She had to make herself do it.
As Bonnasaint’s fingers brushed the hilt of Pan’s knife, Prue yanked her own from its hiding place, wrenched herself about so that she was looking directly at him—her face so close to his that she could feel the sudden exhalation of his breath and see the frantic recognition in his eyes—and drove the knife into his midsection all the way to the hilt.
Bonnasaint screamed and clutched at her, trying to hold her fast. She fought against him, breaking free as his strength failed and the shock of what was happening paralyzed him. He staggered backward, pushing himself away from her, reaching down for the knife in his stomach. There was blood everywhere, and Prue could not look away. His eyes were locked on hers as he dropped to his knees.
He was still alive when Pan reached her, wrapped his arms about her protectively, and moved her back. Then he toppled over, his eyes empty and fixed, his body rigid.
Strangely, she did not find herself crying. The last few moments were so surreal she could hardly believe they had even happened. She knew what she had done. She had done what she needed to do. She had kept Pan alive. Wasn’t that all there was to it?
Then something akin to rage surged through her as the full impact of her actions flattened her momentary calm and everything began to slant sideways.
“We’re going to need a new plan,” she said to Pan, and then, finally, she managed to look away.
PRUE SPENT THE NIGHT WRAPPED IN PAN’S ARMS, pressed close against him beneath their blankets.
She slept a little, although not much, and he stayed awake with her, conscious of the changes in her breathing, of the moments when images of what she had done surfaced and caused her to shiver uncontrollably, and of the dreams that turned to nightmares and made her cry out. She was not handling this well—although he could hardly find reason to think that he would have handled it any better—so he did what he could to help her through it.
They left Bonnasaint pretty much where he had died, Pan taking time to move him out of the open and beneath a huge old cedar where he could be concealed by heavy boughs and hidden from view. He would have done more, even for someone as loathsome as the assassin, but he lacked a digging tool and there were few rocks at this level that he could use to build a cairn. So he did what he could to protect the body, knowing that in the end nature would do the rest.
Sometime during the night he fell asleep, and when he woke the sun was just cresting the mountain peaks, the sky was thick with rain clouds, and Prue was gone.
He panicked, throwing off his blanket and hurriedly pulling on his boots, looking everywhere at once as he did so. Once on his feet, he shouted her name, heedless of who might hear, and was relieved when she called back. He followed the sound of her voice to a break in the trees that allowed a clear view of the valley south and found her sitting on a grassy patch looking out over the countryside.
“Don’t do that again!” he snapped irritably. “I didn’t know what had happened to you!”
She gave him a wan smile. “Sorry. I just couldn’t sleep anymore—or even pretend to sleep—so I got up and came here to think. I forgot that you would be waking up.”
She looked so beaten down that he instantly regretted his words. “I just got frightened, that’s all. It isn’t your fault.”
“That’s about the only thing that isn’t.” She looked away again. “I really messed us up, Pan.”
The way she spoke the words was troubling. She sounded as if she had given up. “You did what you had to do and there’s nothing wrong with that. If you hadn’t killed him, he would have killed us. You know that.”
“I keep thinking that if I could have wounded him … or used the knife on his arms or legs and just …”
He put his arm around her and hushed her. “You could have tried to do a lot of things.
But any one of them would have gotten you killed. You did the one thing that would save us both.” He paused, trying to find something more to say, to speak the words that would reassure her. “You did what the King of the Silver River asked you to do. You protected me. And yourself. You didn’t mess us up.”
She shook her head in denial, but said nothing.
“He was too dangerous to keep around anyway. I should have gotten rid of him earlier. I should have taken him into Arborlon and let the Queen have him. He wasn’t going to help us anyway. He was sent to kill us, and he meant to do exactly that.”
She nodded, but still said nothing.