The Princess and the Bear - Mette Ivie Harrison [81]
Who was she to stand against the cat man? Why did she not flee back to Richon and tell him of the danger, and warn him to keep himself and those he loved as far from the cat man as he could?
Because she could not do it. Hound or woman, she was too strong and too stubborn to back away from a battle. And perhaps because, like the cat man, she was made of two parts, she was meant to stand against him.
Even if she had no hope of defeating him.
It was nearly midday when she saw the royal steward emerge from the stairs and call for breakfast. A serving girl at the inn brought it to him and he ate near the window. His expression seemed bitter.
It was at least another hour before the cat man appeared. Perhaps because of his unmagic, he appeared exactly as he had when the hound had seen him last, two hundred years hence, down to his chilling smile.
She had seen that smile before, when he had destroyed the spot in her own forest, and when he had followed her to the bear’s cave. It was a smile of joyful destruction.
The serving girl was gone when the cat man stopped in the middle of a conversation he was having with the royal steward. He leaned over the royal steward and put a hand on his arm.
And the hound felt the cold of the cat man’s unmagic.
The royal steward’s face froze. Then crumpled. Then began to turn to dust that fell to the floor in a heap that could have been the ashes from a very small fire.
The supposed ally of the cat man was dead, as simple as that. He had caused so much trouble in Richon’s kingdom, but in the end he was nothing.
As if he had never been.
The hound could tell Richon that much at least, if she ever saw him again. He need not fear that the royal steward had escaped, or that he had not suffered enough. An end like this was worse even than a painful death in her mind.
She moved away from the window for a moment to catch her breath, and to save herself from having to look into the face of the cat man any longer. She knew the story, knew how the cat man had been abused by the magic and by a human, but still it seemed to her that his corruption had gone beyond any reasonable revenge.
He had to be stopped, and it was left to her to do it. She had not said a farewell to Richon before she left the battlefield. If she had, he would not have let her go. She had done the right thing, and so had he.
The cat man was standing in the window, staring out at her.
Did he sense her?
He did not smile or try to signal her or speak to her.
Just stared.
The hound kept very still.
Could he use his unmagic on her from there? She had felt it, but it seemed he had to touch her to send it out. That was the way it had worked before, when she had seen him in the forest. And with the royal steward.
She could feel no sympathy for the cat man. She wanted only to see his end.
Despite the shaking in her legs, she stood and turned her face away from him to the sky. Then she howled, as a hound would howl. A call to challenge, to battle, to death.
The cat man answered her call by coming out of the inn to meet her.
They stood face-to-face and the cat man smiled again, and reached for her.
She could have stepped away, but she did not. She moved forward and allowed his hand to touch her back.
How it hurt!
The unmagic was terrible enough when it touched the ground she walked across. But this was inside her, not to be turned away from, never to be escaped. It burned and cut through her vitals. She thought she had no more heart to beat, no more lungs to pump air.
She could hear the cat man’s soft laughter. “You do not fight against me at all. Do you wish for death, then?”
And the hound found it in herself to spit and stiffen and to feel that she still had a body, though she did not know how. It took her another moment to find her magic and to pull it around herself like a cloak. It was not enough.
As she expected, the