On This Unworthy Scaffold, Heidi Heilig [best books to read for success .txt] 📗

arms: death, death, death, death. I have to be brave; I need that blood. So I plant my feet. “You want to work together?”

Reaching out, I take his hand, as if to shake it, Aquitan style, but he seizes my wrist so hard that my bones grind together. “In a manner of speaking,” the monk hisses. “With my soul in your skin.”

“What?” I can’t help but recoil at his words, but his grip is too tight to escape. Under my fingers, his blood is warm, sticky. Frantically, I trace a mark on his wrist. I know he feels it. The monk quirks an eyebrow. Then he grins, drawing me close enough to whisper in my ear.

“Did you think your own blood could pull out my soul?” He draws a knife from his belt, the blade long and wicked. “I am not one of your puppets, child.”

“I know,” I say, my heart hammering in my chest as I twist in his grip. Does he mean to kill me here and now? “The Keeper told me,” I say, trying to stall. “I found the book in Aquitan. Forbidden magic. Stolen blood.”

“So you know the spell?” Le Trépas cocks an eyebrow, the knife still high. “Life, death, and knowledge. And now, two of those gods will exist in one body,” he adds. I cringe away, but his grip is too strong to break. “I always envied the power in the Maiden’s blood.”

“I didn’t use my blood this time!” The blade shines in the moonlight, but as my words sink in, Le Trépas hesitates. Then he looks down at the symbol on his other wrist: not death, but life, traced out in his own red blood.

His eyes widen, and now he is the one to recoil. Releasing me, he drops the knife to scrub at the symbol. I stumble back out of reach, breathing hard. Will the magic work? Le Trépas seems to think so, but as I search the wide sky, there is no light but the moon. Then I see it, on the horizon—a blue glow, far away but speeding closer, faster than a falling star. Blue as a flame, blue as the ocean, blue as the heart of a sapphire. As I watch Le Trépas’s soul returning, I suddenly know where he must have hidden it for so many years. The crown jewel had winked as I held it in my hands just hours ago. Before I had left it with Le Roi, just as Le Trépas had.

The monk follows my eyes, and the color leaves his face. “What did you do?”

“I gave you life,” I say. “We’ve seen enough death, don’t you think?”

The monk shows his teeth, his face ghastly in the light of his own spirit. Then he staggers backward as it pours into him like water into an empty vessel.

Le Trépas’s back arches, taut as a violin string. Then he crumples like a page as the blue light fades, and blood pours afresh from his wounds. But he isn’t dead—not yet. Slumped on the deck, he lifts his head to glare at me, his eyes a vengeful blue. Then he pushes himself to his feet, the knife still clenched in his fist.

“Kill her!” he shouts, and as one, the dead soldiers turn from the cabin door, their dead eyes fixed on me.

Act 3,Scene 27

In the captain’s cabin. LEO sits on the floor, his hands and feet bound once more, this time by AKRA. Now AKRA leans against the door, holding it shut against the dead outside. Suddenly, LE TRÉPAS’s voice echoes across the deck.

LE TRÉPAS (offstage): Kill her!

The pounding stops, followed by a storm of trampling feet racing across the deck. AKRA sags against the door, breathing hard, but LEO’s face goes white as he begins to tug at his bonds.

LEO: Akra? What’s happening?

AKRA cracks open the door, peering outside.

AKRA: Le Trépas is on his knees. But the soldiers . . . she’s going to be surrounded.

AKRA flings the door wide, but LEO’s voice stops him before he can race to JETTA’s aid.

LEO: Shoot him, Akra!

AKRA: What?

Shocked, AKRA turns to LEO, only to find him struggling against the already frayed ropes.

Leo—

LEO: He gave an order. I—ah!

Gritting his teeth, LEO pulls his hands free of the rope; fantouches are so strong. Fighting the command, his hands shake as he starts to undo the knots at his ankles. Still, AKRA hesitates, unsure whether to stop LEO or save JETTA as the soldiers close in.

Shoot him, please!

AKRA: It might not kill him.

LEO: You have to try.

AKRA: But it might kill you!

LEO: Better me than her!

As the ropes fall away, LEO pushes himself to his feet, stumbling toward the door. AKRA grabs him by the wrist, trying to hold him back with one hand. In the other, he raises his gun, aiming at LE TRÉPAS, but his eyes are on LEO’s face.

LEO speaks slowly through his teeth.

Shoot him. Save her.

From outside, JETTA’s voice rings out.

JETTA: Akra!

Swearing, AKRA sights down the barrel and fires once, twice. Through the open door, he sees LE TRÉPAS stumble and fall, and the soldiers around him drop to the deck like the fruit of a poisoned tree.

Then AKRA turns, just in time to catch LEO as he too falls lifeless to the floor.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Le Trépas’s soul is surprisingly bright.

It gleams on the deck, casting long shadows behind me. All around, other souls rise from the corpses of the soldiers, until the fading night glows bright as noon.

My body feels like it’s floating too. I can’t feel my feet. Is this what death feels like? But I am alive. It’s hard to believe.

“Akra?” My brother is the one who saved me. Now he stumbles out of the cabin at my call. His face is a mask of relief—and something else. “Akra!”

“Jetta!” He’s running toward me, his gun jammed in his belt. When he wraps his arms around me, he smells like sweat and blood and gunpowder, but he is undeniably alive