Before Ava's body hit the ground, Cain turned on her, bloodied sword raised.
She did not even think, she simply moved. Turning, she drew back her right foot and drove it forward, connecting right between the man's legs and dropping him like a tonne of bricks.
He rolled away from her, allowing him to dodge the second kick that was aimed for his head and he flung himself back up onto his feet, sword at the ready.
Her mind had gone entirely blank, and she moved on instinct as Letari wailed and struggled behind her, Epharis trying his best to keep her from escaping.
She had shut down so completely, she did not even have time to process the loss; her entire focus was on killing the man who had so thoroughly destroyed her.
Following after him, she reached behind her to draw out two long blades that rested against her lower back, extending her arms out and then swinging them down together, both knives hitting his raised sword in a perfect mirror of each other. Twisting her wrist, she slapped the blade of her left knife against the flat side of his sword, her right-hand slashing across his stomach, but he was quicker.
Spinning, she used both knives to slash across his chest one after the other, and so the dance began.
She had the upper hand, being faster and trained with two weapons rather than his one, and she was in a blind state where nothing mattered. Slashing fiercely, she parried his lunge and scored again and again on his flesh.
Her agility training made her flexible and light on her feet, allowing her to dodge better, and her dirty form of fighting made her better at close-quarters combat.
He was moving her, she knew it, but it did not matter until he had her facing away from the mouth of the cave. He turned, flying towards the sound of voices.
She was on him in a second, leaping off the ground and landing on his back, one arm wrapped around his neck, the other driving the long blade into his shoulder. His sword clattered to the ground, but he threw her off. Perhaps he had been trying to escape. She was not sure.
Pushing herself to her feet, she went after him as he ran. She turned, searching for Letari.
Epharis was unconscious on the ground, his neck twisted at an odd angle, and she left him there, knowing that while he would have an enormous headache, he would survive.
Sprinting out of the cave, she saw something that drove a spark of terror through her heart.
Letari was standing off against Cain, her razor nails bloody as she clawed his face and chest, leaving him ragged and bleeding.
Running after them, Letari turned and smiled at the sight of her sister coming for her. But then Cain grabbed Letari's head and drove a knife into the back of her skull, twisting viciously.
Letari was the next to hit the ground, the delighted smile still on her face, and Cain fled. Instead of going after the man, she skidded to a stop beside her twin and lifted her off the ground, checking her pulse to find it gone. She had known it would be gone, there was too much damage to survive, even for Letari.
Clenching her jaw, she prayed that her twin had the same gift as her, and would not remain dead.
"What's the matter, Etani, last woman standing?" Cain taunted, sounding breathless somewhere around her.
She lowered her sister and stood, turning to try to find him. She did not speak, only searched for him. He was kind enough to come for her.
He tried again and again to punch her, and she parried and blocked the blows, her mind empty, and yet all she could see was the faces of the two she had spent her entire life trying to protect.
It had been her duty, a job she gladly accepted because that was what you did for your family. A duty he had sought to rip away from her, and had now torn to shreds.
Avadari's soul was trapped in his sword, and she would never be able to escape unless the sword was destroyed. She did not know if Letari was like her, she did not know if either of them were like her, but she knew that unless she got Ava out of that wretched thing, she would have no chance of returning to life.
***
With that in mind, she let her rage and agony add force to her blows. She let her anguish at the loss of Sasha, then Nayishma, and finally her precious, wonderful sisters, fuel her rage.
It was too much, she could not handle it, and she wanted it all to end. She wanted freedom from the pain. She wanted to join her sisters in death.
But she could not do that if there was even a shred of hope that one of them would return to life like she did. She wanted nothing more than to smile as her sisters tried to understand why one moment they were dead, and the next they were underwater. She wanted to laugh with them and explain that they had been reborn, to discuss the strange place they went to upon death.
She wanted to conspire about the strange shadowy figures that lurked just off the path that would lead to rebirth, to feel that odd pull back towards life.
She wanted to tell them about Ayathian, about Epharis, the priestess, Nayishma, Alaric, Sasha, the vampire twins… She wanted to tell them everything.
She wanted them to know how much she loved them, and how much it had broken her heart every time she had been forced to leave them behind to keep Cain busy.
She had never told them how happy it made her to come back to them and check on them. She had never told them how much she loved them because it always hurt too much knowing she would have to leave again in a matter of hours.
She had given up her life running, but she had willingly thrown it away for them, to keep them safe.
Tears stung her eyes as she thought over all the little things she had wanted to share with them: a butterfly wing, a shell, a rock that looked like a man's genitals. She never once got to share those with them; she never got to share anything with them.
They had been in the human world for only weeks before they realised they needed to split up. Twenty-five years together with her twin, seven years with Ava, and then nothing for the remaining nine hundred. She got to spend a total of a few hours every couple of years with them.
All because of that bastard before her; it was his fault she had lost out on so much with her precious sisters. It was his fault she had never been able to share herself with them, they had died never really knowing her, always seeing her as just that other sister who came by sometimes.
