Chương 40: Narrow Death

POV: Evelisse Ardentia Honestly, I didn't know what to think and feel anymore. Ywain's words had been circling my head since the moment he uttered them, mid-clash, low enough that only I could hear.

"Whatever you feel for Milo, it's a love spell. He cast it on you."

"He held something the first time you met. That's the spell." It sickened me, because it didn't sound wrong. Milo had been holding something pink when we first met, right after he had saved me from the Cerberus. We had even spoken about it, once, and I had chosen to believe him. He hadn't done anything to me, I'd told myself. He only saved me when I needed saving. Except Milo hadn't denied it.

When Ywain named the thing the Eye of Love, a name that spelled out plainly what it was built to do, Milo hadn't called it a lie. He'd said it hadn't worked, that I would have had to look into the center for it to take effect. But did that change anything? Ywain was right about the part that mattered. Worked or not, Milo had thought about it. Whatever his reasons, he had made a decision to reach into me and turn my feelings toward whatever suited him. To rearrange something that was mine, without my ever knowing.

My stomach turned. For one long moment I genuinely thought about stopping, walking away from all of this, from him, from the whole reckless choice I had made riding out here. What kind of fool stands beside the person who planned to strip her of her own will? Then I got to my feet, and looked at him. He wouldn't look back.

His eyes met mine for the barest instant before sliding away, his shoulders caved in, his face gone slack and hollow, the look of a man who'd already decided he was going to lose everything and was bracing for the blow. Resigned. Done arguing his own case. And somehow, seeing that, I couldn't do it. Not now. Coward, I thought. You lied to me, and now you can't even hold my gaze. Just when I had finally decided to stop running, now you're the one who wanted to run?

Or was this your idea of taking responsibility, folding up small and letting me hate you, so you never have to face what you did? I couldn't tell which it was. What I could tell, the only thing I was sure of, under all the noise, was that I still couldn't raise a hand to kill Milo. And I still wouldn't cross to Ywain's side, wouldn't stand aside and let him do it either. The frustration built and built with nowhere to go, and it needed somewhere, and he needed to understand that this didn't wash away.

That I wasn't forgiving him. But that I wasn't giving up on him either. So I stepped in close, and I slapped him. Not hard, nowhere near as hard as I could have. Just enough to make the point land. His head turned with it, and when he looked back at me his eyes were wide, stunned, like he'd braced for a killing blow and gotten something else entirely and didn't know what to do with it.

"You'd better explain everything to me," I told him, quiet, softening it on purpose, as if the gentleness could take some of the sting back out.

"Later." Then I turned to face Ywain, and set myself to finish the fight.

"I see you've made your decision, Evelisse." Ywain's voice had gone cold and formal. I didn't answer.

"Then I'll hold nothing back. You're a lost cause. A disgrace to the world you were meant to protect." The Lumiere Wings unfurled from his back once more, he rose up, and a sword took shape in his open hand, materializing out of empty air. The Mooncleaver. Of every impossible thing he had done tonight, this was the one I couldn't make my mind accept. We had lost it in Milo's place and Ywain had not been carrying it.

He had simply called it into his hand from nothing, and I couldn't even tell whether it was the blade I had once wielded, or an entirely new version of it. Milo's head snapped up.

"That's not possible, I buried that thing!" Ywain laughed, low.

"I told you. In this world, I am the system. I've been going easy on you, to keep from rousing suspicions from those goons, but we're past that now." His grip settled on the hilt.

"Time to stop pretending." He shot forward at Milo. I got there first, snapping a kick into his ribs, he caught it flat against the Mooncleaver, the holy blade ringing but not yielding an inch. I threw my weight against it and he didn't so much as slide. Then his arm turned, the swing bulling straight through my guard, and my heels dragged back to the earth before his boot buried itself in my stomach. I dropped to my knees.

The pain radiated out from my middle in sick, spreading waves, my breath stolen clean out of me, spots crowding the edges of my sight. If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it. Through the blur I saw him break for Milo, and Milo threw his sword up just in time. The two blades met, holy white against blazing orange, and the fire climbed higher along Milo's edge with every second, roaring as he poured everything he had into simply not being cut in half.

One clean slash from that sword would end him. He couldn't win this. Not against the Mooncleaver, not with it glowing the way it was, that light meant resolve, and Ywain seemed to brimming with it. I forced myself up. Ywain felt it. He leaned harder into the lock, driving Milo's guard wide, opening him up for a killing thrust, and I dropped low and swept for his ankles. He didn't even look. He simply beat his wings once and lifted clear of the ground, my sweep carving through empty air where his legs had been.

So we took it into the sky. I kicked off the earth and launched after him, gauntlets up. Milo came from the other side, his sword trailing fire like a comet. Ywain met us both. He parried Milo's overhead cut with the Mooncleaver and, in the same motion, snapped a wing across my face, the light of it burned, searing where it touched, and I reeled back through the air. Milo pressed the gap.

