“There is nothing,” he said. “I was a fool. I’m very sorry. I don’t want to leave you. I wanted to impregnate you.”
“You’re saying you can’t fix yourself? What sort of wizard are you, prince? Damn you, do something! Tell me what to do!”
His eyes closed, and that ironic smile fell from his mouth. She knew in that moment that he was dying. He was dying as a mortal man would die because as a mortal man he’d been stabbed in his heart.
“NO!”
She stretched out her full length over him. She felt his blood seeping into her gown. She felt his heartbeat, slow, faint.
She closed her eyes and stretched herself so that her arms covered his arms, her legs covered his legs, her heart pressed against his heart.
She closed her mouth over his mouth, breathed in his breath. “You will not die,” she said into his mouth. “Do you hear me, you pathetic wizard? Where is your magic? Damn you to beyond—shuck off the mortal’s skin and heal yourself!”
She felt his pain, pulsing up now, coming through her gown, coming from the deepest part of his heart where the blade had entered and torn. She began to shake with the pain as it grew and grew, pouring itself into her, digging into her very being, hard, stabbing deep. Her eyes rolled back in her head as she felt the knife blade sinki
ng into her, felt her own blood explode around the blade, felt the icy cold of the blade’s tip vibrating, the death bringer. Then she felt the blood—his blood, her blood—begin to seep out of her chest.
She held on, closed her eyes and kept the pain deep and close, not making a sound. She whispered against his mouth, “Prince, you will not die. Give me your pain, all of it.”
“No, Brecia,” he said, and she heard the death sound in his throat. “I was a fool, I wanted to prance about like a mortal man, and now I will die, but I will not allow you to die with me. No, Brecia.” With incredible strength, he threw her off him. She landed at least six feet away, rolling onto the floor. The soul-deep pain was suddenly gone.
He lurched up onto his elbow, looked at her. “I didn’t mean this to happen,” he said, and fell back. “I wanted to amuse you, fight those ridiculous men, make you laugh.”
“You will not die, damn you!” She shouted his name, surrounding it with every curse she knew, screamed it to the roof of her fortress, as she leapt back up and threw herself on top of him again. His chest against her chest, her arms against his arms, her legs against his legs, his bleeding heart now bleeding into her heart.
She held him down with her strongest spell, pressing her forehead against his. The pain grew and grew. She didn’t know such pain could exist. It was beyond the pain of her burning hands, beyond anything she could have imagined. She heard Callas screaming at her, telling her to leave the miserable wizard to the fates.
She felt the prince trying to throw her off again, but he was weakening. Her spell was holding, and she was too strong for him. She realized that she could easily die as well.
It didn’t matter.
She pressed harder and moaned her pain against his forehead. She felt his breath whisper against her flesh. “Get off me, Brecia, it’s no good. It is my fate.” He knew in his wizard’s soul that no one could change fate.
Brecia didn’t waste time worrying about fate. She prayed to her mother, to her mother’s mother, to all the long line of witches who had come before her, who had nurtured and taught her, and she cried, her tears falling on his closed eyes.
The pain was breaking her. It was beyond a mortal’s pain, beyond a witch’s pain. It was a shared pain, a final pain, and it would break her.
She didn’t know how, but she managed to hold on. She felt the last of her own blood flowing into his now, and then, suddenly, she felt empty, a husk that meant nothing anymore. She was above that husk, looking down and wondering what was wrong.
Then she sighed softly and laid her cheek against his cheek. She was falling, but he was with her. It seemed they were falling into a deep hole and it was black and warm in that hole. She wondered vaguely if they would ever stop falling and what would happen if they did.
24
Present
BISHOP WALKED BACK TO the front of the cave to see Merryn warming her hands over the small fire she’d made. He stood there watching her for a moment and thought how much like Brecia she looked.
No, no, she wasn’t Brecia. Brecia was from long ago.
Bishop wondered how long he had been away. And he had been away, he knew that now, knew it to the soles of his boots.
“Merryn?” He started. His voice sounded rusty, as if he hadn’t spoken for a very long time.
She looked up, smiled just a bit. “Did you find anything in the back of the cave? What you were looking for, whatever that was?”
He shook his head. “How long was I gone?”
“Just a few minutes. You came back because you were hungry or because there was nothing for you to find?”