‘She’s coming,’ I said to Anyan, and seconds later we saw her flaming presence making itself felt across the field. Combatants parted like the Red Sea, and those who weren’t fast enough were blasted out of her way regardless of whether they were our soldiers or hers.

Ryu, Nyx, and Caleb hastily cleared our soldiers out of the way, pushing everyone back into a semicircle behind us.

When Morrigan appeared, she was obviously irate.

‘What is this ritual, you stupid bitch!’ she roared. The long muzzle distorting her face was full of sharp teeth and a snake’s tongue, all of which contributed to a definite lisp. What came out was more like, ‘Whas iss diss widual, you dupis biss!’

Any humor created by her speech impediment, however, was mitigated by her throwing the head of one of our goblin fighters at us. I felt bad batting it out of the air but I also didn’t want to get dinged by it.

Morrigan followed up the head with herself, lunging her own neck forward using her Go-Go-Gadget-neck trick that never ceased to horrify me. The Red blazed in her eyes as she again fought for control over her own body. I followed after her retreating jaws, the labrys blazing before me like a comet.

Slashing, I could feel myself melding with the creature as we fought Morrigan together. Preternaturally swift and sure on my feet, my arms moved through the air like a ballerina’s, if ballerinas were armed with flaming axes of death.

Her neck still extended unnaturally, Morrigan pranced in front of me, slashing with wicked teeth and claws. I kept my shields beefed up as much as they could, because any wounds made by the Red were immune to magical intervention. But the same kind of primordial power that animated my labrys animated the Red, and my shields were not immune to her slashing attacks.

So it was up to me to be quicker than she, and the creature helped with that. But I felt the first burning score across my hip like a tracing of fire, and bright blood swelled to the surface when I looked down.

‘Son of a bitch,’ I growled, slashing forward. My labrys found Morrigan’s shoulder as if in punishment for the hip slash, and she growled back at me with equal ferocity. Dancing around each other, we fought with wicked ferocity until we finally fell apart, panting.

Only then did Anyan nod at me quietly from the sidelines.

Launching myself forward, I again attacked Morrigan. She snarled her rage, coming to meet me after the briefest pause. But this time, I didn’t close with her. Instead, I began a weird slashing dance that sent me prancing around her like a deranged dervish. All of my power went into the labrys, leaving me vulnerable. So despite the speed lent to me by the creature, I felt a fiery slash across my left arm, then my right, and another dug deep across my calf. That one made me stumble, but buoyed by adrenaline and egged on by the labrys, I erupted back onto my feet, only to continue my weird twirling circuit around Morrigan.

Obviously confused, she didn’t realize what I’d done till her shields crumbled around her, slashed in a thousand different places. Before she could erect new ones, I shouted for my backup even as I struck.

The ax wasn’t meant to be thrown, but Anyan and I had practiced all day. Good aim and a nudge from the creature’s power meant the strike was perfect, the labrys burying itself in Morrigan’s chest. From inside her, the double-headed ax struck again – a pulse of power that actually knocked me back on my ass and tore through Morrigan like a grenade.

Without losing a beat, Iris ran forward from where she’d been hiding, waiting for her moment. She carried a single, precious bucket of water that she threw with perfect aim over Morrigan.

As the water arced over her, I raised my hand and commanded it to slow and spread till it resembled a net of water that fell over her, pinning her to the ground for the next, awful stage of this ritual.

Anyan came racing up from behind me, grabbing my hand and hauling me to my feet and to Morrigan. Writhing in agony, the labrys pumping a series of tiny explosions of power through her mutilated chest, Morrigan still looked at me with hate in her eyes as we stood above her prone figure.

The barghest took the stone from where it hung at my belly and pressed it into my hands.

‘You must do this!’ he shouted over Morrigan’s angry shouts and the commotion of the battle still raging around us.

I met his eyes, and it was like time stopped. Wanting to memorize every plane of his beautiful, rough-hewn face, I raised a trembling hand and brushed it down over his cheek.

‘I will always love you,’ I told him. ‘Never forget that.’

‘And I you. I’m doing this for you. You must live without me; live for both of us.’

