I asked anyway. “What prophecy?”
His smile was smug. “From a goddess two lines diverged, but they shall be reunited in Victory.”
“That could mean anything. I don’t see how it makes me part of your ‘new world order.’ ”
“I fail to see how it could be clearer. In you, Victory, the two lines—demi-human and demi-demon, Cerddorion and Meibion Avagddu—will become one again.”
“But—”
Pryce gestured, like he was swatting away my stupidity. “Don’t you get it? It means you’re destined to be the mother of my sons.”
I nearly tripped over my own feet. No way, no how, would I ever let Pryce touch me, let alone that way. If he wanted to hear the pitter-patter of little cloven hooves, he’d have to find someone else to beget his demon brood upon.
I turned to tell him so, and he punched me in my solar plexus.
The air whuffed out of my lungs as I doubled over. Pryce stepped back, and I twisted away. The wooden staff whooshed past my head, clipped my shoulder in a starburst of pain, and slammed into the ground.
I couldn’t get a breath.
The staff disappeared. As Pryce lifted it, I launched myself forward, head-butting him in the stomach. He grunted, staggering.
Rape. The ugly word clanged like an alarm bell in my head as I reached for the knife in my boot. He knows I’ll never give him what he wants, so he’s going to rape me.
There was no knife.
I was just taking a daytime walk, damn it. I hadn’t gone armed. Maenllyd was supposed to be safe.
My lungs started working again. I felt dizzy with the rush of oxygen, but I straightened, keeping my knees bent in a fighting stance. Pryce swung the staff at me like a club.
I jumped back, and he pressed forward, swinging the staff. His face twisted in an ugly scowl. He gave a particularly vicious swing, and as soon as the staff swept away from me, back toward his shoulder, I rushed in and smashed his knee with a stomp kick.
There was a pop. Pryce screamed and gripped his knee with one hand.
I wrenched the staff from his other hand and swung it as hard as I could, slamming it into his side. He flew sideways and hit the ground, one leg stretched out, the other bent at a weird angle.
I raised the staff to bring it down on his head. Why not? He’d tried to do it to me. The asshole wanted to rape me. I was acting in self-defense. He deserved to die. He deserved to be annihilated.
Fiery pain slashed my right arm. My demon mark glowed red.
Do it, something urged. Crack open his skull. Smash his face to a bloody pulp. Kill him. Kill him now! DO IT!
Cutting through that urging came Mab’s calm voice: You must be purely yourself.
Purity.
Shit.
It didn’t matter what Pryce deserved. The rage, the overwhelming compulsion to pound his head into a grisly mosaic—those didn’t come from me. They came from the demon mark, and I would not let that control me.
I would not kill anyone lying injured and helpless on the ground.
I hurled the staff like a javelin, as far as I could throw it. It landed among the sheep. The animals bleated and ran.
The voice clamoring for blood grew silent. My demon mark cooled, paled to pink.
At my feet, Pryce moaned. I kicked his shin, hard enough to get his attention.
He twisted his head to look at me. Sweat coated his forehead.
“If you ever try to rape me again,” I said, “I’ll kill you.”
He moaned and closed his eyes. Then he disappeared.
What the—? I stared at the place he’d lain a second ago. Something hit me hard from behind, knocking me onto my hands and knees. A vicious kick, then another, cracked my ribs. A shoe smashed into my nose. I couldn’t see, I couldn’t breathe. Pain exploded in my back, my sides, my head. I curled up, covering my head with my arms and trying to make myself too small to be a target. The attack continued, the blows kept coming, and the world dissolved into an agonizing haze of hurting, hurting, hurting.
Then it stopped.
Something grabbed my hair and yanked my head up. “Understand one thing, cousin,” Pryce’s voice growled in my ear. “I’ve no need to take by force what is mine by destiny.”
He let go, shoving my head back onto the ground. Cloth rustled. I blinked the blood out of my eyes and squinted up at him. He stood over me, whole and unhurt. “I wanted to see what you’re made of,” he said, “and I must say your performance was disappointing. It worries me. Prophecies, after all, are tricky things. So I’m glad for the tests.”
Tests. The word drifted on a dark sea of pain. I couldn’t grab hold of it. What was he talking about?
His voice changed, becoming loud and echo-y, like he was shouting across a canyon. “There will be three tests. If you survive them, I’ll know you are fated to bear my sons.”
Light flashed; tremors shook the earth. When the quaking stopped, I was alone.
19
EVERYTHING HURT. I TRIED TO TAKE AN INVENTORY OF MY injuries, but the individual pains blended into one big ball of agony. I knew several ribs had cracked, my nose was broken, and probably my right arm, too. My liver and kidneys throbbed with pain. One eye swelled shut; the other was a mere slit. I coughed, and pain wracked my chest. Bloody mucus spewed onto the ground.
When I tried to sit up, pain stabbed me in so many places I gave up and fell back to the ground. I had two choices. I coughed up more blood, then groaned. Make that three choices: I could just die right now. But I wouldn’t let Pryce win so easily.
So, two choices: I could lie here and wait for Mab to send a search party. But that would take hours, especially because she didn’t know which way I’d set out walking. Cold seeped from the ground into my fractured bones. I didn’t know if I’d make it that long.
Or I could shift. Shifting would fix my broken bones. Soft tissue was trickier. My internal injuries might heal imperfectly, or not at all. And the effort of making the shift might require more energy than I could summon. If I tried to shift and failed, I’d be left in this battered form, too weak to heal. I’d die before Mab could find me.
A freezing raindrop hit my face. More followed, a few random splatters that soon became a steady downpour. Each drop felt like a needle of ice piercing my flesh. I couldn’t lie here helpless until someone happened to find me, wounded and half-frozen. What if no one did? And what if Pryce came back?
There was really only one choice. I’d have to try shifting.
A gentle bleat wafted across the field, and I remembered the flock of sheep we’d seen. Pryce had nothing but contempt for the creatures, but right now they sounded like safety to me. I could hide among them. If Pryce returned, he’d never know I was here. He’d find nothing but bloodstains on the ground and a flock of stupid sheep.
I closed the eye that still worked—even that small movement hurt—and concentrated. I pulled the sheep’s bleating into me, filling my mind with it. I thought of fleece, thick and soft and warm, protecting me from the rain. I sniffed the air, searching for a hint of grass. I focused on these sensations, letting them fill me, folding them into the core of my being.
And I began to change. An energy field glowed around me as my arms and legs thinned, as my nails hardened and thickened into hooves. Woolly fleece sprouted, diminishing the cold as it grew along my belly and back, my neck and head. My nose lengthened and broadened. Sounds sharpened as my ears grew. The shift hurt—God, it hurt—as my body reshaped itself. But the pain was different. This was the pain of creation.