She rounds to find the last soldier staring, wide-eyed, a feral anger etched across her face as she lifts her sword and drives it down toward Matthew’s chest. But she wasn’t the only one watching. Matthew catches her sword hand, gripping the gauntlet with the last of his strength. He tries to rip the armor off, but the soldier tears free and dances back out of reach, a shadow blending into the dark, and then Olivia is there, pulling her cousin up, away from the shadow and toward the open door. Ten steps, five, one, and then they’re through.
Through, into warmth, into soft earth and the smell of rain and the airy night.
Through, into Gallant.
She stumbles to her hands and knees, the gloves crumbling from her fingers, leaving only a streak of ash on barren ground, the magic lost beyond the wall. But the master of the house looks more alive than ever. He makes his way up the garden, fingers trailing over flowers, and rot spreads along the petals and the stems, consuming everything like fire, leaving a ruined black tide in his wake.
In the moments since he stepped through the door, ivy has spilled out, woody vines that force the gate open like a mouth. There is no way to lock the door, not without closing it first. Two spades lie on the ground nearby and Matthew presses one into her hands.
“Start breaking it free,” he says as he hefts the other spade and surges up the slope toward Death.
Olivia hacks at ivy, and when that doesn’t work, she pulls at it with her bare hands, feels the thorny bark tear open the skin on her palms. Steals a look back over her shoulder, up the slope to the garden as Matthew reaches the grim shadow and swings the spade at his back. But the tool never touches him. It grazes the air around his cloak, and the iron rusts, and the wood rots, and all of its crumbles.
Matthew stumbles back as the monster turns, his eyes a glowing white.
“You are nothing,” he says, in a voice like frost.
“I am a Prior,” answers Matthew, standing his ground. He has no weapon, nothing in his hands but blood. It stains his palm as he lifts one hand, like the statue in the fountain. “We bound you once, and we will bind you again.”
A laugh like thunder rolls through the night.
Olivia keeps hacking at the ivy, even though it’s not working, and the door is jammed open, and even if Matthew finds a way to force the monster back, her heart pounds in her chest, warning that there is no hope, no hope, no running from death, no hiding from death, no conquering death. But she doesn’t stop. She will not stop.
“Olivia!” shouts Matthew, voice ringing in the dark, and she is trying, she is trying. The ivy finally begins to snap and give.
“Olivia!” he calls again, boots pounding over ground as a massive wooden tendril breaks and the door groans free and she looks up in time to see the wolfish soldier inches from her face, in time to see her blade singing through the air.
She doesn’t close her eyes.
She is proud of that. She doesn’t close her eyes as the sword comes down. It strikes her hard, and she falls, hitting the ground. Waits for pain she doesn’t feel. Wonders why she isn’t dead, until she looks up at the open door and sees Matthew.
Matthew, standing in her place. Matthew, who pushed her out of the way the instant before the sword cut down.
Matthew, who leans in the doorway, the blade driven through, the point jutting like a thorn from his back.
Olivia screams.
There is no sound to it, but it is there, ringing through her chest, her bones, it is all she can hear as she pushes to her feet and rushes toward the door, toward him.
Too late, she reaches him.
Too late, she brings the spade down on the soldier’s gauntlet, severing the armored hand. Too late, the soldier sneers and crumbles, and so does the gauntlet and the sword, and Matthew takes a single, unsteady step back, and falls, Olivia sinking with him.
Her hands race over his front, trying to stem the blood as Matthew coughs and winces.
“Stop him,” he pleads, and when she doesn’t move, his hand digs hard into her wrist.
“Olivia,” he says, “you are a Prior.”
The words ripple through her.
Matthew swallows and says again, “Stop him.”
Olivia nods. She forces herself to rise and turn to the garden and storm up the path, ready to face Death.
Chapter Thirty
When Olivia was eight, she decided she would live forever.
It was a strange whim, sprouting up like a weed one day between her thoughts. Perhaps it was after the cat by the shed, or when she realized that her father was gone, that her mother was never coming back. Perhaps it was when one of the younger girls took ill, or when the head matron made them sit on the stiff wooden pews and learn of martyrs. She doesn’t exactly remember when she had the thought. Only that she had it. That at some point, she simply decided that other things might die, but she would not.