“That question may grow to haunt you over the next thousand years or so,” she said. “But you’re going to have to find your own salvation.”
She turned her attention to Rhoswen, who grew more and more agitated under her steady regard. “You went straight to Julian, didn’t you?” she murmured, low enough to keep her words from everyone else but not so low that Julian couldn’t hear. “What did you tell him—how unstable I’d become, how dangerous I was, how it made no sense that I would send my most loyal and devoted servant away and latch on to that manipulative Wyr? I know what you told him. You told him everything he wanted to hear to justify doing the things he did. Then you told the same things to the tribunal.”
Rhoswen straightened and held her head high, while her eyes glittered with angry tears. “I spoke my truth.”
Carling’s contemptuous expression never wavered. “What a poisonous little snake you turned out to be,” she said softly. There were too many fractures in Rhoswen’s behavior. Carling no longer believed the younger Vampyre was stable. If they were anywhere else, Carling would have taken her head. But Rhoswen was not worth breaking the laws of sanctuary over. Carling and Rune had come too far, through too much, to throw it all away.
As she turned away, she said to Julian, “She’s your problem now.”
She watched Julian’s face undergo a drastic change even as she felt a sharp stabbing pain in her back. She arched and tried to turn away, to keep the blade that was sliding into her body from striking a critical, mortal blow to her heart.
But then Rhoswen’s arm came around her neck. The other Vampyre was so much younger than she, so much slower and weaker, but Rhoswen didn’t have to hold her in place for long. She just had to hold her in place for long enough.
“I loved you,” Rhoswen hissed in her ear. “I gave you everything.”
The blow hit home.
Rune, Carling said, and even though he was twenty feet away talking with two Councillors, he could still hear her.
He spun. The shock and horror that filled his face and emotions saddened her terribly.
She still had so many things to say to him. She reached toward him and watched her own hand dissolve.
She still had so many things . . .
Rune, Carling said.
And he turned to see the tip of a short sword burst through her chest, just like the spear he had once watched burst through her father’s body. Behind her, Rhoswen was crying even as she thrust the sword. Julian had lunged forward, but there was nothing the Nightkind King or anyone else could do.
All Carling had time to say was his name. She looked so sad, so loving, and it was Carling that looked that way. That was his look; that look was for him.
She had shone so brightly, for so long. Then she crumbled to dust. And everything in Rune’s fierce, remarkable soul began to scream.
Every little thing is going to be all right.
Except sometimes it wasn’t, Bob. Sometimes things got so fucked up you couldn’t even send them home in a body bag.
Screaming.
Wait, I’m confused.
Hasn’t she died yet? Why have you not gone back to save her?
Have you seen Schr?dinger’s Cat? Like Schr?dinger’s Cat, I am both dead and alive.
Screaming.
I cannot live in this universe. I cannot live this way.
If you die, I will find you.
I will never leave you. I will never let you go. I will not let you fall, or fail. I will always come for you if you leave, always find you if you’re lost.
Always.
Each moment in time was the tiniest of things, the most precious of things. Each moment held the potential for change, a turnaround that led to a different page. It rested on a singular point that was so precise, it would be so easy to lose track of that one miniscule place, that single moment, in the infinite cascade of all the other moments in time. Each turnaround melted away, as every moment in the present slipped into the past.
Every moment slipped away until he reached back, not too far, just far enough, reached for the last definitive place when she was there instead of not there, and he threw all of his screaming soul at her.
And there it was.
The keystroke password to an unbreakable code.
As Carling turned away from Rhoswen, she said to Julian, “She’s your problem now.”
And suddenly the golden monster was in front of her. He was right there, even though Rune also stood twenty feet away talking to two Councillors.
The golden monster contained a nightmare that was so far beyond emotion, it whited out Carling’s senses. He yanked her to him while at the same time he lashed out with all his killing claws extended.
Rhoswen fell, her body in ribbons. Everyone in the clearing spun around to stare as she crumbled to dust, until all that was left was the short sword that had fallen from her hand.