The Winter Long

I HAD NEVER MOVED so fast before in my life; I may never move that fast again. Tybalt’s scream was still gathering strength as I launched myself across the room, drawing the knife from my belt and charging straight for Simon. Behind me, I heard Evening shouting; I heard the Luidaeg shouting even louder, until their words blurred together in a senseless mass of sounds and syllables. None of it mattered. The only things in the world with any meaning to them were the men in front of me, one red-haired and frowning, the other screaming in evident agony.

My knife wasn’t weighted for throwing, and even if it had been, I’d never thrown a knife before; I wouldn’t have known how to begin. So I settled for what I knew, flipping the blade around and slashing open my own palm as I ran. The wound flared pain up my arm. I ignored it—I’ve gotten surprisingly good at ignoring little things like that—and instead used the blood to call as much of my magic as I could summon from the marrow of my bones, calling and calling until the air around me was thick with the smell of cut grass and copper, burying all traces of roses and snow, smoke and oranges.

Tybalt was still screaming. I was still running. All of this had taken seconds, barely enough to register on a clock’s face. It had been enough to accomplish one thing, however: it had been enough to get me close enough to Tybalt that I could slam my still-bleeding hand flat against his chest, transferring all the momentum of my run into his body. He rocked backward, held up only by the ropes of wind that still bound him, and I rocked with him.

Simon cursed. I allowed myself a flickering instant of satisfaction. As I had hoped, when I hit Tybalt, the shock of the impact had transferred back to the man who cast the spell.

That man was going to have to deal with me in a minute. Right now, I needed to deal with Tybalt, whose screams were tapering off as he choked and gasped for air. I pressed my palm down harder against his chest, praying that the wound would stay open long enough to give me the blood that I needed, and closed my eyes. Please let this work, I thought. Please let me remember how . . .

Glowing orange-and-gray lines snapped into view on the inside of my eyelids, carefully and precisely twisted around each other in a net that a master craftsman would have been proud to call his own. They looked almost diseased to my mind’s eye, like they had been infected with something that might never come clean.

“Sorry,” I murmured, not opening my eyes, and slashed my knife along the worst of the lines.

The silver was coated in my blood, and my magic was sizzling in the air. When the blade hit the edges of Simon’s spell they withered, snapping and fraying with every pass. My headache—gone, but not forgotten—flared back to life, and I ignored it. I couldn’t be entirely sure that I wasn’t hitting Tybalt at least a little, but I hacked away at the center of the spell without allowing myself to hesitate. Better a few bandages than a single coffin.

Simon cursed again, and more of the lines sprang into view, slithering to fill the spaces left by the ones I had cut away. I responded by changing the directions of my cuts. Instead of slashing at the spell, I brought the knife down on the inside of my arm, opening the skin from wrist to elbow. The blood came fast and dangerously heavy then, but I ignored the implications of that as I dropped the knife, covered my hands in sticky warmth, and began shredding the spell by the fistful, ripping it away like there was no tomorrow.

When I yanked the threads from Tybalt’s throat he breathed in—a huge, whooping gasp of a sound—and the lines on his chest began to move as he panted. I took that as a good sign and ripped away chunks of spell even faster. The threads stung my fingers when they got through the insulating layer of blood. I didn’t care. I could handle a few small abrasions better than I could handle my boyfriend’s death.

Then enough of the strands had broken for Tybalt to fall. He hit the ground hard enough that I heard the impact, and I opened my eyes, sparing only a brief glance down to see that he was on his hands and knees, not crumpled in an unconscious heap. Then I raised my head and looked at Simon, my teeth bared in a snarl.