My chest was tight; I needed to breathe. Claws, bones, and even the water itself could kill. If I couldn’t push her off me, all she had to do was simply hold me underwater.
I prayed, “Goddess help me!”
A pale hand shone in the water, and Segna was pulled backward, my grip on her arms pulling me with her. We broke the surface together, both of us gasping for breath. Her breath ended in a spattering cough that covered my face in her blood. For a moment I couldn’t see who had pulled her back. I had to blink her blood out of my eyes to see Sholto with his arm across her upper body. He held her one-armed and yelled, “Get out, Meredith, get out!”
I did what he said: I let her go and pushed backward, trusting that there were no bones just behind me.
Segna didn’t try to catch me. She used her newly freed hands to claw down Sholto’s arm, making a crimson ruin of his white flesh.
I treaded water, looking around for Doyle and Frost, and the others. There were no others. I was paddling in a lake — a deep, cold lake — no longer the shallow, stagnant pool we’d been wading in before. There was a small island close at hand, but the shore was far away, and it was not a shore I knew. I screamed, “Doyle!” But there was no answer. In truth, I hadn’t expected one, for I could already see that we were either in a vision, or somewhere else in faerie. I didn’t know which, and I didn’t know where.
Sholto cried out behind me. I turned in time to see him go under in a wash of red. Segna struck at the water where he’d vanished with the dagger from her belt. Did she realize it was him she attacked now, or did she still think she was killing me?
I screamed, “Segna!”
The sound seemed to reach her, because she hesitated. She turned in the water and blinked at me.
I pushed myself high enough out of the water so she could see me. Sholto had not yet resurfaced.
Segna screamed at me, the sound ending in a wet cough. Blood poured down her chin, but she started moving toward me.
I screamed, “Sholto!” hoping Segna would realize what she’d done and turn back to rescue him. But she kept swimming, weakly, toward me.
“He is only white flesh now,” she growled, in that too thick, too wet voice. “He is only sidhe, not sluagh.”
So much for her helping Sholto — obviously it was up to me. I took a good breath and dived. The water was clearer here, and I saw Sholto like a pale shadow sinking toward the bottom, blood trailing upward in a cloud.
I screamed his name, and the sound echoed through the water. His body jerked, and just then something grabbed my hair and yanked me upward.
Segna pulled me through the water. I could see that she was making for the bare island. My naked back hit the rocks, scraped along them, as she struggled from the lake. She pulled me with her, until both of us were free of the water. She lay panting on the rock, her hand still tangled in my hair. I tried to ease away from that hand, but it convulsed tighter, wrenching my hair as if she meant to take it out by the roots. She started dragging me closer to where she lay.
I fought to get up on all fours so she wouldn’t scrape more of my skin off on the bare rock. In order to do so, I had to take my gaze off her for an instant.
It was a mistake. She jerked me down with that strength that could have torn a horse apart. Jerked me down, onto my stomach. I wedged an arm under my body to keep me off the rocks.
Then I saw that she still held the dagger. She pressed it to my cheek. I gazed at her along the line of the blade. She was lying down, almost flat against the rocks.
“I’ll scar you,” she said. “Ruin that pretty face.”
“Sholto is drowning.”
“The sluagh cannot die by water. If he is sidhe enough to drown, then let him.”
“He loves you,” I said.
She made a harsh sound that spattered her chin with more blood. “Not as much as he loves the thought of sidhe flesh in his bed.”
I couldn’t argue with that.
The tip of her blade wavered above my cheek. “How much sidhe are you? How well do you heal?”
I thought it was a rhetorical question, so I didn’t answer it. Would she die of her wounds before she hurt me, or would she heal?
She coughed blood onto the stones, and it was as if she wondered the same thing. She used her grip on my hair to force me onto my back, dragging me closer as she did it. I couldn’t stop her — I could not fight against such strength. She crawled on top of me and put her blade tip over my throat. I grabbed her hand, wrapped both my hands around it, and still trembled with the effort to hold her off me.
“So weak,” she gasped above me. “Why do we follow the sidhe? If I were not dying, you could not hold me off.”
My voice came out tight with strain as I said, “I’m only part sidhe.”
“But you’re sidhe enough for him to want you,” she growled. “Glow for me, sidhe! Show me that precious Seelie magic. Show me the magic that makes us follow the sidhe.”
Her words were fatal. She was right. I had magic. Magic that no one else had. I called my hand of blood. As I summoned it, I tried not to think about the fact that I could have done it sooner — before she hurt Sholto.
I wielded the hand of blood. I could have made her bleed out from just a tiny cut, and these were not tiny cuts. I started to glow under the press of her body. My body shone through the blood she was dripping on me. I whispered, “Not Seelie magic, Segna, Unseelie magic. Bleed for me.”
She didn’t understand at first. She kept trying to shove the blade into my throat, and I kept holding her just off me. She dug her hand into my hair so that her claws raked my scalp, bloodied me. I called blood, and her wounds gushed.
The blood poured over me, hot — hotter than my own skin. I turned my head away to keep my eyes clear of it. My hands grew slippery with her blood, and I was afraid that her knife would slip past my defenses before I could bleed her out. So much blood; it poured and poured and poured. Could a night-hag bleed to death? Could they even be killed this way? I didn’t know, I just didn’t know.
The tip of her knife pierced my skin like a sharp bite. My arms were shaking with the effort to keep her off me. I screamed, “Bleed for me!” I spat her blood out of my mouth, and still her knife wormed another fraction into my throat. Barely, barely below the skin — I wasn’t hurt yet, but I would be soon.
Then her hand hesitated, pulled backward. I blinked up at her through a mask of her own blood. Her eyes were wide and startled. There was a white spear sticking out through her throat.
Sholto stood above her, bandages gone, his wound bare to the air, both hands gripping the spear. He pulled the spear out with a wrenching motion. A fountain of blood spilled out of her neck. I whispered, “Bleed.” She collapsed in a pool of crimson, the knife still clasped in her hand.
Sholto stood over her and drove the white spear into her back. She spasmed underneath him, her mouth opening and closing, hands and feet scrabbling at the bare rock.
Only when she stopped moving completely did he take the spear out. He stood swaying, but used the tip to send her dagger spinning into the lake. Then he collapsed to his knees beside her, leaning on the spear like a crutch.
By the time I staggered to him, I wasn’t glowing. I was tired, and hurt, and covered in my enemy’s blood. I fell to my knees beside him on the bloody rock, and I touched his shoulder, as if I wasn’t sure he was real. “I saw you drown,” I said.
He seemed to have trouble focusing on me, but said, “I am sidhe and sluagh. We cannot die by drowning.” He coughed hard enough that he doubled over, throwing up water onto the rock, as he clung to the white shaft of the spear. “But it hurts as if it were death.”
I embraced him, and he winced, covered in wounds new and old. I held him more carefully, clinging to him, covering his upper body in Segna’s blood.