Of course, Myrddin was nowhere to be found. His illusion of guards had disappeared along with him.
“Get—him—off,” Yanna thundered, her voice furious as it was hitched. “Get your stupid, oversized leech off of me, or I’ll haunt your children’s children to the grave!”
The thought of Yanna’s body, limp in his arms, flashed through Lilac’s mind. She ran her tongue across her lower lip. Would it be so bad to let him have her? He was hungry, after all. Whatever pleased him. It couldn’t be Lilac feeding him. Not now. Not with the way he looked at her, touched her, craved her. He might?—
“Lilac, please!” Yanna’s pained sob pierced the night.
Blinking the vision away,Lilac dropped to her knees and frantically ran her fingers through the grass. Her knuckles brushed against a solid shaft; she grabbed it, leaped up, and slashed it hard under Garin’s shirt. It skidded along the skin of his back, just above his trousers.
Warmth pooled over her fingertips. Lilac clung to the arrow and scuttled back.
Garin released Yanna with a roar, blood dribbling down his front. It was everywhere. He began retching and coughing, confusion marring his anger while he spat what was left in his mouth into the dirt. He wiped at his red-stained chin and whipped around.
“No.” Garin wiped his mouth, his ruddy, blown irises shrinking as they flew over her. “No, no, no?—”
“It wasn’t me,” she whispered, placing her hand on his cheek.
He slowly turned to Yanna, who stood there trembling. “I’m sorry. I?—”
A loudcrackechoed across the fields, sending startled nightingales soaring into the sky before Yanna stomped off.
Garin’s hand went to his cheek where she’d slapped him. “She’s still bleeding,” he murmured when Lilac stumbled from his side, stalking toward Yanna.
What was wrong with her?She was so willing, more than willing, to sacrifice her handmaiden to him.
Her throat tightened, thinking of the two girls standing outside of Garin’s room at The Fool's Folly. How they’d sacrificed their friend to sate his hunger enough for him to want to bed them.
She’d been so fixated on her and Myrddin’s mission, fucking him seemed far from her thoughts until the moment she slit her though. But now, it was more than envy. Something deep-seated—an arcane wrath that strained against any attempt to grasp at logic. She slowed in the middle of the path, realizing her hands had been balled into fists.
“Let him heal you, Yanna,” Lilac managed, nauseous at the thought of his tongue on her.
“No,” Yanna screeched. “Stay thefuckaway from me, the both of you!” She gathered her skirts into her fist. Holding the bunched outer hem of her gown against the wound at her throat, Yanna staggered toward the nearby pile of hay stacks that sat between Sable and Jeanare and the farmhouse.
Lilac turned back to urge Garin to help her, but he’d already left. His back was to her—he was approaching the porch again.
No, something infrontof it.
He was so disfigured and crumpled, Lilac hadn’t noticed him there.Several feet away, Artus lay face-up, his charred lips gaping to swallow rattling breaths, his torso quaking but otherwise still.
“You.” Garin sank to his knees beside the old man, slipping his arms beneath his head and shifting him further away from the fire. If she didn’t know better, she’d have thought Garin was attempting to save him.
The blaze before them burned brighter, the last of the west hall collapsing in on itself. Lilac retreated and was forced to shield her eyes and face against the blast of heat, but Garin remained oblivious to the embers flung at them, his hands flying over the old man’s body. He wassearchinghim. Armand’s breast pocket, the leather pouch. Then his trousers and even under his shirt.
“Where is it?” His snarl was barely audible, a treacherous sound ensnared in bile and venom. He coughed and spat into the dirt beside Artus’s head. “What have you done with it? Where is—” As if belatedly realizing Artus was incapable of answering even if he’d wanted to, Garin broke off and grabbed him. He shook him violently by the shoulders, hard enough to bounce the back of Artus’s skull off the ground.
A heavy growl of frustration leaked from Garin’s lips as he dropped him, fingers curled. He hung his head, chest rising and falling in a scattered rhythm. Without warning, he brought a heavy fist down on Artus.Throughhis skull. Lilac jumped and covered her mouth.
He did it again, upon Artus’s chest. Then, into his ribcage.
Over and over and over again.
Lilac wanted to move. Her legs burned against her will, her fingers itching to slip down the front of her gown, but she couldn’t bring herself to do any of it. She couldn’t divert her gaze or shut her eyes, or even retreat to prevent her feet from being further covered in the gore that splattered with every hit. The raw agony with which Garin moved petrified Lilac. There was nothing stealthy or lithe about him as he pummeled Artus’s remains into the earth.
He was the force of falling night in the flesh.
Lilac licked her lips, enchanted by the melodious sound of his fist squelching, shattering Artus’s bones.
“For this kingdom,” Garin grunted to the pulverized corpse between punches. “For my mother.” He lifted his fist high once more. “For the love—of my—life.”
