“Father, no!” screamed Rowan.
And then something caught her eye. She stared in disbelief as Merrilee seemed slowly to change. A smile graced the child’s lips, and she withdrew something from her sleeve—a flash of moonlight on silver, the sharp tip of a hunting blade. In Rowan’s mind, she saw the image of Merrilee standing over the candelabra, sliding her greasy fingers over the silver, and she understood. Merrilee hadn’t been looking into the forest; she had been looking into the silver. The duke wasn’t the Greywitch. It was Merrilee.
“Father, no!” she cried again, but he didn’t seem to hear, so intent was he on rescuing what he thought to be a helpless child.
It happened too quickly. One moment Merrilee was flinging herself into Henry Rose’s arms, and the next there came a terrible sound as the child plunged her knife deep into his body, and with the strength of a man, she tore upward through his flesh, splitting him open, rending the fabric of his being.
Henry Rose tried to gasp, tried to cry out, but when Merrilee plunged the knife into his heart, there was no longer any more of him to scream.
Covered in blood, Merrilee stepped away, wrinkling her nose as if offended, and observed as her victim, opened up, ribs and viscera exposed, fell face-first into the snow.
Rowan screamed. Her world seeming to spin, she ran to her father, to where he lay motionless, crimson flooding out around him. Her hands moved against his shoulders as she shook him, tried to stir him, but her frantic fingers met only an empty vessel. She held his lifeless body, refusing to believe he was gone. Around her she could hear disbelief, screaming—but the cacophony seemed to flow past her as she sat shocked and silent. Soon Tom was beside her. He turned her father’s body over, searching in vain for a way to save him. A moment later, Rowan felt Jude’s hands on her shoulders, pulling her away from her father, pulling her into his arms.
“Rowan,” he whispered. “Oh, Rowan.”
The duke looked on, his face drained of color. “Merrilee, what have you done? Great god of the sea, what have you done?”
“I’ll do what I like,” Merrilee said, her tiny voice a bizarre companion to the darkness in her face.
Rowan stared at the child, unable to comprehend that this small creature could be capable of such evil. And then her eyes fell to her father’s rifle, now abandoned in the snow. Before Rowan could move to retrieve it, Merrilee was upon it. Rowan scrambled to find her own weapon, but it was too far away to reach in time.
Gingerly, Merrilee lifted the rifle from the snow. She held it awkwardly, as if she meant only to keep her fingers to the metal, to avoid touching any wood. Gun in hand, she moved toward Tom.
“Tom!” Rowan screamed, and he jumped up to face Merrilee just as the child swung the butt of the rifle, cracking it with great force against his knees.
The sound of bones shattering echoed through the night, and Tom cried out, crumpling to the frozen ground. Distaste upon Merrilee’s face, she hurled the rifle into the trees. Her knife in hand again, she grabbed Tom from behind, and pulling him to her with a relentless, otherworldly kind of strength, she pressed the blade flush against his throat. Rowan knew then that Merrilee was no child.
Fiona, who had been watching from a distance, sprang to attention, anger burning in her eyes.
“Let him go!” Rowan cried. “Please, let him go.”
But Merrilee ignored Rowan and turned her attention to Fiona. “I want you all to understand something,” she announced. “There are only two outcomes possible tonight. Either I leave here with that coin and I let this boy live, or I leave here with the coin and he dies—probably along with the rest of you.”
“What are you?” Jude screamed, his face contorted with pain. But then his gaze connected with Rowan’s, and she saw comprehension dawn in his eyes. He realized that whatever they were up against might be something they couldn’t overcome.
Merrilee ignored him, her attention focused solely on Fiona and her necklace. “The dead girl gets to make the choice,” she said, and then, dragging Tom through the snow like a rag doll, she made her way closer to Fiona. “Do you even know what it means to die a second death? Do you have any idea what that’s like? Do you know what it is to have darkness consume you anew each night?”
Rowan looked on in wonder as Fiona snarled, her face suddenly contorted into a fiendish mask. She was a monster. Rowan knew this, but still something in Rowan’s heart struggled against it. Her father was gone now. She had no family, except for this girl. Fiona, monster or not, was her sister, and she found that she didn’t want to lose her just yet.
Rowan tried to push through the pain and grief that clouded her mind. She needed to think. Something wasn’t right. Clearly Merrilee would stop at nothing to get what she wanted, and yet she wouldn’t directly challenge Fiona. If she wanted the coin, why not kill her and take it from her? What power did Fiona hold over the girl? And then Rowan remembered what Fiona had said about her connection to the beast. If the beast died, Fiona died. Perhaps it was the other way around as well. And Merrilee needed the beast alive.
“Give me my coin,” Merrilee growled, and with a hand on Tom’s shoulder, she pulled back and twisted, the bones shattering beneath her grip as Tom wailed in agony.
Jude turned and ran to his brother’s side. Enraged, he pointed his gun at Merrilee, but she pressed the knife into Tom’s flesh, beginning to draw blood.
“Put your gun down or I kill him. You have three seconds.”
Jude dropped his gun.
“Not just you,” she said, looking around. “Everyone throw your weapons over the side of the cliff. Do it now, or the boy dies.”
Shaking, Jude flung his gun over Lover’s Leap before gathering the other weapons and heaving them over as well. For a split second, he stared into the woods where Henry Rose’s gun now lay, but then he looked away and threw his arms into the air, though not until after giving Rowan a quick glance.
“They’re gone,” he said. “Now let him go. I beg of you; let my brother go.”
“You too,” Merrilee said to the duke, ignoring Jude. “You know the things I’ll do to you if you refuse me.”
His breath coming in raspy bursts, the duke tossed his weapon over the cliff, and the Greywitch turned back to face Fiona, a bright smile now on her face.
“The beast belongs to me,” Merrilee said. “It’s mine.”
There came the sound of branches twisting, snapping, as behind them something moved. And turning, Rowan saw it—back at the Mouth of the Goddess, at the outcropping of forest, the creature hidden among the branches and snow.
Merrilee narrowed her eyes and turned to see what it was that moved among the trees.
Carefully Rowan made her way through the snow to Fiona Eira, and when the girl saw her, her expression transformed from suspicion to surprise. Looking into each other’s eyes, the sisters suddenly knew each other. Fiona held out her hand to Rowan. Rowan reached out as she’d done a thousand times before, only this time cold fingers reached back, and clasping at her warmth, Fiona Eira pulled her sister to her side.
Hatred burning inside her, Rowan stared at the child who had just killed her father. “I’m not frightened of you,” she said.
“Rowan,” the duke said, his voice shaking as he walked slowly through the snow to the Greywitch. “Don’t be stupid.”
Merrilee turned her focus to him.
“Are you frightened right now?” the Greywitch asked. “Are you frightened of what I might do to her?”
“Stop, Merrilee, please!” cried the duke. “You promised that no one would die. You swore to me that no one would die.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Promises have ways of getting broken. You think I don’t know about the promises you’ve been making to Rowan?”