Rising Dark (The Darkling Trilogy, Book 2) (43 page)

“
Luna?”

I am ashamed to say all thought of
Henriette fled my mind at the sight of Luna standing by the window.
She was wearing a black dress, her arms and shoulders exposed by
its V-shaped neckline. Its uneven scalloped hemline grazed her
knees at the front, but hung to her ankles at the back. Her ebony
hair was bone-straight and short, capping her head in dark, shiny
waves. I felt a shiver of desire thrill through me at seeing her in
the clothes of this age, so much of her gleaming dark skin exposed.
She looked simply exquisite, like a living, breathing
doll.

I crossed the room to her.

“
Luna? I thought you were
dead.” I placed my hands on her shoulders, and then brought them to
her face.

At first she was rigid, but only for a
second. She yielded and I kissed her on the forehead, pulling her
to me.

It was at that moment that I heard a
stifled whimper from Henriette and she came back into my thoughts.
I turned and looked at her properly for the first time. She was
sitting with her arms folded over her, almost in the same way they
arrange the arms of a corpse, hugging herself against the cold in
the room. Her hair, which had been pulled back when I left her
earlier that afternoon, was now partly pulled out of its bun and
wisps of it dangled in her face. Tears streamed down her face, and,
to my horror, a livid red mark discoloured her pale cheek, a mark
that had no doubt been made by a hard slap.

Her mind revealed what had happened
shortly after I left the house. Luna had surprised her in this
room. She slapped Henriette to the ground and then dragged her by
the hair to the chair, where she was ordered to sit down. They
waited for me to return.

I felt some of the joy and relief at
seeing Luna cool at the unjustified treatment she had dealt out. I
also began to feel apprehension as I noticed that although Luna’s
body had yielded to my touch, her eyes had not, and her hate-filled
gaze had never left Henriette. In her right hand, she held a
bunched up item of clothing; it looked like Henriette’s wedding
dress. In Luna’s other hand was a long, sleek dagger.

I moved my hands away from her face
and frowned down at the dagger.

“
Luna, what...what are you
doing with that?”

She faced me at last, her thoughts
shielded. But a dark and stormy rage tumbled in her raven eyes. She
held the dagger up and pressed its cool, sharp tip to my
neck.

“
It’s a beautiful dagger,
isn’t it? The rubies you see along the hilt are from the necklace
you gave me. I couldn’t have just any weapon to kill you with, so I
had it made especially.”

A gasp escaped Henriette and she
jumped up from the chair. “No, please! You cannot kill
him!”

“
Quiet!” Luna
hissed.

Henriette would have ignored her if I
hadn’t sent a quick command that froze her to the spot. She looked
frantically from me to Luna whilst I gently coaxed her back into
the chair.

Please, Henriette, keep
still and don’t move until I tell you to
,
I thought at her, all the while my gaze on Luna.

“
Luna, I—”

Her head snapped back to me and she
didn’t allow me to finish. A film of tears shimmered in her eyes
but the rest of her, especially her expression, was hard as she
pressed the dagger against my throat.

“
Am I so easily replaced?
You couldn’t have chosen a worse insult by making that weak little
thing your bride.”

“
You were gone for over
thirty years, Luna. I thought you were dead.” I couldn’t hide my
own hurt and my voice gave at the last five words. “You have no
idea how your disappearance almost destroyed me.”

“
Oh, I know, Avery. I
wanted you to suffer. And did you really think I could ever leave
you? I made a promise to you a long time ago that I would always
come back to you. I made you a promise! I’ve been here the entire
time following as you ran around the world searching for
me.”

“
You’ve been nearby? The
whole time? How could you do that to me?”

She released the wedding
dress and made a stabbing movement in Henriette’s direction. “How
could you do
that
to me?”

“
Do what? Try and ease the
lonely bitterness of the tragedy my life had become? Why did you
stay away for so long?”

She looked away at the ground,
seemingly wrestling with her emotions, the dagger at my neck
wavering.

“
Why, Luna?”

“
I don’t know!” she
snapped, but then her hard veneer crumbled. “I don’t know. I wanted
to come back, but I couldn’t. I needed the space to try and
change—for you. I wanted to try and be whole—
for you
.” She looked up, the tears
flowing freely now and I saw anger, but clear confusion, her lip
quivering as she looked at me. “But even then, I didn’t know how I
could walk back into your life after everything I had done, and if
I really could go back to being the woman you fell in love with.
And now...now you’ve replaced me. With
that
!”

I was only too aware of Henriette
sitting in the corner watching all of this in agony, especially as
I wanted nothing more than to wipe away the tears trailing down
Luna’s face, hold her to me and tell her she was
irreplaceable.

“
This isn’t the time or
the place, Luna,” I said.
Please, be
reasonable.

She looked completely crushed and
those beautiful dark eyes became windows of bleak
despair.

“
Maybe that’s the problem,
Avery. I can’t be reasonable when it comes to loving you.” The hand
holding the dagger became firm once more. “You may be reasonable
enough to walk away, but I never will. You’re
mine
. If I can’t have your love,
than no one else will.”

“
That doesn’t sound like
love, that sounds like possession,” I said, growing angry now. “Put
the dagger down, Luna. We both know you won’t kill me.”

She gazed at me for a long moment, and
then slowly drew the dagger away from my throat.

“
No, I won’t kill you. Not
yet.” She brought the dagger up again, but this time she was
pointing it at Henriette. “You can watch her die first.”

I disappeared, and in the next
instant, I was standing between her and Henriette. “You will have
to kill me first!”