I nodded, pulling him down to me in a kiss. He tasted of love, and regret, and so much life.

Before we had even pulled away, my hand found the haft of the labrys. I’d have to do this quickly, as once the labrys was out, Morrigan would heal herself in seconds and we wouldn’t be able to keep her on the ground.

Anyan’s hand fisted itself in my hair as his forehead met mine.

‘God, I love you. I love you, I love you,’ he chanted, his eyes frightened but determined.

And that’s when I pulled the ax from Morrigan’s chest with a great sucking sound. It took me a second to adjust the grip on the haft, and then I struck.

Anyan’s eyes widened as he screamed, a single, piercing ‘No!’ His power rent the air around him.

The pain, of course, was excruciating. There was a reason shamed samurai ended their lives by self-evisceration. It was a horrible way to die.

My knees buckled as my blood bubbled from my gut. The labrys still pulsing in my hand, I used the dregs of my physical strength to push the silver stone into the wound I’d made.

When bright red splashed against silver, the stone and the labrys began to pulse the same shade of coppery gold. I could feel Anyan’s magic trying to close the wounds I’d made, but they’d been made to serve a magic far older than his, and would not answer the throaty pleas he shouted into the air above me.

With bloody hands, I raised the stone above Morrigan, where it glowed down on her, raising her body up an inch in the air. Her green eyes, slit like a cat’s, met mine. After the first shock of fear had passed from them, they seemed pleased.

‘Now you die,’ I told Morrigan, plunging the stone back into the wash of my fresh blood. Her dragon’s face smiled at me, her expression almost serene. Her hand reached up to the stone, as if accepting her fate. Then she spoke.

‘And so do you, little halfling. My life for yours.’

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Dying hurt, and dying the way I’d chosen to, hurt a lot. But I’d known it had to be me, for a lot of reasons.

After all, it had never made any sense that Anyan would have to die to complete the ritual. He wasn’t the White, after all – not anymore. The White was the stone I was bleeding all over. There had been that pesky ‘again’ in the poem, as well as the male pronoun. But everything was a male pronoun back in those days, and as for dying twice – well, I had that covered after dying once over Jason.

And that’s what I’d realized the night at the club. All of the niggling hints and things that had never made sense came together for me as I watched over the crowd like a god. Things like why the creature didn’t just tell us what we needed to do; why it was important I figure things out for myself.

It also answered that bigger question: Why make me the champion? I’d joked a number of times that I was a lover, not a fighter. It had never made any sense that I’d be chosen over someone like Blondie, who’d already made such a good warrior-champion.

But that was the whole point. This job, killing the Red and the White for real, didn’t require a fighter. It required a lover.

What I’d seen that night, arcing above the crowded nightclub, hadn’t really been destiny, although that had been a good enough word. More accurately, I’d seen a really good choice. I’d figured out the motivation behind the universe’s actions, and realized what I had to do. I was the sacrifice – the Green Man – not the May Queen who would bring renewal to the land. I had to die before that could happen.

In other words, it wasn’t destiny at all, even if the universe itself was involved. The creature, Blondie, Anyan, me: We’d all been the pawns of ancient forces beyond our comprehension since the first stirrings of the Red in Morrigan’s consciousness. I’d been cast as a sacrifice, and having realized that, I knew what a smart choice the universe had made. After all, a sacrifice had to be a real sacrifice. I was loved, and loving. I didn’t want to lose this life and these people I cared so much about and who cared about me. So yeah, I wasn’t that great at fighting, but because my friends loved me, they would keep me safe until the time came. And then I would do the same for them, in the only way I knew how.

I would die for them, and do it gladly.

Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t feel all that glad right then. My life’s blood was pouring out of me over a silver stone that, except for a bit of a glow, wasn’t doing much. And Anyan was shouting, staring into my pain-widened eyes with a gray gaze full of despair.

‘It was supposed to be me. It was supposed to be me!’ he was shouting, trying to heal me, trying to pull me away from the magic in which I was caught. But the labrys wound wouldn’t heal any more than one made by the Red’s claws, and the otherwise innocuous glow of the stone wouldn’t let me go.