She was vaguely aware of Teddy’s voice, of the rain pelting her face, of the wind lashing at her hair.
“Stella! Don’t look at them. Look at me. Look at my eyes.”
The world was half-dark from the clouds, but Teddy’s eyes were still bright and golden—a beacon in the storm.
“Good. Now listen to me. Those men were assassins, and they would have killed you if you’d given them the chance. You did what you had to do.”
A hysterical laugh bubbled up her throat. “What I had to do? I had to kill three out of four of them without breaking a sweat.”
“It was a sight to behold, if I’m honest.” His eyes flicked down to the drenched shirt plastered to her skin. It was entirely transparent and speckled with blood.
She frowned. “It was horrifying.”
“It wasnecessary.” Teddy’s voice was deep and firm and full of certainty. He took her swords from her hands and awkwardly fed them back into their sheaths at her hips.
Stella stared at her palms as the pouring rain turned the bright red blood a paler pink by the second.
She felt at once like she’d lost something vital and gained something awful.
Teddy’s hands were warm on her cold cheeks. “You were so beautiful. I have never seen someone fight like that.”
Stella had always thought she was more like her mother, and she was angry at being so soft. But looking at her blood-stained hands,she wondered if she had more of her father than she’d thought and she’d just never experienced the circumstances that brought out that side of her.
She’d seen her father fight in several swordsmanship tournaments, but the stakes of those contests were just bragging rights. It was always obvious he was holding back—swiping to maim and not to kill.
Once, she’d heard a man describing Rainer McKay in battle as supernaturally efficient in his ability to read the shifting tides of a fight and tilt the field his way. He’d called her father a skilled and efficient executioner.
Do I have that same killer instinct?
She hadn’t expected it to be soeasy. She’d known it was a possibility—even a probability—when she entered herself into the Gauntlet Games, but she thought she’d see it coming.
Stella was aware of the storm raging around them, but she could barely hear it. She was focused on Teddy’s face and on the pounding of her heart, which didn’t seem to register that the fight was over.
“You’re going to be fine. You’re just in shock. We need to get you inside and warm you up.”
“Can’t you stop the storm?” she mumbled.
He shook his head. “It would take too much magic and I just spent the better part of what I’d replenished. I’ll need it if any other assassins come along.”
Stella looked around the forest for any other attackers. Lightning flashed in the sky above them. She tipped her head back, letting the rain wash over her like it could wash away her sins. Her magic prickled restlessly at the tips of her fingers. Fire wouldn’t work out here, but she could pull on the storm or rage alongside it.
“Stella.” Teddy’s voice dragged her back from the cliff of her mind. “Climb back up to the treehouse. You can do that, right? I will take care of the bodies.”
Bodies. Bodies she had made with her two swords.
Stella turned away from him and trudged through the mud to thebase of the tree. She pulled herself up rung by rung, happy to have something rhythmic to focus on.
When she got to the top and dragged her chilled body over the ledge into the treehouse, she lay on the floor, staring up at the beams of the roof. She lifted her hands to look at them in the lantern light and was stunned to see that the rain had washed all the blood away. It was like it had never happened.
Stella lay there looking at her palms for several long breaths, listening to the rain pounding against the treehouse roof and the telltale rhythmic dripping of a leak somewhere in the far corner of the room. Finally, she forced herself to crawl over to her bunk. She pulled the shabby quilt around her body as the trembling began anew.
27
TEDDY
Mud squelched under Teddy’s boots as he shoved the assassin’s body down the steep incline. He turned back to face the treehouse. From this angle, he could only make out the faintest glow in the treetop. It was the kind of thing you’d only see if you were looking for it.
He lifted the last assassin, hauled the dead weight over his back, and set to weaving through the thick trees to get rid of the body.
