar moved everyone back to give us room. He made certain that Agnes moved back, too, which meant that Segna’s body began to sink below the water. I moved forward, tried to help catch her, as I treaded water. I got a hand on her body, felt the weight of her cloak wrap around my legs. I felt her tense a heartbeat before her arm, which was behind me now, swept forward. I had time to turn and put both hands on her arm, to keep the claws from my side.
“Merry!” Doyle yelled.
I had time to see her other arm sweeping up behind me. I let go of the arm I was already fending off, and tried to sweep the second arm away from me. Segna’s body rolled under the water, and took me with her.
CHAPTER 14
I HAD TIME TO TAKE A BREATH, THEN WE WERE UNDERWATER. Segna’s face loomed under the dirty water. Her mouth opened, screaming at me, blood blossoming from her mouth. My hands dug desperately into her arms, too small to encircle them, as I forced them away from me and she dragged me deeper into the water.
Too late I realized that there were other ways to kill me than claws — she was trying to impale me on submerged bone. I kicked my feet to stay above the bone, to not let her spit me upon it. The point of bone held me on its tip, and I kicked and pushed to keep it from piercing my skin. Segna pushed and fought against me. The strength in her arms and body was almost too much for me. She was wounded, dying, and it was all I could do to keep her from killing me.
My chest was tight; I needed to breathe. Claws, bones, and even the water itself could kill. If I couldn’t push her off me, all she had to do was simply hold me underwater.
I prayed, “Goddess help me!”
A pale hand shone in the water, and Segna was pulled backward, my grip on her arms pulling me with her. We broke the surface together, both of us gasping for breath. Her breath ended in a spattering cough that covered my face in her blood. For a moment I couldn’t see who had pulled her back. I had to blink her blood out of my eyes to see Sholto with his arm across her upper body. He held her one-armed and yelled, “Get out, Meredith, get out!”
I did what he said: I let her go and pushed backward, trusting that there were no bones just behind me.
Segna didn’t try to catch me. She used her newly freed hands to claw down Sholto’s arm, making a crimson ruin of his white flesh.
I treaded water, looking around for Doyle and Frost, and the others. There were no others. I was paddling in a lake — a deep, cold lake — no longer the shallow, stagnant pool we’d been wading in before. There was a small island close at hand, but the shore was far away, and it was not a shore I knew. I screamed, “Doyle!” But there was no answer. In truth, I hadn’t expected one, for I could already see that we were either in a vision, or somewhere else in faerie. I didn’t know which, and I didn’t know where.
Sholto cried out behind me. I turned in time to see him go under in a wash of red. Segna struck at the water where he’d vanished with the dagger from her belt. Did she realize it was him she attacked now, or did she still think she was killing me?
I screamed, “Segna!”
The sound seemed to reach her, because she hesitated. She turned in the water and blinked at me.
I pushed myself high enough out of the water so she could see me. Sholto had not yet resurfaced.
Segna screamed at me, the sound ending in a wet cough. Blood poured down her chin, but she started moving toward me.
I screamed, “Sholto!” hoping Segna would realize what she’d done and turn back to rescue him. But she kept swimming, weakly, toward me.
“He is only white flesh now,” she growled, in that too thick, too wet voice. “He is only sidhe, not sluagh.”
So much for her helping Sholto — obviously it was up to me. I took a good breath and dived. The water was clearer here, and I saw Sholto like a pale shadow sinking toward the bottom, blood trailing upward in a cloud.
I screamed his name, and the sound echoed through the water. His body jerked, and just then something grabbed my hair and yanked me upward.
Segna pulled me through the water. I could see that she was making for the bare island. My naked back hit the rocks, scraped along them, as she struggled from the lake. She pulled me with her, until both of us were free of the water. She lay panting on the rock, her hand still tangled in my hair. I tried to ease away from that hand, but it convulsed tighter, wrenching my hair as if she meant to take it out by the roots. She started dragging me closer to where she lay.
I fought to get up on all fours so she wouldn’t scrape more of my skin off on the bare rock. In order to do so, I had to take my gaze off her for an instant.
It was a mistake. She jerked me down with that strength that could have torn a horse apart. Jerked me down, onto my stomach. I wedged an arm under my body to keep me off the rocks.
Then I saw that she still held the dagger. She pressed it to my cheek. I gazed at her along the line of the blade. She was lying down, almost flat against the rocks.
“I’ll scar you,” she said. “Ruin that pretty face.”
“Sholto is drowning.”
“The sluagh cannot die by water. If he is sidhe enough to drown, then let him.”
“He loves you,” I said.
She made a harsh sound that spattered her chin with more blood. “Not as much as he loves the thought of sidhe flesh in his bed.”
I couldn’t argue with that.
The tip of her blade wavered above my cheek. “How much sidhe are you? How well do you heal?”
I thought it was a rhetorical question, so I didn’t answer it. Would she die of her wounds before she hurt me, or would she heal?
She coughed blood onto the stones, and it was as if she wondered the same thing. She used her grip on my hair to force me onto my back, dragging me closer as she did it. I couldn’t stop her — I could not fight against such strength. She crawled on top of me and put her blade tip over my throat. I grabbed her hand, wrapped both my hands around it, and still trembled with the effort to hold her off me.