The lines were beginning to blur.
The cool wind that kissed Aelin's cheeks as she ran was far too similar to the wind that had sliced at them months ago, as she raced through Rifthold, leaving Chaol and the rebels behind in her desperate fight to get to Nehemia in time. She ran now, with the same desperacy, and the only sounds in the world were the beat of her heart and the rasp of her breath and the thud of her footsteps as she ran.
"AELIN." Came the shout. "SLOW DOWN."
But she would not. She could not. She didn't dare. Not whilst every second, every breath, every whisper of wind was another moment in which Lysandra - her friend, her best friend, the one girl friend she could rely on to tell her the truth, the one person other than her carranam and her cousin that she had shown the complete whole of herself to and hadn't shied away from her darkness - was being tortured. Enslaved. Killed.
She didn't allow herself to imagine what could happen any further than that.
The streets of Rifthold blurred beneath her and the splash of cool rainwater against her calves as she kicked up puddles was nothing more than noise, a distraction, as she hurtled onwards, onwards, always onwards.
Because this time, she would not fail her friend like she had failed Nehemia, like the gods had failed her. She would not add another name of the beloved dead to her flesh.
She would not fail Lysandra.
"Aelin." Rowan's voice was hoarse, strained - pained. He grabbed at her arm and yanked her to a halt. Of course he'd been able to outrun her; she couldn't shift. Not without magic. And without her magic she couldn't incinerate whoever stood between her and her friend. "Think. You can't just barge into a prison wagon and expect to be able to get her out. You need to think this through, or she's gone forever."
"We'll be too late," she insisted, tugging, clawing, writhing in his grip. But his hand was a vice and his clamped hold didn't lessen. "Let go of me."
"We won't be," he promised, but in his eyes was the agony of a warrior who'd seen a thousand deaths, and she didn't believe him.
He knew it, too.
"Aelin," he reiterated, and his grip slackened slightly. "She may already be dead."
"No," she snarled, and used his flinch at the sudden aggression as an opportunity to wrench herself away, and she went to run again. Rowan didn't run after her.
But her carranam had delayed her for a sufficient amount of time that Chaol and Aedion had caught up - the remnants of Aedion's wounds slowing him to the same pace as Chaol. A set of strong arms wrapped around her and though she growled and struggled like a caged animal, they didn't let up.
You and I are nothing but wild beasts wearing human skins.
The last time she'd felt the truth of that statement so keenly was when she'd been trapped in one of those prison wagons herself, bound for Endovier. Only she hadn't been the animal she was now, harassed and angered and ready to tear its handlers limb from limb, but a broken, tamed one, the dog that cowered in the corner of the kennel in an attempt to put as much distance between it and the stick as possible.
The thought of Lysandra, who'd spent so long trapped in a skin that was not hers, in corsets and trinkets and bed linens, bound by that brand on her wrist as surely as though it were a shackle, in that place, being trundled along, seeing the forest she had so longed to run away into, just beyond reach-
Aelin stopped fighting the restraining arms as she sagged and vomited, clutching them for support.
The arms released her and her legs collapsed. She was sprawled across the damp cobblestones as Aedion - who'd been the one holding her - knelt next to her.
"We'll get her back," he promised in a guttural voice, even as the hand he placed over hers trembled. Of course - he had loved her too.
She buried her face in his shoulder as held him for a moment as she sobbed. Then her eyes were drying and she looked over her cousin's shoulder to where Chaol and Nesryn stood awkwardly. The woman said quietly. "We'll get her back. Together."
Her eyes went to Chaol, then - to the scar that was a single slash across his cheek. He noticed, and paled.
"Never again," he promised lowly, and she thought that might be something like tears in his voice, before she turned away.
The door to the prison wagon was insultingly easy to open. The wood of it yielded to Aelin's daggers without much of a fight, and the light of the forest spilled into the wagon, piercing through the thick blackness like her blades through flesh. It fell on a moon-white body, a curtain of raven hair, and Aelin scrambled forwards at the sight of her friend's prostrate form, curses springing from her lips at the dark blood that marred it-
No no no no no-
She touched Lysandra's hand, and almost flinched back at how cold the skin was. Her heartrate accelerated until it resembled a hummingbird's wings, and she shoved two fingers against her friend's wrist, frantically searching for that beautiful glimmering pulse, that beat of life-
Don't be dead don't be dead don't be dead don't be dead don't be dead don't be dead-
She felt her eyes tear up before her vision began to swim, blinking her eyelids because Lysandra was not dead she was not dead this was not Nehemia it was not that night she was not dead-
Her hands brushed over Lysandra's corpse, grabbing at her hands-
They grabbed hers back. Those frozen fingers squeezed her own.
Aelin collapsed to her knees sobbing. "Lysandra Lysandra Lysandra Lysandra Lysandra-" Her name was a mantra of relief.
"Aelin."
