Then her eyes shifted back to Phaedon, still sitting on the bed, staring into space, and she noticed that the knife was gone.
An instant later she felt a sharp blow to her back followed by a wrenching pain, and she collapsed to the bedroom floor. It was as if all her strings had been cut, and she could no longer make anything work. She lay in a red haze of anguish and fury, watching as Jera Elessedil stood looking down at her, bloodied knife in hand, and she realized what had happened.
“You killed them,” she managed to gasp.
Suddenly Jera didn’t look like Jera anymore, but like something not even human. Her features were losing shape and twisting into something feral. It lasted just a minute, and then she was back to herself again.
“You’re not dying fast enough,” she hissed.
She lunged for Seersha, who barely managed to catch hold of her wrists and stop the knife’s downward descent. Jera shrieked and thrashed in her grip, and for a moment Seersha, her strength all but gone, was certain she was finished.
But Jera was too eager, and her wild efforts caused her to lose her footing and tumble to the floor, the knife skittering away. Seersha saw her chance—one so small it offered no real hope, but she embraced it anyway. In an instant she was on top of Jera, her wounds forgotten, her weakness thrust aside, her body flooded with the Druid magic that had always sustained her. Everything happened all at once, and even making the effort to regain control of her injured body was done on faith.
A warrior to the last, she refused to give in to the damage and the pain, refused to admit she couldn’t do what she needed to survive. Refused to admit she was finished.
She bore down on Jera Elessedil with every last ounce of strength she could find, hammered her head into the floor, then jammed a forearm across the her neck and pressed down.
The cry that broke from Jera’s mouth was terrifying and inhuman. Instantly, the creature that had surfaced earlier—the creature Seersha now realized had been disguised as Jera—reappeared in bits and pieces. Clothing ripped and split apart. Skin fell away. Jera Elessedil began to fade, and something muscular and lithe emerged in her place, something covered head-to-foot in earth-colored hair and possessed of sharp claws and teeth—a being like nothing Seersha had ever seen before. She knew this was what had killed not only Aresh and the guard but also the old King. It was the spy that had tried to steal the diary from Aphenglow and leave her injured or dead.
All this came to the Druid in seconds, and that was all the time she was given. The creature hiding within Jera’s skin had emerged, and she did not have the strength to fend it off. It was enormously strong, and Seersha knew it would be free in seconds and that would be the end.
She cried out for help, then flung her arms about the creature’s neck in a vise-like grip that crushed its windpipe and cut off its air. The beast thrashed and writhed once more, and this time its claws ripped into the Druid, tearing at her exposed back. She summoned her magic anew and tried to create a protective covering for her body. But mostly she used it to infuse her arms with renewed strength so that she could apply crushing force as she tightened her hold about the creature’s neck.
They rolled and twisted about the floor of the bedroom, bumping into the bodies of the dead and covering themselves with blood. Atop the bed, Phaedon Elessedil was screaming, backed up against the headboard, trying to curl himself into an invisible ball.
When the door finally burst open and Elven Home Guards poured through and managed to pry Seersha free, they found that the creature she was locked onto was already dead.
Blankets were brought in which to wrap her, and voices called out to her as they picked her up.
“Hold on. We’re getting you help.”
“There! Her legs! Keep them steady.”
“She’s been stabbed in the back, too. Look at the wound!”
“Seersha, can you hear me?”
She was drifting now, far out on the ocean, borne by the waves in a rocking motion that left her warm and sleep.
“Seersha! Don’t go to sleep!”
On the bed, Phaedon was weeping. For himself, she imagined.
“Seersha! Listen to me!”
Listening.
Drifting.
Don’t go.
Thirty-one