Chapter 46

A lone sound pierced the haze of my disbelief.

Laughter.

Lord Death's chortling broke into booming laughter. He lowered his own sword, seeming to savor the sight of Caitriona staring down at the hilt still clutched in her hand, at the jagged piece of the blade that remained. The pallor of her face emphasized its spray of freckles.

God's teeth. This couldn't be happening.

"No," Olwen breathed out, returning to my side. "Oh, Mother, no …"

"This is the divine blade?" Lord Death's head fell back with another bark of laughter. " This is the slayer of gods?"

Only Neve's line can use its full power, I thought, sitting up but not loosening my grip on Cabell. Otherwise it's just a blade.

And now the one weapon we'd believed capable of destroying Lord Death lay in pieces at Caitriona's feet.

My body felt like it was vibrating with adrenaline, throbbing with every heartbeat.

Do something, I thought to myself. Anything.

I knew what my power was now—but recognizing the magic and tapping into it were two different things.

What am I missing? I squeezed my eyes shut. There were the dreams—dreams that Olwen had claimed allowed me to connect to messages from something greater. From the Goddess .

And then there was the white rose of Avalon.

That dream had been unlike all the others. After I'd found the flower in the courtyard of the tower, blooming up between a crack in the stones where nothing else had grown, I'd wondered if I'd somehow dreamt it into being. I'd told myself it had only been a premonition, but what if it wasn't?

What if I'd been right, and I'd somehow created it, transforming the decay in Avalon's soil to give it new form—new life?

Lord Death circled Caitriona, watching as her shoulders heaved, his amusement plain.

"Do you recall that very first day I arrived at the tower," Lord Death began, "and you came to me, your dress still stained with the blood of your beloved High Priestess, and asked to be trained? Do you remember what I said to you then?"

Caitriona only lifted her chin, jaw clenched.

"Skill can be taught, but courage cannot," Lord Death said, continuing his slow, spiraling path around her. "I always knew that you were special in that way."

Olwen appeared again at my side, wrapping an arm around my shoulders, holding both of us there. I stared up at her face. She was bruised and worn from the strain of the last ten days, but she held herself with a serenity I couldn't fathom.

"You were quick on your feet, quicker of the mind," Lord Death continued. "And you seemed to enjoy it—there truly is no comparison to the rush of blood, to the exhilaration, that comes with running headlong into battle, knowing at any moment you might die, or you might live."

Caitriona stood as straight as a blade, her face revealing nothing.

"Perhaps you will feel it even now, as I offer you this," Lord Death said. "Kill the hound, and I shall release the souls of Avalon to be reborn."

Nash used to say that living your life was like shuffling a deck of cards. One day you might draw a good hand, the next, a bad beat. But buying into that meant surrendering what control we did have .

Life wasn't drawing cards at random, it was choosing to pick up the deck, it was choosing how to shuffle, it was choosing the rules of play. It was the thousands of choices we made every single day, and the path those choices created for us.

Olwen held me firmly, even as I tried to jump to my feet.

"Let me go," I gasped out.

"Wait," Olwen said, repeating the word until it became a prayer. A litany. "Wait, wait …"

I could no longer see Caitriona's face through the churning mist. She was nothing more than a dark outline until a wind came to bellow through the clearing.

She stood exactly where she had before, staring down at the remaining fragment of Excalibur's blade.

"I've never known you to hesitate," Lord Death said, sheathing his own sword.

A new, painful chill took hold of me as her words in the library's attic circled back to me, just as cruel and terrible the second time.

He's a monster, Tamsin, and you know what must be done. There is only one way to stop a monster.

"Cait …," I started to say, but her name was drowned out by Lord Death's baritone.

"You were always too strong, too fierce, to be a mere priestess," he continued, drawing a step closer to her, then another. "What binds you to the isle now? I know what your heart desires. You've already discarded the beliefs that once held you back. Allow me now to break the shackles that remain. Kill the hound. Prove your loyalty to me, and your sisters, all of Avalon, will be reborn in this world."

Olwen's hold on me tightened again, but her expression never changed. She didn't call out reassurances, or even beg her sister to hear her, the way I would have expected her to.

"You … you would have me come to Annwn?" Caitriona rasped out.

"You would lead armies of the dead to punish the wicked—all the wicked of all the Otherlands," Lord Death continued. "You would ride alongside me in the endless hunt, your power limitless."

"Don't do this," I begged her. "This isn't what you want. This isn't who you are."

If Caitriona heard me, she did nothing to acknowledge it. Instead, she looked up. My skin crawled as Lord Death laid a heavy, gloved hand on her shoulder, his expression a sickening play at seeming paternal.

She's going to do it, my mind screamed. She's going to kill him.

"It is who you are," he said. "My crown allows me to weigh the worth of a soul, to judge it. What I sense in you now is the hate necessary to survive."

Even at a distance, I saw the way her lips trembled as she pressed them together. The bleakness of her dark eyes. Her shoulders sloped down, as if the fight were draining from her.

"No," I tried again. "None of that is true! You aren't your pain. You aren't your anger—"

But with one last look at Lord Death, she started toward me. Toward us.

"What are you doing?" I asked, leaning protectively over Cabell again. Panic trilled in me.

"Wait," Olwen breathed out.

"Stand aside, Tamsin," Caitriona said, emotionless. "It was always going to come to this."

She'd said it herself before, in the library. There is only one way to stop a monster.

"Cait, please," I babbled. "I know what he's done. I know that he hurt you in so many ways and nothing will ever truly make it right. But it's not too late for you. You don't have to cross this line."

"You forgive him?" Caitriona asked, advancing toward us, her silver hair swaying around her face with each step.

"No," I said. "I don't. But I love him, and I can't kill that part of me—I've tried, Cait. I've tried. "

He was my brother. He had done horrifying things he couldn't take back. But he was my brother, the same little boy who held my hand when we walked alone in the dark, both of us hungry and exhausted. And now he was coming back to us. He was climbing out of the darkness alone.

"He can make amends," I swore.

Caitriona looked worse up close. Clumps of moss and stray leaves clung to her hair. The skin beneath her eyes looked bruised by sleepless nights.

"Don't worry," she told me coldly. "It'll be a swift end."

"No!"

Caitriona's expression changed then, as if a stone mask had fallen away to reveal the familiar flint in her eyes. Her face came alive with new focus, her body rising to its full, impressive height.

Shame scored my soul, because I understood then why Olwen had held me back. Wait, she'd said. Wait. Not out of denial. Not out of fear.

It was faith.

Caitriona turned her back to us, addressing Lord Death with steel in her voice.

"I am the High Priestess of Avalon," she said. "And I serve only the Goddess."