56. Chapter 56

Chapter 56

C onsciousness was something Cyril wanted no part of.

The searing throb radiating from the back of her head was unlike anything she’d ever felt before. It was a sickening sort of pounding that crested to an unbearable degree every time she tried to open her eyes.

Did she…fall?

The rooftop had been slick, sure, but…her boots were built for grip.

It didn’t make sense…

Her shoulders screamed too, like when Bron used to have her hang from the apple trees behind the estate for far too damn long.

And her hands were numb and…up?

Cyril fought to swallow down the sickly, metallic tang of blood in her mouth and willed one eye to open, just a crack.

Blood-soaked floor greeted her.

The toes of her boots barely skimmed the floor, and she…she hadn’t fallen.

No—the cellar.

She found the cellar, and… Oh gods.

No .

Cyril shifted against the stone wall at her back, her aching wrists tethered high above her head. She willed her other eye open just a crack, and a quiet, shuddering breath left her.

All four blades strapped to her thighs were missing, the carefully crafted sheaths left empty and half-torn off her legs. That snug comfort of her reinforced leather jacket was gone too, the front of her white blouse stained with smears and droplets of blood.

Cyril wasn’t alone either.

The warm, flickering light of the wall torches had her sensitive eyes watering, the finer details of her vision a blurry mess. But a small frame cloaked in black kneeled in the center of the room, speaking in a rhythmic cadence Cyril just couldn’t grasp.

Not that the dull ringing in her ears helped.

Beside the huddled figure were a set of boots and legs and—

Cyril had to squeeze her eyes shut as a tremor set into her vision and her stomach lurched up her throat. She needed to breathe , needed to think . She needed to assess and figure out what the fuck she was going to do.

“ It wakes ,” said a guttural, rattling voice.

Her eyes slid open, and every screaming, aching muscle in Cyril’s body tensed.

Whatever stalked towards her with preternatural fluidity, it wasn’t mortal, or fae, or anything she had ever seen before. Sunken-in eyes built of nothing but abyssal black sized her up from head to toe as thin, pallid lips peeled back into a jagged grin.

Cyril sank back against the rough stone wall, trying to gain every breath of space she could as the creature extended a hand tipped with gleaming, black claws towards her. She fought against her shackles, pulling so hard her wrists burned, but the chains gave no quarter.

She had nowhere to go.

“ Nononono, ” she breathed, hoarse and ragged, as those claws scraped over the surface of her throat. They wrapped and squeezed slowly, restricting her air.

Cyril kicked her legs up wildly, trying to wedge a knee up in between herself and a body that felt like it was hewn from stone.

The creature didn’t even flinch.

“Oh, it fights ,” it rumbled with a wicked shriek of a cackle. Its face skimmed along hers, blowing warm puffs of putrid air from slitted nostrils until its empty eyes leveled with hers. “I like it when it fights.”

The fingers wound tighter around her throat, and Cyril thrashed.

There was no fucking way she was dying here.

She kicked her legs up again, fighting against the oxygen-deprived pounding of her head, against the darkness pressing on at the edge of her vision.

But it wasn’t any good.

Another claw-tipped hand caught her thigh and punctured, shredding fabric and flesh and muscle in one fluid movement.

Cyril couldn’t even scream at the pain that lit her body on fire. At the pain that ignited in her chest and burned as badly as it did in her leg. The creature said something in a hitched, goading tone, but her pounding heart was the only clear sound, and the darkness moved in quickly.

Her vision flickered, the pain and panic sputtering and dancing.

She couldn’t breathe, and this…this was it.

What a pathetic end.

The pain in her chest cracked and splintered, and an inferno tore through her. She never thought death would be such a spectacle. That it would feel like such a consuming, painful—

Cyril’s knees hit the ground, and her chest heaved at the first whisper of air.

Damp and rank, fucking godsent air, that she took down in violent gulps.

She was…no longer chained.

And her leg—oh gods .

Cyril couldn’t look at it, at the torn flesh and muscle, exposed and bleeding freely.

It ached, so fucking bad, but it bore her weight and she staggered upright as the creature whipped around, snarling.

“Filthy sun-fae bitch ,” it seethed in its rattling echo of a voice, and it charged .

Cyril didn’t have time to parse what happened. She didn’t have time to even consider why the hells her body felt like it was fucking buzzing , like it was full of more life than it ever had been.

She had to fucking move .

Cyril lunged forward against the pain and swept in low. She said a quiet prayer to whatever old god still deigned to listen as she reached down into her boot and—

Thank fuck .

She freed a blade from the concealed sheath in the leather and swung it back towards the creature’s knees as she slid under its reach. Blood-soaked dirt and gravel flew up in every direction around her.

The ground shook with a thud as a blood-curdling shriek rang out.

Cyril hit her mark.

