As he remained silent, Isabeau’s face distorted with rage. Flying at him, she hit him over and over. “Tell me! Tell me what you’ve done!”
He grew hotter, his Power grinding against the geas, and blood thundered in his ears.
Gritting his teeth, he said, “No.”
“You have to!” she shouted, hitting and slapping his face, his chest. “You have to tell me!”
He barely felt the blows. The pressure built in his chest. It felt like a heart attack, radiating out his left arm, while the geas pounded in his brain. As it forced his mouth open, his Power rose to meet it, and he stopped the flood of words from flowing.
“No,” he gasped.
Dimly he was aware of Sidonie shouting. At some point Modred had grabbed her again, and she struggled against his hold. “Stop it—you’re killing him!”
He had fought before against the geas, many times, and lost. This time he couldn’t afford to lose. The geas tried to wrench the words out, and he clenched down harder. Desperately, as he reached for anything he could pull strength from, he connected to the earth magic.
Digging deep, he drew hard on it. Something shifted down below, and with a great, yawning noise the floor in the great hall cracked.
“You have to do what I say. I command you.” Isabeau’s face had purpled, and blood vessels burst in the corners of her eyes from the force of her scream. “Otherwise what has been the point of this whole bloody nightmare! I’ll make you tell me!”
He was blinded to almost everything from the forces tearing him apart, except for Isabeau.
With a wrenching cry, she dragged Azrael’s Athame from the scabbard and then fell to her knees, as if she had tried to lift an unimaginable weight. Hunching over, she dragged herself to her feet.
Tears spilled over. He couldn’t breathe. His chest was being crushed from within.
Still he managed to whisper, “No.”
His final act would be one of his own free will.
“Then what use are you anymore?” she cried.
Baring her teeth from the effort, Isabeau thrust the knife into his heart.
* * *
The black blade hit home.
There was no mistaking it for anything but a mortal blow. Morgan’s expression changed; it was obvious he knew it too. Isabeau froze, staring at what she’d done.
Sidonie heard herself scream as if from a long distance away. She felt like her heart was being cut out of her chest.
Then Morgan’s face sharped with such ferocity, he no longer looked human. Grasping Isabeau’s hands as she gripped the hilt, he bared his teeth and roared at her. Light shone out from the entry wound in his chest, and a blast of boiling heat blew out across the room. Struggling against his grip, Isabeau shrieked in agony.
Gradually the light and heat faded. As they dimmed, all expression faded from Morgan’s features, until he almost looked peaceful. He fell in a sprawl.
Still howling, Isabeau stumbled back, holding up her shaking hands. They were withered and blackened like claws.
Modred abandoned his grip on Sidonie and raced to the Queen. Scooping her into his arms, he ran from the hall.
Sid barely noticed. All her attention was on Morgan.
He lay so still. She knew he was dead.
Despite that, she ran to him, fell to her knees, and clawed at the knife protruding from his chest. It was wrong, so wrong, and she had to get it out of his body. Someone was sobbing. Wait, that was still her.
As she pulled out the knife, everything around her shifted and darkened. It was the heaviest thing she had ever held, both icy and burning at once.
The hall darkened further, and she looked up.
She still knelt over Morgan’s body, but they were no longer in the great hall of the castle in Avalon.
They were in another hall altogether. It seemed to go on forever. The floor was made of black and white marble, and there were rows of black marble pillars. Between the pillars, tall black marble stands held huge vases of onyx filled with bloodred roses.
Sidonie’s breath scraped in her raw throat. It was the only sound she heard. Utter silence filled the hall. There wasn’t even the sound of a breeze.
Then she heard quiet, measured footsteps approaching.
A tall, straight figure walked into view. He wore plain, elegant clothes, and his eyes were green like summer leaves.
His face. She saw his face.
His face was the answer to a question she didn’t know how to ask.
He knelt beside her and held out one hand. She didn’t even think of trying to keep the blade as her own and offered it to him immediately. When he took it from her, the relief was immense.
“I will have to make a new scabbard for it,” Lord Death said as he turned the knife over in his hands. His voice was as gentle as before.
Sidonie sank her fists into the edges of Morgan’s shirt, tears spilling over. She had never known such pain. It was tearing her apart.
She whispered, “Give him back.”
Azrael raised an eyebrow. “But this is the answer to your prayer. Morgan is now free from bondage. The first blow the Queen struck was irreversible—death was the only way to release him.”
“I don’t care.” The words scraped in her throat. “You’re a god. You can find a way. Give him back to me. Please, I’m begging you.”
Azrael’s expression turned indifferent. He stood and, from his tall height above her, said, “I’ve heard begging before, countless times. The echoes go back through history. Some beg for death, others beg for more life.”
The tears wouldn’t stop falling. Wiping at them, she stood. “Then take me. He was a slave for so long. Let him live in peace for a while and take me.”
“I have heard bargaining too, and I will have you soon enough.” Death turned to walk away.
She was losing him. Desperation drove her to speak faster. “You’ll have my death,” she called after him. “I’m offering you my life.”
Azrael paused for an infinitesimal moment, head turned to one side, the line of his jaw sharp as a scythe.
In that infinitesimal moment, her mind raced at supersonic speed as she desperately scrambled to think of something else to offer him, something that would make him stay.
But she didn’t really have anything. She was nobody of importance, and she had no Power of her own. Her connections were all mortal.
All she’d had ever had was her music.
“I’ll play for you,” she said. Stepping over Morgan’s body, she walked toward Death. “Let me play for you. Please. You have your knife back because of me. Give me this one thing: if I am able to move you in any way with my music, you will give him back to me. If my music doesn’t touch you, then you’ve lost nothing but a few moments of time. And what is a few moments of time to a god?”
Azrael still stood with his back to her, head tilted as he listened. His lean cheek creased as he smiled.
“Very well, musician,” he said. Turning, he flung ravens at her. At a midway point in their flight, they turned into a violin and bow, tumbling end over end. Heart leaping, she tried to catch them, and they flew into her hands. “Play for me. Show me what you are made of.”
Shaking, she clasped the instrument to her. What could she play that could move the god of Death? She had fought with everything she had just for the chance to play, but now that it was presented to her, she felt hollow, small, and inadequate.
Mortal. She felt mortal.
Closing her eyes, she fit the violin under her chin, and set the bow to the strings. Faith had never been as blind as this.
The first thing that came to mind was the sound of her fingers breaking. Her life, as she knew it, dying. The shock and the pain of it, and the utter devastation.
They’ve killed me, she thought.
So she played it.
Next came the memory of warm, strong hands reaching for hers in the darkness. The unknown clasping her fingers, healing her, lending her strength and reassurance. It was the only thing in the world when she had nothing. It had been her lifeline.
And she played it.
Then came trust, the tentative unfurling, when she believed against all evidence that the person who came to her in the darkness would help her in any way he could. The impossibly intense adventure of his arm, sliding around her shoulders. The miracle of warmth when she had known nothing but coldness.