Shadows of Asphodel (38 page)

“Wendel,” she said fiercely. “You don’t have to be like him.”

All the tension faded from Wendel’s face. He turned from Thorsten and met her gaze. Hope and despair battled in his eyes.

“If it’s not too late,” he said, “I can try.”

The moment lasted a small eternity.

Then it ended.

Thorsten surged to his feet. Wendel blocked with his dagger and cut Thorsten’s arm to the bone. Wendel yanked out the blade and slashed at Thorsten, who feinted left, lunged right, and torqued Wendel’s wrist.

They struggled for control of the dagger. The Grandmaster won.

Thorsten stabbed the blade into the necromancer’s heart. Wendel sucked in a breath and staggered back, his lips parted, his hands finding the dagger still in his chest. He wrenched it out and stared at the bloody blade.

Wendel coughed. “What—?”

He didn’t seem to think he was dying.

Ardis couldn’t find the air to scream. She stood paralyzed.

Gently, Thorsten took the black dagger from Wendel’s fingers, then grabbed the lapels of his coat to keep him from falling.

Thorsten waited for the necromancer to look him in the eye.

“Goodbye, Wendel.”

Ardis’s paralysis shattered. “Wendel!”

Wendel looked into her eyes, his own so vivid with the clarity of pain that she didn’t think she would ever forget them.

He tried to speak. She thought he said, “Ardis.”

Thorsten dragged him to the broken window and threw him into the night.

Ardis ran to the window and clung to the edge, the shattered glass cutting into her hands, the wind flinging her hair into her eyes.

She watched Wendel fall.

Six stories down, where he landed on the rocks below.

A wave curled onto the island and washed over Wendel. When it retreated, he was gone. Dragged into the dark water.

Ardis turned to face the Grandmaster. He stood with his arms outstretched.

“Will you try to kill me now?” he said.

Ardis’s heartbeat sounded distant in her ears. Her skin felt like it belonged to someone else. When she tried to sheath her sword, she missed the scabbard once, twice, trembling from the quake inside her bones.

Finally, the hilt of the sword clicked against the scabbard.

“No,” she said.

Ardis ran downstairs, her feet flying, almost weightless. As she spiraled down the Serpent’s Tower, she stumbled over the bodies of the assassins they had killed, the undead men the necromancer had commanded. They lay like discarded dolls. Outside the windows, she heard the incessant cacophony of crows.

The crows. They would find Wendel.

Ardis fled from the Serpent’s Tower. No assassins stood in her way.

She ran faster, gasping for breath, and zigzagged along the island until she found a murder of crows perched at the edge of the water. Their hoarse cawing seesawed through the dank air. Crows gathered on the ground in a mass of black. They scattered into flight as she approached, and revealed a man on the rocks.

Wendel.

He laid facedown, one arm flung forward. She knelt beside him and grabbed his arm, grimacing at his sleeve soaked in blood. When she rolled him over, he stared past her at the sky, his eyes pale in the moonlight.

He did not blink.

“Wendel?”

Her voice sounded harsh in her own ears. She wiped her bloody hand on her knee.

“No,” she said. “You can’t. You—you’re a necromancer. You don’t die.”

Wendel’s eyes reflected stars, and she could almost pretend he was ignoring her.

“When a necromancer dies,” she said, “does he die like a normal man?”

“God,” he said, “I hope so.”

His wish had been fulfilled.

She would never hear his voice again.

Ardis could barely find the strength to breathe. She couldn’t look at him any longer, but she was terrified to look away. As if he might vanish, as if she might have never met him, as if she might have never fallen for him.

“Wendel,” she whispered. “I love you.”

She hadn’t said it until tonight, the last night, the only night it didn’t matter.

Ardis bent over Wendel, her tears falling onto his face, and kissed him.

His lips were cold against her own, but she imagined she could still feel the shivering electricity of magic beneath his skin.

No.

She wasn’t imagining.

Ardis felt his neck for a pulse. Wendel had absolutely no heartbeat.

But if he was dead, then why did she feel the icy fire of necromancy under her fingertips? Why was it growing stronger with her heartbeat? Ardis shuddered at the intensity of the magic. The sensation hummed through her bones and stole her ability to think. Her fingers curled involuntarily around Wendel’s neck.

A heartbeat thumped against her fingertips.

Wendel coughed, and seawater spilled from his mouth. The shock of it jolted Ardis into action. She grabbed his shoulder and rolled him onto his side. He coughed and coughed, his hands splayed on the rocks, until he sucked in a rattling breath. Then he coughed some more, even though his lungs had to be empty.

“Wendel?” she said.

She was afraid to touch the necromancer again.

Wendel turned his head. His face still looked as pale as death, but his green eyes glittered.

“Ardis,” he rasped. “I’m back.”

