Page 46 of The Unseelie Wish
Wonderful. That was just wonderful. Her irritation faded with the cold realization that she was going to die. She pulled a stool over and sat on it, staring down into her mug of coffee, watching the surface swirl with the remaining force of her stirring.
At her silence, Izael raised his head to look at her. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m going to die.”
“We both are, if you weren’t paying attention.” He flopped his head back down on the pillow.
“I just need a moment to process the fact that I’m going to die, Izael. Sorry.” Rolling her eyes, she sipped her coffee. It was still a little too hot to drink, but she needed the comfort and familiarity of it. She was going to die.
The knowledge came with a strange sense of calm. That was it. That was going to be the end of it. The end of her. The end of all this nonsense. She wasn’t afraid, not really—there wasn’t a point in it.
But the thought put a rock in her throat and made her eyes sting. She didn’t want to die. She really, really didn’t. “It’s still our best option.”
“In what way? We’re both going to die. That makes it the worst possible option, songbird.”
“By the numbers, it’s the best. We’ll die, but nobody else will. Two versus thousands. Millions, even.”
“Right, but I’m very attached to the two in question. We aren’t doing this. It’s suicide. There must be another way. Something that bastard half-breed hasn’t seen.” Izael threw his arm over his eyes to blot out the light, looking more and more like a renaissance painting by the minute.
“What if I try to kill Valroy? I can—like—I don’t know—turn him into a newt or something.” She tried to smile at her bad reference, but it didn’t stick. It faded the second it was there.
“You’d have to destroy the whole Maze of Shadows. He isn’t really what you see walking around. You could kill the projection, but he’d just come back a few minutes later. Trust me. People have tried. And even if you try to kill the Maze, I don’t know how you’d succeed.” Izael let out a breath.
“Well. If we’re both going to die anyway, what’s the harm in trying?”
“Because if we fail, Valroy will make our deaths extremely slow and painful? And do you really want to make an enemy of Abigail after you try to explode her husband? What, do you plan on rearranging her, too?” Izael placed both hands over his eyes, their heels to his cheekbones.
Stirring her coffee again, she thought it over. “I refuse to let him use my magic to wage his war. That’s out. If giving up my magic means we both die, I’m fine with that—but you’re not. So that’s out if we’re doing this together. Which only means…going out in a blaze of glory. We stop Valroy or we die trying.”
“Most certainly the latter.”
“Would you rather die fighting, or not?”
“I’d very much rather not die at all!” Izael sat up, clearly too anxious to stay still. He got up to begin pacing again.
“I don’t see another choice, Iz.” With a blink, she realized she had called him a nickname. She hadn’t done that in what felt like years, even though it’d only been a handful of days.
A sudden clarity hit her like the ringing of a bell.
He mattered to her. Deeply. The mix of emotions swirling about in her heart like her coffee was more confusing than not, but the reality of that much was true. She didn’t want anything bad to happen to him. She cared. And more than that, she…didn’t want him to be her enemy. This was how she wanted to be with him—okay, suicidal conversations about how they wanted to die notwithstanding—she wanted to be working with him. Not against him.
Izael walked up to her slowly, before turning her to face him and pulling her into an embrace. She sank against him, shutting her eyes, resting her head against his chest. He smelled like cologne, and the sharpness of a walk in the winter woods, with only a hint of grass.
Kissing the top of her head, he stroked her hair. “I love you, my songbird. I will burn down the world if it means I get one more moment to share with you.”
That almost sent her crying again, but she bit it back. She hated crying more than anything else in the world—well, okay, it was still second to throwing up, but that wasn’t the point. Sniffling, she wrapped her arms around him and held him tighter. “I don’t want us to die.”
“In that, we are agreed.”
“But I don’t know what else to do.” Lifting her head, she wiped her eyes. Goddamn tears. “If I give up my magic to Abigail, we know we both die. If we try to take out Valroy, we…might have a chance.”
“What is the human phrase about a snowball?” Izael huffed.
The sad chuckle she let out ended with a sigh. “Yeah. Snowball’s chance in Hell. But it’s still a chance. What about Anfar? Would he help us? Or Bayodan and Cruinn?”
Izael grimaced. “No. They have stood against his wrath before. Anfar was spared, but you have seen the cost upon Bayodan and Cruinn. And they only survived at all because Valroy’s new wife was so terribly fond of them both. We are under no such protection.”
That made sense. “So, we’re alone.”