An Artificial Night

“Make me,” I said, gritting my teeth but managing not to fall again. Blood was running into my eyes; I wiped it away with one hand. Then I paused, looking down in disbelief.

My candle was lying near the base of his throne. I hadn’t been able to hear it singing to me under all the fresher blood, but as soon as I saw it, I knew it for my own. That made a certain amount of demented sense: they obviously didn’t clean up much around here, and once I’d thrown it away, it was just trash. I’d given up its protections—but that was then, and this was now. If I could reach it, I might still be able to get out by a candle’s light.

“I’m not going to die,” I said.

“Aren’t you?” He smirked. “A pity. If you won’t die, it’s not worth my time to kill you.” He turned back to Acacia, drawing my knife down the side of her face. Her eyes stayed glassy and unfocused, even as the blood started running down her cheek.

Blood ran down my fingers and along the length of Sylvester’s sword as I leveled it at him, the metal gleaming purple and gold in the firelight. “Leave her alone and fight me!” I shouted. “Be a man, you bastard, not a god! Or are you too afraid?” My last word rang through the square like a battle cry. It was a challenge he couldn’t ignore after the failure of the Ride.

Blind Michael dropped my knife into Acacia’s lap and stood, sightless eyes narrowed. “Do you really think you can challenge me?” he rumbled. “You, who have turned your heritage aside to live as less than nothing? You’re a fool, October, daughter of Amandine. Have you forgotten your god?”

“I’m more of an atheist, really,” I said.

“I see.” He smiled, extending an empty hand toward me. I thought I heard the Riders around us shout in triumph; then they were gone, voices fading as the mists surged up to block the landscape. “But church is such a quiet, welcoming place. There’s no pain there, little changeling. No death. No need for swords.”

The sword in my hands vanished, swallowed by the mist. I clenched my fingers together, trying to find it, but touched only air. I looked up, furious—and met Blind Michael’s empty eyes. His smile didn’t waver. I couldn’t look away.

“No pain,” he whispered. “No death, no need to fight. Come back, little changeling. Come back to me and be with me forever.”

The whiteness of his eyes expanded, just like his sister’s, and I was drowning. “I’m not yours,” I said, forcing the words out one by one. It was getting hard to move or think, and something in the back of my mind was shouting hosannas, ready to leap back into his arms.

How much of me belonged to him? How much of me was ready to betray the rest? I sucked the inside of my cheek, trying to use the blood I knew was there, but I couldn’t taste anything; his magic was too strong, and he wouldn’t be caught that way twice.

“I don’t want this,” I whispered, aware of how weak I sounded. He took another step toward me and I dropped to my knees, staring up at him. There was no pain this time. Either I’d lost more blood than I thought, or he was just that strong—and either way, the odds were good that I was screwed.

“Why not?” he asked, pressing his hand against my cheek. My vision was struggling to fragment back into the multiplicity of the Ride. I caught fleeting glimpses through other eyes, watching a changeling bleeding to death as she bowed before her lord and master. “You’re lost without me.”

Oh, oak and ash, Luidaeg, Sylvester, Quentin, I’m sorry. I thought I was doing the right thing this time. I thought it was important.

“I’m not . . . lost . . .” He was filling the world. There was nothing left but Blind Michael and the mist, and the brief, fractured visions I was stealing from other eyes.