“I prefer to keep my hands clean, but there are exceptions,” he says, stealing a glance at Beau. Victor Carver is an enigma, but right now, I have to trust him as we fight Mara.
Like I thought, it is a trap.
Mara lunges first. My knees buckle under her weight, but I don’t drop. I shove her away from me. Victor swipes at her, yelping as a chunk of rotting flesh splatters on his pants.
Mara is on the ground, but her eyes aren’t on us anymore. They leer at Viola with unbridled thirst. I don’t have time to blink; she slides past me, diving straight for her. Beau pushes Viola aside, and Mara’s claws cut across his shoulder. I grip her elbow, pulling her back. She flails, her long, skeletal hands still reaching toward Viola. I loop my arm around hers and jerk her away.
The upper half of Mara’s body twists, and she drives her claws into my ribs. Haal, have mercy. It hurts.
Out of the corner of my eye, Beau urges Railesza toward me, but she doesn’t move. At least someone around here is following orders. Mara kicks me in the abdomen, and my back clashes with the pavement before my head meets the ground. She straddles me, tilting her head as if she’s trying to figure me out. Up close, her face is drooping, with large veins coming out of her eye sockets. Her eyeballs seem to be her only remaining human attribute, and they’re now a deeper shade of green.
“I can handle her. The puppeteers can’t be far,” I shout to Victor, and he immediately sets off through the cemetery, quietly stalking into the woods.
Mara swipes at my neck, and the metallic smell of blood fills the air. My vision blurs, but regardless of how Raiek feels about me, I know the Imortalis won’t let me die.
One after the other, three knives sink into Mara’s neck. I look past her, and Beau readies a fourth. She removes them one by one and throws them back toward my brother with a wicked grin that crawls down my spine. Iwill my body to move, but it won’t so much as twitch. Without Railesza to heal me, I’m as good as dead. The corners of my vision fade to black, and my eyes roll back.
When I come back to my senses, a tall male figure—a second puppet— drags Victor from the cemetery toward me. Haal, is he dead? The darkness takes me away. What good am I if I can’t keep anyone alive? I don’t deserve the Imortalis when all I do is push people to their deaths.
Light seeps through my eyelids again. Across the yard, Mara’s long, sharp fingers pin Victor to a tree through his shoulder. He’s alive. With his relic, coated in blood—his blood—he distracts her every few seconds, but his magic doesn’t hold, and she punctuates every gap with a hit.
“Vi,” Beau pleads, his voice faint. “Victor’s going to die again. Aspieri cannot heal Arkani. Please cut the puppet’s threads.”
“I don’t see the threads.” Viola chokes. “I don’t see them—”
I pass out again.
This time when I wake, Viola’s legs are swinging, her hands trying to pry Mara’s death grip from her neck. Behind them, Beau helps Victor toward the street. At the slightest movement, my neck hurts.
Will I have to watch everyone die by the hands of Mortemagi as I lie here,useless?
“Do not speak of Olivia.” Viola’s yell pierces through the chaos.
When my eyes find her again, her right palm is open, her fingers ebbing and flowing, like she’s weaving invisible threads. Mara drops her abruptly, and Viola lands on her feet, scrambling away from the puppet.
“Something is tethering the threads,” she calls out. “They’re impossible to cut.”
A moment later, Beau careens toward me, and Railesza half wraps around my arm, biting into my veins, healing me just enough to get up. I inhale, and my lungs fill with relief as I stagger to my feet, stumbling forward. My harness is empty, and Raiku doesn’t respond when I call out to him. I scan the area, but my killer aspier is nowhere to be seen.
A dagger flies past me, landing straight between Mara’s eyes. From the street, Victor falls to his knees, the other puppet lying still at his side. It looks deflated, empty. I only hope this means he’s somehow found the second puppeteer.
Like a parasite who refuses to die, Mara pulls the dagger out and takes a step forward, aiming it toward me. If I can’t fight, I can at least distracther with the little strength I have left. I close my eyes, bracing for the hit. It can’t kill me, I remind myself.
Nothing comes. Or maybe it did, and I somehow died so fast I have no recollection of the moment.
A whimper forces my eyes open.
Viola is in front of me.
Her shoulders sag, and I catch her midfall, a dagger below her rib cage, so close to where I stabbed her days ago. This woman is out of her mind. Does she forget that I am immortal? My limbs refuse to move. I am a statue of confusion, anger, and guilt. She threw herself in front of me. She just tried to saveme.
Mara spits, blood splattering in the air. She drags her limp leg forward. “Beau,” I call out, and my brother wraps his arm around Viola’s waist, holding her weight.
“Rai and I have her,” my brother says.
I don’t have time to reply when Mara darts toward me, her hands reaching straight for my neck. My arms slide between us, and I twist her hands away, kneeing her hard in the stomach. She recoils, the green of her eyes fading—the puppeteer is distancing themselves. Mara stumbles back to her feet, but I don’t yield. I charge at her, and she drags me with her to the ground. This time, I have the upper hand. I throw punch after punch until my vision is hazy again, until I no longer know what is and what isn’t. One moment, Beau is yelling, and the next, my body lies flat on the grass.
“Sylas,” a voice calls.