Page 14 of Our Lady of War
Jónatan sat up, but Athania moved without thinking, pushing him back down and straddling his hips. “Wait,” she purred. His eyes sparked at her sudden shift. The veil was pulling back rapidly, and she could no longer control it. She bent down and licked up his neck, stopping at his ear. When she bit his earlobe hard enough to draw blood, he sucked in a breath, squeezing her hips in his hands. His anticipation was evident beneath her, and she moved to press her lips gently to his.
“Close your eyes,” she whispered against his mouth.
Jónatan obeyed with another low laugh. Athania shifted on him, making him believe she was removing her tunic. Instead, she slammed her fist into the large mirror above the headboard, glass raining down.
“What the f–”
But she already had a jagged shard in her hand, its edges slicing into her palm. Every vein of numbness fell from her, all her grief and rage coalescing until her teeth were bared, and she shoved the sharp fragment of the mirror into Jónatan’s neck, right where she’d just kissed him.
Athania watched with a sick smile on her face as the light left his eyes. It had all happened too quickly for him to even struggle.
Pity, she thought as she stood, the last vestiges of sanity finally falling off her shoulders like shedding a second skin.
She stared at the blood on her hand. A mixture of Jónatan’s and her own. With a deep breath, she closed her eyes. Malice. It felt right to finally let her play on her own, clamping shut the mouth of mercy. When her eyes flew open, a giggle bubbled out of her, a cauldron runneth over. But it was soon replaced by a pleased gasp. There, above Jónatan’s lifeless body, the shards of the broken mirror were hovering. Awaiting her command.
She’d done it. She’d discovered how to wield her mortal magic.
“Come along then, dearies,” she whispered to the broken glass. “We’ve blood to claim.”
Flinging open the door to the compartment, her jagged weapons at her back, she looked up at the lightening sky and inhaled the salty air. Barefoot and bloody, she calmly stalked across the deck of the ship until she encountered a soldier. He was startled by her presence, demanding to know what she was doing.
Athania smiled vacantly and lifted her bloodied hand in a wave. “Hullo.”
His face blanched when he noticed the mirror daggers behind her. Before he could bellow a cry for help, one of the shards lodged itself into his eye socket, deep into his brain.
“Bye, then,” Athania whispered over his body when it crumpled to the deck.
Giggling madly to herself, she stepped over him and encountered three more men. One took a shard to the temple, one to the heart, and another to the hollow of his throat. “Oof.” She bent over the latter. “That might take some time to do you in.” She ripped the shard free, relishing the bite as it sliced her palm again. The soldier’s neck gushed blood, and Athania patted his cheek, leaving a macabre handprint. “There you are.” Throwing her head back and laughing, she drew the attention of at least a dozen more men.
Her mirror shards had done all the dirty work before they understood what was happening.
“Oh, pity, pity,” she sang at the pile of bodies. “I’m out of weapons now.”
Tapping a bloody finger to her lip, she channeled whatever inner well that had done her bidding and was pleased to see several daggers free themselves from the dead and come to take the place of the broken mirror shards. “Much better,” she cooed.
“Yo ho, yo ho,” she sang out, her heartbeat acting as a pounding war drum.
“Yo ho, yo ho.
The blood, it sings to me
The ship it rocks
Tossed in the waves
Yo ho, yo ho,
But it’s the blood that calls my name.
Yo ho, yo ho,
Yo ho, yo h–
–oh, hullo.” She beamed at a soldier who was confused by the chaos and her cloak of daggers. “Drat, have I scared you?” She looked down at her bloodied tunic and legs, making a clicking sound with her tongue and cheek. “And here I thought a woman in red was every man’s cup of tea.”
Three of her daggers lashed out, landing in lethal places. He fell to the deck, revealing Millicent and three of the other Orfordian girls huddled together on the ladder that led down into the ship’s hold. Athania reached down to haul the trembling girls up.
“Wha-what have you done?” Millicent looked around the deck, horrified.