Gold laughed as Ron flew into him. He put one hand up, tossing him back. Ron crashed into the trunk of a tree. "You'll have to do better than that, dearie."
Ron came back, thinking of nothing except smashing that smug smile off Gold's face.
Still smiling, Gold dodged aside each time a blow was about to connect. "Not bad, dearie. You were paying attention earlier. I had wondered."
"Is this all just a joke to you?" Ron demanded. "Our lives, our deaths, you think it's just a game?"
Gold giggled, lightly stepping out of the way of each blow. "Now, now, don't denigrate games, not till you've spent as much time being bored as I have."
"My wife's dead," Ron yelled at him. "Everyone I know is dead. And you just laugh about it!"
The humor vanished from Gold's eyes. He hit Ron hard, knocking him down to the ground, near the corpses. He leaped onto Ron, straddling over him, crouching low, one of his knives out and pressed against Ron's throat.
"And why's she dead, dearie?" Gold asked. "Who left her, hmm? Who ran away and left her? Who forgot any promises, any deals he made her? How does the standard deal go around here? I thought it was something about, 'till death do us part.' But, maybe I had it wrong. Maybe the correct wording is, 'till I decide to cut and run.' If she's dead, why are you still alive?"
His eyes burned, yellow flames consuming the brown and red and not a shred of sanity in them.
He knew, Ron thought. Somehow, he knew what Ron had done.
He knew what Ron deserved, too.
And he was right, Ron thought. He was right. Ron shouldn't have lived, didn't deserve to live. He should have died with Linda, with everyone, only –
Only he saw something else in Gold's eyes, something that hit him as forcefully as waking up drowning in a cold river, the secret lurking behinf Gold's own anger.
"Who?" Ron asked. "Who was it? Who did you leave behind?"
Gold snarled. There was nothing remotely human about his face, now. His lips curled back from his brown and black fangs, like a hungry wolf's, like the infected that had almost killed Ron moments before. His blade dug into Ron's throat.
Then, Gold was off him.
He stood with his back to Ron, resheathing his knife.
"Get up." The words were an animal growl. "Time and past we were gone from here. We've got to get back to the boat."
He strode off, not bothering to see if Ron followed.
Shakily, Ron pulled himself up. He put a hand to his neck and pulled it away, looking at the warm blood. He stared at it for a long moment before wiping it off on his shirt.
Walking unsteadily, he made his way back to the boat.