She crouched beside him, but still didn’t touch him. “Are you—alive?”

Wendel squinted. “Apparently.”

“What happened?”

He shook his head and crawled to his hands and knees. He stood, then staggered and nearly fell. She caught his arm.

Wendel certainly
felt
alive. Cold and wet, but alive.

“We need to run,” he said, “before the Grandmaster realizes I’m not dead.”

Ardis frowned and glanced at the Serpent’s Tower.

“Oh, God,” she said. “You’re right.”

Wendel nodded. His teeth had started chattering. He leaned heavily on her as they walked, his legs stiff, his arms shaking.

“How are you alive?” Ardis said.

Wendel glanced into her eyes. “Necromancy.”

She swallowed down bile. “Shouldn’t that make you undead?”

“No.”

Ardis spotted the skiff where they had left it, hidden under the branches of thorn bushes. She left Wendel leaning against a boulder and hurried to uncover the boat. Thorns scratched her hands, but she barely felt the pain. The shadow of the Serpent’s Tower still reached this far, and it was making her sick with fear.

“Almost free,” she said, to convince herself more than anyone.

Ardis dragged the skiff to the water. She helped Wendel lower himself in the skiff, then climbed in after him and shoved off. As she rowed from the island, a giddying tide of hope washed over her. She rowed farther and farther from the Serpent’s Tower, until her arms burned, then let the skiff drift in the waters of the Bosporus.

“Ardis,” Wendel said.

She stood upright, her arms stretched for balance, and turned so she sat facing him.

“Thank you,” Wendel said, “for saving me. Again.”

She smiled, her eyes blurring. “Let’s not make it a habit.”

He returned her smile, then reached across the boat and clasped her hands. His skin didn’t feel quite so icy, but he was still shivering.

“You know,” he said, “I’m amazed that gamble worked.”

She cupped his hands to warm them. “What gamble?”

“Lending you my necromancy.”

“You—what?”

Then she remembered the beach, before they had climbed the Serpent’s Tower.

“Oh!” she said. “When you kissed me?”

He bowed his head. “Half of me thought I must be weakening myself for nothing, but half of me hoped that the stories were true.”

Her heartbeat skipped with excitement. “What stories?”

“When you asked me what happens to necromancers when they die, that afternoon on the train, I may have lied.”

Wendel managed something close to a bastardly smirk.

Her jaw dropped. “You knew this all along?”

“Far from it,” he said. “But I read stories about necromancers, over the centuries, who cheated death. An Egyptian here, a Russian there. Nearly all the necromancers died and stayed dead, though, because they never understood the secret.”

“The secret?” Ardis said.

Wendel averted his eyes, and a little of the color returned to his cheeks.

“Someone,” he said softly, “had to love them enough to bring them back.”

Ardis stared at him. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to kiss him or smack him.

“How did you know…?” she said.

Wendel looked at her with the saddest smile she had ever seen.

“I figured that if you didn’t,” he said, “it wasn’t worth coming back.”

Ardis did kiss him, never mind the cold and the wet. And it was the best kiss she could remember, in spite of it all. Because of it all.

When they withdrew, she saw happiness shining in his eyes.

“Where now?” Wendel said. “Switzerland?”

“Maybe,” Ardis said.

“Somewhere as far away from assassins and archmages as possible.”

She squared her shoulders. “Let’s not be here when the war starts.”

He paused. “You don’t want to try and stop him?”

“The Grandmaster?”

“Yes.”

She swallowed hard. “I’m done trying to be a hero. I want my life back.”

“My thoughts exactly.”

Ardis climbed to her feet, turned around, and glanced back at Wendel.

“Who said you ever were the hero?” she said wryly.

Wendel laughed. “Then that’s the end of my heroism. So much for redemption.”

Ardis kept rowing into the dark and unknown night. Remarkably, for the first time in years, she felt hope perched inside her heart.

“This isn’t the end,” she said. “This is the beginning.”

Believe me,
Shadows of Asphodel
wouldn’t be nearly as awesome without the support of my beta readers, friends, family, and Kickstarter backers. In alphabetical order, particular people who deserve all the cupcakes in the world:

Asa Hurst, my long-suffering husband, for cooking endless dinners and answering endless questions.

Chelsea Campbell, author and partner in crime, for hours of scheming over coffee.

Lydia Budak, my mom, for reading and encouraging every Ugly Duckling draft of mine.

Regina Barber DeGraaff, for brainstorming story ideas when we were supposed to be studying Chinese and Calculus.

Talya Garman, for sending emails full of exclamation marks and
Supernatural
GIFs.

Special thanks to these Kickstarter backers, who generously allowed me to steal their names in exchange for glory:

Carol Swindaman

Dean Vigoren

Maili Weissman