Page 129 of Bitter Burn
“The terminal,” I manage again. “Might be a way to lift the walls. Get out while you can.”
She leans down to kiss me briefly on the lips and then says, “I’m sorry, but I won’t do it without you. You can take it out on me later.”
I have no idea what she means until she stands up, grabs my wrists, and then starts dragging me to the nearest terminal. I think I scream again, I don’t know, because the pain also wrenches the breath from my body, and I lose another chunk of time, coming woozily awake as Isolde is typing at the terminal’s keyboard, the air acrid with smoke.
“Veronica?” I ask her with whatever voice I have left.
“Dead,” she says, not taking her eyes off the screen.
“Sedge—Adam?”
“Don’t know. How do I lift the walls?”
I tell her haltingly—fadingly—my best guess, but even the pain is slipping between my fingers now, along with my focus.
“Tristan,” I manage to say. “In the grotto. You have to—Isolde!”
My warning comes just in time for Isolde to turn to see Adam. Every inch of his skin glistens with sweat now, his hair has been torn from its neat bun, and there’s blood on his hands that I don’t think is his.
“At last we get to meet truly, Isolde,” Adam says. He puts a polite, bloody hand to his chest. “The Scales. It’s a pleasure.”
A million emotions flit through Isolde’s face just then—everything from shock to anger to hurt—but then the emotions fall away, leaving nothing but determination behind.
With a single graceful motion, the honeysuckle knife is flashing in the light of the fire. Father Adam falls to the floor before he can utter a single other syllable, not even a prayer.
His eyes, by the time I can see them, are completely without life.
Isolde is back at the keyboard, and then after a few more keystrokes, she drops to her knees next to me. She gives me another kiss.
“Hang on just a minute, sir.”
Ah, that sir. Almost as good as the air it hurts too much to breathe right now. I’m smiling into her mouth as the darkness finally swallows me whole.
And the last thing I hear above the spitting, hissing mess of the fire is a whirr of metal and unseen motors. The walls are coming back up.
I open my eyes to a blue sky with puffy white clouds. There’s a gentle breeze washing mild air over me—a fool’s spring, my grandfather would say. I hear the hungry roar of a structure fire and, distantly, sirens.
I roll my head on the grass to see Isolde kneeling next to me, and Tristan too.
“Sir,” Tristan says. He’s crying. Isolde is crying too. “Hang on just a little longer.”
I press a shaking hand to Isolde’s cheek before it drops away. “You came back,” I whisper.
“I came back.”
“Why?”
Through her tears, she laughs, that rare laugh that should be kept in a tabernacle and venerated on feast days. “Because I love you. Because I choose to. Because I don’t want to play the game with you anymore.”
Sparks and static frill the edges of my vision; the sirens are so loud. In front of us, the club has started to energetically burn, flames licking at the inside of the glass like tongues of fire.
My eyes slide closed. I don’t think I can last much longer.
Warm lips find my mouth—another pair, firm and with the rasp of stubble, finds my cheek. Worshipful. Heart-melting.
“I’ve already lost the game,” I mumble as I listen to my life’s work burn to the ground, as the internal blood loss pulls—and pulls—and pulls—at my pulse. I manage to fumble Isolde’s hand in the direction of my pocket, and I feel her fingers close around the crystal chess piece I carry with me always. “You win, Isolde. I want you to win.”
“And I have,” says Isolde into our kiss, and I can hear the fear and love and stubbornness in her voice. “But I’m taking mercy on you anyway.”