Pain flared in her eyes, and for a
split second, the hand holding the dagger wavered and I thought she
was going to let it drop. And then she smiled through her tears. A
smile that was as dazzling as it was lethal.

“
As…you…
wish
!”

She lunged at me, jumping in the air
to give her the height to bring the dagger down in a fell swoop on
my neck, a movement far too quick for human eyes to see. I caught
her with a hand to the neck and the other to her wrist. I only had
a moment to turn to Henriette.

“
Run!” I threw Luna away
from me. She went crashing into the wardrobe and the dagger flew
out of her hand. “Get to the church. I don’t know how long I’ll be
able to hold her off.”

Luna was on her feet before I could
even finish the sentence, her eyes wild with fury and hurt.
Henriette looked frantically at the two of us for a second or two
before she bolted out of the room.

The air around Luna began to shimmer
but she was torn, looking from me to the door, not sure of which of
us to go after. That hesitation gave me the time I needed, and as
her form began to waver, I dove into the ether and was before her.
I took hold of her arm and wrenched her out of the ether to keep
her from disappearing after Henriette, whose footsteps could be
heard running furiously down the corridor.

A blow to the jaw sent me stumbling
back. Luna darted toward the dagger on the floor. I materialised by
the window and reached for a silver tray. Luna was in front of me
before I could touch it. The dagger came slashing down toward me. I
leapt back but it slashed against the jacket of my brown
three-piece suit. I slapped her. She went sprawling across the
floor.

Despite the bloodletting over thirty
years ago, she was still stronger than me. As we fought, I realised
Henriette’s footsteps were not heading toward the front door and
out to safety. They were headed deeper into the house, her breath
ragged, blood surging through her veins. Her footsteps stopped, and
I heard her desperate movements and a click as she fumbled with
something. Then, to my dismay, she began running again, but not
toward the front door. Her frantic steps were beating a path back
to the bedroom. I’m sure Luna heard it too.

Henriette was soon at the
door.

“
Avery
!” she screamed.

I rushed at Luna and knocked her to
the ground. I was able to glance at Henriette long enough to see
her throw something toward me, one of my father’s swords, the
silver along the blade’s edge glinting in the moonlight streaming
through the window. Luna was still on the floor, shocked into
inaction for a few seconds as she stared at Henriette with a
mixture of rage and intense agony.

“
Go now,
Henriette!”

I looked away for only a second, but
in that time, Luna had leapt to her feet and kicked me in the
chest.

I went down on my knees. Before I
could enter the ether and get to Henriette, Luna
disappeared.

A scream pierced the air and the blood
turned to ice in my veins.

Luna had Henriette in her arms, the
dagger at her neck.

Henriette’s eyes were locked on me in
terror and she was shaking.

“
Luna, don’t kill her!
Please, I’ll do whatever you want, just don’t kill her!”

She smiled a cold, cruel
smile.

They vanished.

“
Luna
!”

For what seemed like an eternity, I
heard nothing, and then footsteps. On the roof.

The room contracted, and then I was
standing on the roof in the sweeping night air.

Luna was standing at the edge of the
roof holding Henriette by the neck before her. Henriette was as
white as the string of pearls around her neck.

“
Luna, I beg you, please
don’t hurt her.”

She gazed at me, her eyes clear and
the only trace of her previous anguish the tracks of her tears.
Then she smiled, pulled Henriette back by the neck and tossed her
over the edge of the roof.

Henriette didn’t scream. All was
silence as I gathered the ether to me. If I couldn’t catch her, at
least I could be there to break her fall.

Before I could shimmer away, Luna was
there. She drove the dagger into my shoulder and kicked me to my
knees. She was lightning-quick.

Pain erupted high in my shoulder, and
the shock of it made me dizzy and weak. If Luna had always been
this quick, I realised she could have killed me at any
time.

But she had held back.

Precious seconds were wasted as I
reeled in pain, but I made myself focus. The windy rooftop
disappeared as the ether took me.

But it was too late.

I was just in time to see Henriette’s
body shudder from the impact. Her mouth was open, blood oozing from
the back of her head. One of her legs lay twisted beneath her, and
an arm lay at an impossible angle. I could have stood there and
counted all of her hideous injuries, but only one sent rivers of
rage pouring over me.

Her broken neck.

She hadn’t screamed because she was
already dead when Luna flung her off the roof. All to heighten my
agony when I realised just how futile my attempts to save her had
been.

I looked up.

Luna was standing on the roof watching
me, no doubt revelling in her little victory. She was holding the
twin to the sword I had in my hand. I glanced down at Henriette,
who had brought me joy for such a short time. I placed my fingers
on her eyelids and closed them. When I looked up again, Luna was
gone. The world around me contracted and I landed on the roof of
the cathedral in a crouch. I searched the night before
me.

At last I found what I was searching
for. She stood with her back to me, looking down on the street
below her with an air of tense expectation, the sword dangling
casually from her right hand.

She turned and regarded me for a brief
moment. Then she fled, disappearing in midstride as she leapt from
one rooftop to the next. She soon melted into the night.

I straightened, the sword in my hand
glinting in the moonlight.

Visualising myself on a roof a few
streets away, I drew the dark energy to me until I was weightless
and everything around me dissolved. Seconds later, I burst out of
the nothingness, my feet striking the roof I had envisioned in my
mind. I was there for less than a second before I disappeared into
the ether again.

I was soon close enough to see her
ahead of me, leaping, sometimes somersaulting in mid-air before she
landed on one of the rooftops.