“Detrudo!” Al snarled.
I heard Trent and Bis slam into one of the cabinets, glass and wood shattering.
“I had to know if you were okay!” I said, and then his fist tightened again, choking off my air. Reaching up, I pinched his nose, and he jumped, fingers easing enough to let me breathe.
My air came in quick, thin pants as he lowered his face until inches separated us. “You came to steal my things!”
I fixed on one of his eyes, seeing myself in their red, goat-slitted pupil. “I came to see if you were alive,” I said, and his grip tightened, his eyes narrowing as my breath gurgled to a stop.
“Let her go, you ass!” Trent shouted from the floor, and the sounds of sliding glass became obvious as he shook the shattered cabinet off. “She’s here because she thought you might be dead.”
“To steal what’s left of my miserable life,” he breathed. My hands ached and my arms began to shake as I kept trying to wedge him off me. If I used magic, he would, too, and he knew more than I did.
“She thought you were hurt!” Trent said, his voice between us and the fire. “She doesn’t care about your things. She thought you needed help!”
Snarling, Al pressed into me, fingers tightening until black stars began to blot my vision.
“You are killing her!” Trent said, and I heard a dull thud as his fist met Al’s face.
Al’s fingers let go. My breath came in with a gasp, and I rolled to my front, the cool slate of the table soothing against my flushed cheek. Hand to my neck, I choked and gagged, eyes watering as I pushed myself up. Bis was on the mantel beside Mr. Fish, scared to death.
“You are going to kill her, you putrid little elf!” Al snarled, and Trent drew himself up, his face white and his expression hard. “There is nothing that will survive what’s coming. And it’s your fault.”
“I’m okay,” I croaked, trembling as I waved Bis off, and he landed on the back of Ceri’s old chair, still in its accustomed place. Seeing me upright, Al scooped up a carpetbag and tried to shove the rolled-up tapestry into it. Trent was going to kill me? Nothing here was his fault. It was sort of mine. Trent stood between us, my bag spilling out over the floor behind him, and I don’t think I appreciated him more than at that moment. “What’s coming?” I whispered, voice raw.
“The end,” Al muttered, his frustration growing as he fought to get the tapestry into the bag, clearly bigger on the inside than the out. “I see you washed the Goddess slime off you. Too bad it will keep coming back.”
He was talking about the mystics, and I squared my shoulders. It was going better than I had thought it would. I was just glad he wasn’t dead. “An elven spell tried to kill me,” I said, and Al turned the tapestry end over end to fit it in the bag, but it unrolled as if trying to stay out. “It wasn’t the Goddess, it was the dewar and the enclave.”
“Surprise, surprise,” he muttered.
“It couldn’t get a grip on me,” I said, gently pushing Trent’s hand off me when I edged past him. “But then I heard the collective cry out. I thought . . . it took you.”
Shoulders hunched, Al threw the tapestry at the wall in frustration. It hit with a thud, the sliding fabric sounding like a muffled scream as it landed on the floor and slowly uncurled. “It was . . . ,” he said, eyebrows lowered as he stared at me, “. . . a cry of joy, Rachel Mariana Morgan.”
My chest hurt. “Please don’t call me that. You left me. I didn’t leave you.”
Al flicked his eyes at Trent as he yanked his carpetbag up. I stepped closer, feet scuffing to a halt when Al growled, “Yes. You did.”
“Because he’s an elf?” I exclaimed, frustrated.
Al’s expression twisted even more. “Exactly,” he said, the words dripping scorn and hatred. “Love has made you into a tool, Rachel, and like a tool, you are oblivious and will be cast aside when your job is done.”
“I am not,” I whispered, cold, but the thought that Trent would soon remember his place among his people weighed heavily on me. Quen was right. I was a phase, a happy dalliance.
“You are blind, Rachel, even as you are a part of it.” Al pointed at me, his anger stemming from a deep wound. “Elves ask too much. They bring only destruction. That is what they are. They’ve always been such, even when we tried to crush them from existence. And it will kill you.”
“But you loved Ceri,” I pleaded, and Trent grunted as if only now getting it.
Al’s pointing finger slowly dropped, his depth of hatred chilling me.
“Just so,” he said bitterly, looking at his empty room. “You begin to understand?”
“You can’t blame this on Ceri,” I said, a new fear slithering through me. He’d loved her, loved her enough to break the rules and free her from her servitude in such a way that I could save her life. From there the world changed as Trent used her to begin to pull his people back from extinction. Love had turned my goals to his, and I found a pre-curse DNA sample so Ceri’s baby would be free of the curse. And now, bolstered by the mere hint of success, the elves had begun to eliminate everyone more powerful than themselves. Perhaps Al was right.
Horrified, I watched him stuff the last of the things on the mantel into the bag like Santa in reverse. His thick fingers hesitated at Mr. Fish, and then he closed them, leaving the brandy snifter where it was. “Where has everyone gone?” I asked, scared.
Gaze flicking to Trent, then Bis, sitting wide-eyed on Ceri’s chair, he hesitated. “Anywhere they want,” he said, waving at Bis until he moved to Trent’s shoulder.
Anywhere? My thoughts went back to the empty state of Dalliance, and then the celebration of familiars at the mall. He said it had been a cry of joy . . .
“Oh, your elven brethren have made a large mistake,” Al said to Trent as Ceri’s chair was wreathed in a haze of black and shrank down to the size of my hand. “One we will exploit to the fullest and wipe them from existence once and for all,” he said, using both hands to shift the smaller but clearly just as heavy chair into the bag. “Revenge is a tricky beast. Her claws face both ways. I don’t mind a few more scars. They’ll be unnoticed among the rest.”
Trent paled. “The curse that attacked you . . . ,” he whispered, and then he reached for the slate table, his balance gone. “The Goddess help us,” he whispered, expression haunted. “That’s what I felt. It was a call to break the curse.”