That voice.
No no no no no no no no-
Aelin took a shuddering breath. "Lysandra?" She tried again, even though she knew how it would end, had known it deep in her heart from the moment she'd found Evangeline in the ink warehouse below the flat. . .
Because the voice that answered was colder than the lifeless hands she grasped, colder than the feeling that crept over her as she heard it, colder than the world had been before Mala brought sunlight. It was an ancient voice she'd never wanted to hear again, one that sent the pressure plummeting, one that triggered a slow and steady nosebleed in her left nostril.
"Aelin Galathynius," the voice mused, it's tone mocking, like the words on that thing's tongue - Lysandra's tongue - were an inside joke with it and it's ilk. "How low you've been brought."
Final test. Aelin found she couldn't extract her right hand from the Valg demon's grip, so she reached round her waist to unsheathe the small pocket knife she had on her. She gently pressed it to the wrist she held - performing the action on her friend, even now she knew her friend was gone, felt abhorrent - and the skin split like a ripe grape. Black blood seeped out.
She choked on her tears.
In what seemed like half a motion, the thing wearing Lysandra's skin had pinned her to the wagon floor and was shackling her throat with her friend's fingers. She fought for breath, squeezing her eyes shut against the darkness that leaked from the demon, like ink into water. Her other nostril began to bleed.
"I have not tasted pain so exquisite in eons." The beast whispered. But not the beast Lysandra was. Not the one that had fought and clawed for survival, that had earned the skin she wore as much as she had her original one. It was a beast who didn't need meat, but killed anyway. A beast that played with its prey.
Her ear began to bleed.
"One sign, Lysandra," she choked out, giving her friend the same gift she'd given Dorian back in the gardens of the glass castle. She'd hated herself even then, hated herself for killing one of her oldest friends, though her self-hatred had paled in comparison to Chaol's. Now she knew what it felt like. "Give me one sign that you're in there."
She had Mala's ring, she reasoned with herself. Tucked away in her apartment above the city for safe keeping. She somehow doubted that this demon would let her escape and return with the means to banish it.
With a smile that was not hers, Lysandra smiled.
No. With a mouth that was not its, the demon smiled.
Her vision was going, but now, in the light streaming in through the window, she could make out that obsidian collar encasing her friends neck, the shackles she'd tried so hard to shake off. She reached underneath her for the spare dagger against her back, even as she felt the demon brush against the edges of her mind.
Take it, she willed it. Take it all.
She surrendered her memories of Lysandra to the thing, even as she scrabbled. It wasn't like this would hurt anymore than it already did.
Lysandra when they were children, and they were both vapid and shallow and vain and vicious and had taken pleasure in sniping at each other like the mortal enemies they were, even as Sam mediated between them.
Lysandra as she'd last seen her before her trip to Endovier, just after her Bidding night, smug and brutal and terrified, the dagger she'd thrown a hair's breadth from her face, mouth agape in shock.
Aelin had sworn to kill her.
She almost laughed at how it came to pass.
Lysandra when she'd seen her first as Aelin, her modest clothes and hesitant remarks, Evangeline trailing behind her. Her face creasing in fierce anger as she spoke of Arobynn and Sam and Wesley, and the disappointment when Aelin had turned down her offer for help. Evangeline lingering behind her, glancing between her mistress and a wicked stranger, and proceeded to tell the stranger the tale of unexpected kindness in a harsh, harsh world.
Lysandra when she first saw Rowan, with her cheeky, "I like your fangs," then the sheer terror as Rowan outed her as a shape-shifter. The way she'd shyly looked at Aelin as she was silent, like she was terrified she would toss her out on the street, like she'd grown to care for Aelin as much as Aelin had for her.
Lysandra in the Shadow Market, complaining about her large breasts. Lysandra by Arobynn's side, ruthlessly acting the part of a demure mistress. Lysandra weeping next to Madame Clarisse, covered in blood and terrified, but secretly thrilled about her benefactor's death. Lysandra telling Aelin that she was still miles away from paying her debt. Lysandra looking at Aedion, and fixing him with her pale green stare, and the unspoken promise that one day she would turn into ghost leopard to terrify him.
Now she would never get to.
Lysandra Lysandra Lysandra-
The demon glutted itself on her pain, and didn't notice when she rolled over, until she was on top of it, and severed her friend's head from her body.
Aelin stumbled out of the wagon and into the too bright daylight. Aedion was on her immediately.
"Aelin, what's-"
She fell to her knees and vomited. She hugged herself, but her hands were covered in blood, all of her was covered in blood, she could never be clean-
The shouts behind her as her cousin and carranam looked inside the wagon.
I just killed Lysandra.
She vomited again.
Lysandra. . .
I DON'T KNOW WHY I WROTE THIS OKAY I WAS FEELING ANGSTY.
All characters and such belong to SJM.
What did you think? Please don't kill me...