Her chest heaved as she tried to catch her breath, spitting out blood and debris and whatever the fuck else was in her mouth. Cyril pushed herself up onto her elbows and knees, but claws tore into her ankle and ripped her back across the room.

“Let me go !” Cyril roared as she twisted and writhed, trying to wrench herself free from its grip. Its claws were fucking merciless as they hooked into her boots and through her flesh.

It tossed her onto her back with enough force to send Cyril’s vision spinning and another torrent of pain down her spine. Her blade clattered from her hand as the creature pinned her with its crushing weight. It felt like a plate of lead landed on her hips, boring her down into the earth, but Cyril kept writhing and wrenching and pounding her palm against its chest.

“I like it when it fights,” the creature rumbled, its serpentine face hovering above hers. It snaked a hand back up her neck as it cackled, “But now it dies .”

Her next movements were a blur.

Cyril slammed her forehead up into its face, its razor-edged teeth tearing into her skin. As the creature grunted and sputtered, it reared back, giving Cyril the precious inch of the quarter she needed to reach her blade. It took all of her might to plunge it into the side of the creature’s neck.

She went to rip the blade forward, to slit the fucking thing’s damn throat just like Bron taught her to do, but thick, black blood poured out from the wound. Cyril lost her grip on the slick handle as the creature rolled off her with a wet, gurgling shriek.

Cyril staggered up to her feet, the gaping wound in her leg nothing more than a dull ache now, and she freed the blade from her other boot.

That fucking blonde woman was still chanting, muttering words Cyril couldn’t process, oblivious to the world around her as the runes painted around the room pulsed with life.

Cyril would deal with her after—she had more pressing issues.

The creature on the ground writhed and grunted, trying to pull the blade free from its neck. Cyril dropped her weight down onto it and something like pain surged in her periphery as its claws tore into her side.

She plunged her blade into the other side of its throat, gripped both handles with every last bit of her fleeting energy, and ripped them across in opposite directions.

A final, gurgling breath left the creature before it went limp.

One more to go.

Getting to her feet this time took a concerted effort. Her chest burned as every breath sawed in and out of her lungs. She staggered forward a step, both blades clutched in her hands, but the woman splayed her arm towards Cyril and a blast of force blew her back against the wall.

The impact rattled her bones.

“ Fucking hells ,” Cyril groaned. She coughed and wiped at the blood trickling down the corner of her mouth.

Of course, this one wouldn’t be easy.

She pushed off the stone and made it a few steps forward before that energy rippled again, sending her crashing back against the stone wall and straight down to her knees. The blooming pain in her side was making it hard to breathe.

“Stop this!” Cyril pleaded, trying to pull herself up the wall, a single blade still left in her grip. “You are killing innocent people. People who—”

“What about our people?!” The woman’s seething voice carried a frighteningly familiar lilt to it as she stood, her milky green gaze fixed on Cyril. “Our people are suffering , our people are dying , our women cannot bear children! You and your filthy people have come here and tainted our lands.”

The runes on the ground pulsed, and the air became impossibly thick, too dense to breathe. That deep-seated pain in Cyril’s chest cracked and splintered again, heat pouring through every fiber of her being.

Darkness shuttered her senses and her body hummed again with that strange surge of life that pulled her pain away with it.

“ You have upset our balance, and it is my obligation to restore it. I will not allow you to—”

Cyril’s hand curled itself around the woman’s throat almost of its own volition, gripping and pulling her head back as she pressed her blade to her throat. Cyril shot a glance back over her shoulder, at the wall she had just clung hopelessly to.

A dozen feet away.

Did she just…

No.

There was no fucking way…

“You filthy bitch,” the woman growled as she clawed at Cyril’s arm, her free hand flying back to the gaping wound in Cyril’s thigh.

Another ripple of force tore through the air, and the snaps that reverberated up through Cyril’s leg and into her body sent a surge of bile clawing up her throat. Darkness clawed at the edge of her vision as she fought for breath.

She couldn’t waste another second.

In a jagged line from left to right, Cyril ripped her blade across the woman’s throat, and an arc of blood sprayed out in its wake. A burst of desperate, gurgling noises came spitting out of her before she went slack in Cyril’s arms.

The air in the cellar thinned, and the room dimmed as the runes lost their glow of life.

Cyril collapsed to the floor as a torrent of searing pain surged through her.

She barely had time to shove the woman’s body away before her stomach turned itself inside out, tears rolling down her cheeks as she heaved and retched.

The pain crested in frightening degrees as Cyril tried to pull herself back against the wall.

Away from the bodies and the blood.

Away from the terrifying reality of what had just happened.

Away from her own fucking vomit.

Her back hit wood and Cyril clutched at her side, at the gaping hole that soaked her shirt a burgundy red.

The gaping hole that continued to soak her shirt, no matter the pressure she put.

Cyril let her head drift back and stifled down a sob with a slow, shaky breath.

This was it.