All That Lives Must Die - Eric Nylund [274]
She couldn’t. But she couldn’t think about Robert anymore. Her blood would demand revenge . . . and that mustn’t happen now—not when she was on the verge of being able to accept Mitch’s mercy and get Eliot and herself out of here in one piece.
Oh, but Eliot! He’d never leave without his stupid Jezebel.
“Okay,” she said, lost for a moment as she struggled to hold her anger in check. “You were attacked. You got hot. You defended yourself. I get that. But winning isn’t everything.”
Mephistopheles gazed down at her, suddenly wary. “What do you mean?”
“Can’t you stop? Leave Sealiah one scrap of land so she can fix Jezebel?”
Mephistopheles looked like this was a bad joke—then his face fell. “For Eliot. Yes, as he goes, so do you.”
Was that true? Would she stay and fight even now for Eliot? After she had been so badly beaten? Amanda and Robert were gone, and she was tired of always fighting. There’d been so much bloodshed. She was sometimes even tired of being Eliot’s sister.
But that was the right thing to do. Family stuck together. No matter what.
Fiona looked up into Mitch’s face. Even if it was Mephistopheles . . . it was Mitch Stephenson, too. She couldn’t stop thinking of him as the boy she knew.
Eliot was playing his music again, that same song, the one full of hope.
The sky brightened.
Mephistopheles winced, but he didn’t notice the strange orange half light as he continued to stare into her eyes.
“Yes,” Mephistopheles told her. “For you I would leave on the brink of my victory.” He blinked, surprised by his own words. “What an impossible thing you have made possible.”
An impossible thing: hope in Hell, and mercy in the depths of darkness.
“Thanks,” she whispered.
The battle continued about them—shouts and gunfire and screams.
“I will leave,” Mephistopheles said, “if you let me take you back to school. And if we can go back to being friends . . . perhaps growing into something more in time.”
Him and her? Friends? More than that? After he had revealed what he was? After she’d seen him murder Robert? Taking his mercy and escaping Hell was one thing. Going back to the way things were? No way.
But would she have done any different in his place? Her Infernal blood on fire? She didn’t know.
Fiona’s head swam. This was so confusing. There were too many feelings to sort through . . . and since she’d cut herself, she didn’t trust her feelings anymore. She actually felt as if she were balancing on her tiptoes—one tiny push either way and she’d land . . . but which way? Give in to her burning hate and avenge Robert? Or stay collected, make peace, and live to fight another day?
This was the same decision she’d been struggling with all year: choosing between Robert and Mitch (although right now neither seemed like the correct choice, because one was dead, and the other was evil).
But while she was trying to figure this out, Eliot and others were dying around her.
She could stop the fighting. She had to stop it. For all their sakes.
So she decided. She and Eliot would get out of here alive.
It was funny—she was about to make peace with an Infernal Lord, one who’d been part of a plot to get her on their side, one who’d walked away from those schemes to save her . . . and they’d both ended up exactly where the Infernals had originally wanted them to be.
“Delicious irony is ripe in the air,” Mephistopheles whispered. “Let us not waste the moment.” He offered her his hand. It was the hand without the gauntlet, the one she’d cut off, the one that had grown back—flesh and shadow: white smooth skin and long articulated fingers, reaching for hers.
“Come with me, Fiona. Come and we will walk and talk and be together.”
The last thing in the world she wanted was to touch him . . . but something in her blood called to his blood. Like the bloodlust she’d felt before in battle . . . only this was far more passion than rage.
Fiona couldn’t help herself.
Her hand was drawn to his. She dared to reach for him, fingers outstretched.
They touched and he pulled her up to stand with him.
There was heat and life and the world