Rituals (Cainsville 5)

One way to win.

A million ways to die trying.

Not the best odds, but I'd never been all that good at math.

I sat there, my teeth gritted against the pain until I could speak, and then I said, "You tried to set them against one another. Gave them the chance to take out the competition and win the fair maiden. Well, actually, you offered the chance to survive themselves, but the other version sounds much more romantic."

She glanced toward the stairs, as if expecting to see an ally who'd turned on her.

"No one told me your plan," I said. "It's the obvious one. That's the inherent weakness in triangles. You only need to get one side to buckle, and the whole thing collapses. But it didn't, did it? So now you're taking me up on my own offer. Withdrawing my cure."

A flick of her hand and feeling returned to my legs, the pain in my back ebbing.

"Thanks." I got to my feet. "That'll make this part easier."

I walked toward the belfry balcony. Part of the railing had been ripped away. I touched the broken and jagged edges.

"Did you see this?" I said. "It should have reminded you not to bother going after Gabriel. Tristan already tried that. He was working with you, right? Tristan. Like Walter and Jack."

"No one works with--"

"Bad turn of phrase. They were your lackeys, though they may have thought themselves partners. In Tristan's case, he probably didn't even realize who he was working with. I bet you impersonated some fae confederate. A lackey of his own."

Her lips rose in a faint smile. "Tristan was a fool. As arrogant a fae as any. At least Walter had some sense of his true place. Not surprising, given how firmly Ida kept him in it."

A board creaked deep in the building, and I turned, but the sluagh said, "No, that's not Walter. Did you fail to notice the past tense to my phrasing? He served his purpose." The sluagh stepped toward me. "You've made your point about Gabriel. He rescued Ricky at that balcony, when he could have let him fall. I thought he might have grown a spine since then. Realized exactly how annoying it was, always having Ricky buzzing about."

"I'm not standing over here to rub your face in your mistake. I'm admitting that my aunt was right. Well, my great-great-aunt. I've seen her here in the asylum. Or I thought I did. Was that her? Or you, playing mind games? Doesn't matter. Either way, she was right."

I stepped closer to the edge of the broken balcony. "There's only one way out of this. That's all there's ever been. One way out. One way to stop being a pawn. To take control of my life. Or my death, as the case may be."

I jumped. I didn't hesitate, and that wasn't conviction so much as gut-wrenching terror. I jumped before I could fully process what I was doing.

I dropped, and it was like falling off the bridge, where the moment I hit free fall, I stopped thinking, Oh my God, I'm plummeting to my doom. There was a split second of something like clarity. Yep, I'm falling. Should probably be concerned. Deathly concerned, ha-ha. But I wasn't.

The sluagh let out a shriek, like a human scream, the sort that should have been coming from my throat. A scream of fear. Then a snarl of rage that set the very air vibrating. A swarm of melltithiwyd slammed into me, shrieking themselves, as if enraged by being called to do something other than rend me limb from limb.

They pecked, and they clawed, but they lifted me, too, still attacking, unable to keep from venting their frustration as they deposited me in the belfry.

"Huh," I said. "That didn't end the way I expected."

Which was, of course, a lie. Yet if one is going to threaten self-annihilation for a cause, one has to actually seem willing to do it.

I got to my feet, swatting off the last few melltithiwyd, who couldn't resist one final peck. Then I strode to the balcony.

"If at first you don't succeed--"

My legs buckled, and I pitched to the floor, arms flying out barely in time to catch myself. That now-familiar pain twisted through me, and I closed my eyes, pushing it back and reminding myself it was temporary--the pain, that is. The reversal I did need to accept--that I might survive this but not actually walk away from it. The pain was just my body dealing with the renewed trauma, which would ease, leaving me with the rest. I could live with the rest. People did. I could. I'd have to, wouldn't I? The alternative was...

Well, the alternative was exactly what I needed to attempt, yet again. I dragged myself along the floor, muscle memory returning, back to those infant days when I'd done exactly this.

"Do you really think that will help?" the sluagh spat.

"I don't see how it can't. If I'm removed from play, you three groups have nothing to fight over."

"If you do this, Eden, we will take revenge. You know we will. We'll take your soul. Make you one of them." She swatted a melltithiwyd, still fluttering about. Hit it so hard it exploded in a spray of black blood.

"Yeah, sorry," I said, still dragging myself. "I'm not marked, and I've done nothing to deserve the punishment. I haven't taken part in anything that deserves it. I haven't been found guilty of anything that deserves it. So I won't be joining your flock."