He hammered blow after blow into the Mooncleaver, each one landing heavier as the sword blazed hotter, and for the first time Ywain gave ground, his parries coming a half-second late. I shook off the sting and dove back in from above. We hit him from both sides at once. I caught his sword-arm at the wrist, wrenching it wide; Milo drove a shoulder into his chest and knocked the wind from him.

Ywain thrashed, wings beating hard, trying to climb out of it, but I had the arm, and I dragged him back down out of the sky and slammed him into the dirt hard enough to crater it. He tried to bring the Mooncleaver around. I threw myself across his sword-arm and pinned it to the ground with my whole body, both gauntlets locked over his wrist, the holy blade twisting uselessly in the earth.

He bucked and snarled beneath me, all that impossible strength straining against my grip, and I held, teeth clenched, every muscle screaming, because this was the opening and it would not come twice.

"Milo—" I ground out.

"Now!" Milo was already moving. He came down out of the air with the Hell's Sword raised in both hands, the blaze around it so bright it turned the whole clearing gold, and everything he had left behind it. As Milo dropped toward him, white light began to gather around Ywain, and my stomach dropped with it. I knew that light. The Holy Flash. The same burst that had knocked the demon girl out of the sky. I wanted to scream for Milo to stop. But too late. The light erupted, swallowing all three of us at once.

I felt myself flung backward, burns stinging bright across my skin, my vision whiting out to nothing. When it cleared, I found small scorch marks scattered over my arms, painful, but survivable. If Milo had been as close as he had looked, the same blast would have carved into him far worse. I dragged myself upright, wincing, and scanned the clearing. I couldn't find Milo, and I couldn't find Ywain either. Where— A presence, behind me. I spun, and a crescent of white light was already streaking at my face.

I threw my gauntlets up and caught it; the impact jarred down to my bones, but the enhanced armor drank the blast and scattered it. And in the half-second it cost me, Ywain was there, closing the last of the distance with the Mooncleaver drawn back. I parried his slash by a hair, gauntlet screeching against holy steel. But he flowed off the block, spun in behind my guard, and clamped a hand around my wrist.

Then his wings beat and we left the ground, me dangling from his grip, twisting, clawing at his hand, unable to find any leverage in the empty air. He rose, held me there a moment, and drove straight back down, slamming me into the earth with the full weight of the descent behind it. Something gave. Most of my strength went with it, and I felt the enhancement flicker out; the gauntlets and greaves guttering to nothing. Blood ran from my temple, from the corner of my mouth. My breath came ragged and shallow.

Ywain settled his weight on top of me, and before I could gather anything at all, his hands found my throat. I clawed at them. I couldn't pry them loose.

"You were strong, Evelisse. I'll grant you that." His grip began to close.

"If not for the blessings I've been given, you'd have beaten me. It's a shame, someone like you, throwing the whole world away over something as small and stupid as love." I could only hold his eyes as the pressure built.

"I'll make it quick," he said, almost kindly.

"I'll tell them you fell in battle against the Dark Lord. A Hero's death. It's more than you've earned tonight." I kept fighting it, prying at his fingers, trying to work a knee up, to drive a heel into him, anything. There was nothing left in my legs to do it with. The edges of the world started to dim, narrowing inward, the sound of the forest thinning to a distant hum. My chest heaved for air that wouldn't come. My hands, of their own accord, began to loosen. Maybe this was it.

I had finally tried to do the one thing I wanted, reached for it with both hands, for the first time in my life, and I had failed at it. The strange thing, the thing that surfaced through the dark closing over me, wasn't fear, or regret for the Church, or my own dying. It was him. Please let Milo still be alive. Not for me. I didn't need to see him again. I just needed the world to still have him in it. Needed to know that the choice I had made, the one that was killing me, hadn't been for nothing.

That I had been right about him. Please. Just let him live. Then something crashed into Ywain and tore him off me. The grip vanished, and air rushed back into me all at once, a huge, ragged, burning gulp of it, my whole body seizing around the breath, coughing, gasping, the world crashing back to full volume and light. I turned my head. Milo was on the ground beside me, grappling Ywain in the dirt. The Mooncleaver had spilled from Ywain's hand in the tackle and lay a few feet off.

But Milo was in a worse state than I was. The Holy Flash had caught him far harder, deep burns seared across him, his movements slow and labored. Without the Mooncleaver in play he had a chance, but not with those wounds, and not against Ywain's strength.

Sure enough, in a matter of seconds Ywain landed a fist across his jaw that snapped his head sideways and stunned him, then reversed the hold, and now it was Milo pinned beneath him, one of Ywain's arms crushing down on his throat, the other cocked back and glowing white, gathering a holy strike. I tried to rise. To run to him. My legs wouldn't hold, the slam into the ground had done something to them, a deep wrongness in one knee, and I stumbled and went down after a single step. Then a roar split the clearing.

A green blast came screaming in and caught Ywain full-on, blowing him clear off Milo and hurling him a good distance across the frost. Some ways off, at the treeline, stood the Cerberus. Astride her, robes stark white against the dark, sat a bald man I had never seen before.