Two of the lines came together and crossed over my fingers, tying them down. I flexed my hands, carefully at first, and then with more force, straining against the lines. They stung where they touched me. It started out light, and then it flared into a burn. Pain flooded back into my body, like it had been invited in when I started fighting against the lines. I welcomed it. If there was pain, I still had a body that was capable of hurting: there was a chance I’d be able to make it to all the things I didn’t want to miss. I strained harder.
Follow the lines, I thought, and then: Don’t let the bastards win.
The lines across my fingers snapped.
The smell of meadowsweet and wine vinegar assaulted my nostrils as I moved my hands, clearing more of the lines away. The pain wasn’t receding, but it wasn’t as all-consuming as it had been: I was starting to hear voices. A male voice, raised in anger; a female voice, raised in a plaintive whine that sounded somehow familiar. I knew these people.
Rhys and the false Queen. If they were arguing, it was probably over the fact that I was supposed to be his undying font of alchemical providence, and she had gone and stabbed me in the chest. I wouldn’t be nearly as useful if I was dead. They might as well have stuck with my laundry.
My eyes wouldn’t open. That . . . wasn’t a good sign. Before, it had been pain keeping my body from responding to my demands; now it was weakness, plain and simple and all-consuming. My mouth wasn’t bleeding anymore. There was nothing to lend me strength but stubbornness, and so it was stubbornness I seized upon, using it to force my now-unbound hands to keep moving. If I had hands, I must have arms; that was the logical extension. If I had arms, they were going to do what I told them to do. They were going to work.
It was a relief when my hands touched my chest. Until I felt the fabric of my cheap tank top, tacky with blood and sticking to my skin, I hadn’t been sure the movement was anything but my own dying imagination. Slowly, with fingers that felt like so much dead weight at the end of hands that weren’t much better, I began feeling around for the knife. When I finally found it, I gripped as best I could, and began trying to pull.
Arthur pulling Excalibur from the stone got him a kingdom and a legend and a whole bunch of crappy knock-off stories. Hell, it got him a Disney movie. Me pulling a knife out of my own heart got me pain, pain, and more pain, until I felt like I was on the verge of blacking out again. I gritted my teeth and kept pulling. If I lost my grip, I wasn’t going to get it back.
The knife moved.
It was a small thing at first, just a shift, but it was a shift that pulled an infinitesimal fraction of the blade out of my heart. I could almost feel my flesh beginning to knit back together, moving faster to save me than my body was moving to die. I pulled again, and the knife shifted more, almost coming free.
The false Queen had never been a fighter. Her attack had been intended to kill—there was no doubt of that—but she’d never really had the strength to drive the knife as deeply as she would have needed to. She only got it between my ribs because I couldn’t move away and luck was on her side. While she’d been able to pierce my heart, she hadn’t been able to fully bisect it, which explained why I was still alive to pull the damn thing out.
“—attack her like that!”
“She deserves it for what she did to me! You don’t know how I’ve suffered since that little whore put her hands on me! You’ll never understand the pain she’s put me through.”
“She purified you!”
The sound of flesh striking flesh covered up the sound of the knife finally coming free of my chest. It couldn’t cover the sound of that same knife dropping from my hand and clattering to the floor. There was a sickening pause before Rhys laughed, sounding utterly delighted.
“Look at that! You didn’t exaggerate when you described how difficult she was to kill. She’s amazing.”
I forced my hands to move again, raising them, shaking, to my mouth. I had a few seconds. That was all. Rhys would get over his delight: he would realize I was moving, which meant that his spell had broken. Once that happened, all hell was going to break loose.
The blood I sucked from my fingers tasted darker than it ever had before. My death had seeped into it, flavoring it until it was barely recognizable as my own. I still swallowed greedily, pulling it back into my body and yanking out every last scrap of strength. I could feel my heartbeat, steady and strong and slightly frantic, like it was as angry as the rest of me.
I opened my eyes. I reached down and ripped the spike out of my stomach. I sat up. I had been lying on a bier like the ones in the dungeon. There were channels cut into the stone to coax my blood toward the bowls Rhys had set up at the corners. I ran my fingers through one of them as I swung my legs over the side of the bier. The blood that had pooled there was still half liquid, and stuck to my skin. Good. I was going to need it.
“You stabbed me,” I said, eyes going to Rhys and the false Queen. She was standing so that his body shielded her from me. That was probably smart; I wanted to strangle her more than I had wanted anything in a long time. It was too bad I was also too weak to stand. “I didn’t expect that. I didn’t appreciate it, either.”
Marlis was standing behind the pair, the heavy jeweled chalice still in her hands. She met my eyes and nodded, almost imperceptibly. I didn’t dare return the gesture. I just hoped she would take apparent disregard as agreement.
“I am a diplomat from the Kingdom of the Mists,” I said, sliding slowly off the bier. I kept my hands braced against the stone, trying to look like I was just steadying myself, and not holding myself up completely. It wasn’t an easy balance to strike. “I am here in the name of Her Majesty, Arden Windermere, Queen in the Mists. And it is not nice to stab your diplomats.”
“You troublesome little bitch,” said Rhys wonderingly. He took a half step forward, one hand going to the pocket of his apron.
He was still reaching when Marlis hit him across the back of the head with the chalice. I could hear bone crack from across the room. Rhys wobbled, looking startled. And then he fell, opening a portal beneath himself as he dropped, so that he fell through the floor rather than crashing into it. The former Queen of the Mists stood frozen for a few precious seconds, eyes gone wide and pale with terror, before she whirled and bolted for the door. She grabbed it, slamming it open—
—and ran straight into Tybalt’s open, outstretched hand. She screamed, and the sound was cut off as his fingers closed around her throat. His face was contorted into a twisted mask, more feline than human. I couldn’t hear him snarling. That was probably not a good sign. The louder he was, the easier it was to talk him down.
“Tybalt!” I took a step forward, and almost fell as my legs tried to buckle underneath me.
His eyes flicked to me, widening in concern. Some of the feral fierceness went out of them, leaving the man I loved visible in the face of the furious King of Cats. Then the false Queen squirmed, and his attention snapped back to her, eyes narrowing again. He tightened his grip, lifting her off the floor. Her feet kicked helplessly, finding no purchase, while her hands clawed at his arm, trying to make him let go. It wasn’t going to happen. Unlike him, she had no actual claws: she couldn’t hurt him enough to get what she wanted.
He was going to kill her. He was going to kill a former monarch of the Divided Courts in front of me, and I wasn’t going to be able to stop him.
“Don’t do this!” My legs were still weak, but I was standing, and that was enough for me. I half-walked, half-fell toward him, gaining strength with every step, until I was virtually running. Marlis appeared next to me, offering me her arm, and I took it. She had attacked her King for me. At this point, I would have trusted her even if she hadn’t been Walther’s sister.