Shadowspell

I wondered what was going on. Arawn had been able to kill Fred because Fred attacked him, but Grace was just sitting there, helpless and bleeding. I thought maybe he was trying to trick her into attacking him in self-defense—like he’d tricked Ethan—but frankly, she didn’t seem to be in any shape to attack even if she fell for it.

“Please,” Grace tried again, but this time, to my shock, blood dripped from her mouth, and she began to make a noise somewhere between a cough and a choke. It should have taken more than a small stab wound, no matter how well placed, to kill one of the Sidhe, even if my spell had taken her healing magic offline. So why did it look like she’d taken a mortal wound?

The Erlking’s sword whistled through the air, moving blindingly fast. It sliced clean through Grace’s neck without even slowing down.

I caught only the briefest glimpse of what happened, because the Erlking quickly stepped between me and her, his cloak completely blocking my view. But that brief glimpse was more than enough to haunt my nightmares for years to come. It might have been a quick death, but it sure as hell wasn’t a pretty one. Even Ethan’s face turned green at the sight.

Blood still dripping from his blade, the Erlking turned to face me. “Are you all right?” he asked, and the question was so absurd it startled a nearly hysterical laugh out of me.

“Oh, sure, just peachy,” I said between giggles. “I was just almost raped, and I watched you stab one guy and behead my aunt, oh, and I got knocked around a bit, but other than that, I’m having a blast.” I was still laughing, but there were tears on my face, and I was having trouble getting a full breath into my lungs. Okay, so maybe that sound coming out of me was more like sobs than laughter.

It was hard to read the Erlking’s face in the flickering, erratic light of the downed torch. His eyes were hidden in shadow, but I felt the pressure of their gaze on me even as he pulled a rag from somewhere under his cloak and started wiping the blood from the blade.

“I am sorry I could not get here sooner to spare you some of what you’ve been through,” he said, sounding like he meant it.

The calmness of his voice and his manner took a bit of the edge off my hysteria, though now that it was over, I started to shake all over.

“How did you get here at all?” I asked.

It was too dark to tell for sure, but I think he smiled. “As Ethan has told you by now, he is still bound to me even if he is no longer bound to my Hunt. When he was hurt, I sensed it. Then I used our bond to find him.”

“And communicate with him,” I said, because I remembered the Erlking shouting “Now,” which had obviously been a signal to Ethan—one Ethan was expecting.

Arawn nodded. “And communicate.”

“But how could you kill Grace? She’s a citizen of Avalon, and you’re not allowed to kill anyone in Avalon unless they attack you.”

“There is one other condition that will allow me to kill in Avalon,” he said.

Of course there was. Both he and Grace had mentioned that he was hunting her, and my dad had said he was allowed to pursue his quarry into Avalon. I’d assumed the Erlking had come to Avalon in pursuit of the Fae I’d seen him kill the first day he’d come, but now I figured the Fae had been a bonus and Grace his main quarry.

Ethan forced himself up into a sitting position with a grunt of pain. Arawn dismissed me for the moment and went to kneel beside his former Huntsman. I don’t know for certain if it was on purpose, but he managed to position himself in such a way that his shadow hid Grace’s decapitated body from my vision.

“Lie down,” the Erlking ordered Ethan, and though I saw the spark of rebellion in Ethan’s eyes, he obeyed. I guessed he didn’t have any choice.

The Erlking put his hand over Ethan’s wound, then pressed down hard. Ethan screamed in pain, and I tried to scramble to my feet. What I could possibly do to help Ethan against the Erlking was anyone’s guess. But after that scream, Ethan’s body went completely limp.

For one terrible minute, I thought he was dead. Then the Erlking lifted the hand he’d laid on Ethan’s chest, holding something between his thumb and index finger. It was the bullet.

“It had to come out before he could heal properly,” he said.

I steadied myself with a hand against the wall. “You could have just taken him to a healer. A healer could have fixed him up without hurting him.”

He nodded. “Even so. And in the intervening time, he’d have been in constant pain. Better to have it over with quickly, don’t you think?”

I wanted to disagree with him, but that would make me a hypocrite. After all, I’d decided to let Keane heal my hand when I’d hurt it for just that reason.

Dropping the bullet, Arawn stood up, the shadows and his black cloak making him seem even larger than he really was. “I take it you fully understand the terms of our bargain now.”

“Yeah,” I said weakly. I could have lied, but Ethan had heard Grace’s big revelation, and it was pretty obvious now that anything Ethan knew, the Erlking knew.

I closed my eyes to stop the tears that wanted to spill out. I had known from the moment he’d made the offer that Arawn was angling for more than sex, that giving him my virginity would have some kind of unpleasant consequences. So why the hell did it hurt my feelings to discover those consequences would have included my death? He was the bad guy, a cold-blooded, cold-hearted killer. Yeah, he’d just saved my life, but he’d done it entirely for his own purposes. I couldn’t put out if I was dead. So it should have come as no surprise that he was planning to use and kill me, just like Grace had planned to.