He was the reason they had to spend their lives in one cave after another, always wary and always afraid.
She did everything she could to keep them safe, and in the end it had not been enough; she had not been enough, and she would never get that chance to tell them how sorry she was for being distant, for being cold.
Her jaw clenched, she ignored the pain of each blow, as she did everything within her power, just to get her hands on him. She wanted to rip him apart with her bare hands. She wanted to eviscerate him.
He was afraid, she could see it. He was not aware of how strong she had become, not aware of just how much her anger would scream through her and send her into that anguished void of rage. She blamed him, and she wanted him dead. Not only that, she wanted Illia dead for sending him.
She was going to bring an end to the Queen of Ceress for ordering the deaths of her sisters.
Her blows turned feral, her fingers and mouth bloody as she used nails and teeth to rend his flesh. When that did not seem to work, she came up with a new idea.
Reaching behind her, she felt along the small pouch of vials against her lower back and picked one out. Under the cover of trees, she pulled the cork with her thumb and the powder filled her fingers. He seemed to think she was exhausted, and he was grinning maniacally as he flew towards her. She lifted her hand, blowing the powder into his face.
The man screamed, his arms flying up to clutch at his face as the acidic blue powder puffed up around him and she smiled, stepping into him.
Without a word, she drove her knee up into his groin and he dropped. The moment he was on the ground, she stepped over him and dropped down onto his stomach, taking first one arm and then the other, stuffing them under her knees.
He was still screaming, and she shut him up with first one punch, and then a second, driving her fists into his face over and over until he stopped making any noise.
That made her feel a little better, or at least slightly less angry.
Looking down at him, she contemplated what it was she could do to him, and her head turned, looking at the limp corpse of her twin, looking towards the cave where Ava would be lying, beautiful and perfect in death.
Looking back down at him, she bent down over him and sank her teeth into his throat. He screamed, but she ignored it, ignored his attempts to throw her off him, and ignored his attempts to kick her back or twist his arms. Tearing the flesh from his neck, she spat it out onto the ground and bit again, and again, and again.
He did not deserve the peace of the death she could give him; he did not deserve a beautiful death. He deserved to die in the mud, his throat ripped out by a half-breed freak.
She bit and spat until all that was left was his spine, and then she ripped the spine apart. There was no surviving that; none of them survived decapitation.
If he could come back like she could, she would be glad of it. She would gladly spend the rest of eternity killing him over and over again, but she doubted he would. The ability was so incredibly rare now, regardless of what the rumours had been when she was a child.
Standing, she picked up the head by what was left of the spine and turned, throwing the thing into the trees, not wanting to see his face ever again. But she would, she would see him every night in her nightmares, killing her sisters over and over again.
Heading back towards her twin, she carefully wiped her bloody hands clean on the soaked grass and lifted the body tenderly from the grass.
Cradling the body in her arms, she closed her eyes and willed her sister to know how to escape the spirit world, begged her to come back, pleaded silently and screamed into the void for her to come back.
Stroking the beautiful, pale face, she began to sing quietly, a lullaby their mother had sung for them when they were young and sick, or fretting, or did not want to go to bed.
Her voice was low and soft, her tears falling freely as she stared with a desperate longing at her twin. She wanted nothing more than to do that, to just sit there with Letari and stroke her hair, to listen to her laugh and smile with her.
She could not survive without her sisters; she did not want to survive without them.
Clenching her eyes shut, she bit hard on her lips, trying to keep her face from showing her anguish as she rocked slowly back and forth, comforting the body of her dead sibling.
"You're okay, Lee…" she whispered, her smile feeling warped as a stab of pain ripped through her body. "You're okay, I'm here now."
She should have been there the whole time, but she had not been. It was her fault for not being strong enough in time. It was her own fault that four incredible, wonderful women were now dead.
How could she have been so stupid as to think she could look after them? Who was she? Just some foolish girl who thought she could keep all of those innocent lives safe? She was not even considered a full adult by her own people.
She wished she had been older, stronger, braver... better. She wished she could have been enough, but she was not. She was none of those things; she was a scared little girl trying to protect other scared little girls from the adults.
Why couldn't they have just let them live in exile? She should have asked for help, asked anyone who had listened. She should have demanded someone help her protect them but instead she was arrogant, and that had cost her those lives.
She should have gone to the Winter Court, begged the queen to protect her sisters in exchange for herself. She would have done it without a second thought had she known, but she had never dreamt that he would go after them when he had been so close to getting her.
She should have gone there. She should have done better… She should have done everything for them…
***
How long she sat there she did not know, but it was long enough that the body had begun to scatter, and Epharis walked from the cave and approached.
"Etani?" he asked, looking shocked by the carnage.
She did not take her eyes off her twin, even when he joined her on the ground.
Letari's body was disintegrating as most mythicals did when they died, ensuring there would never be a trace of them left to be studied.
Her fingers traced her twin's jaw, and she watched as the spots she touched scattered into the wind.
"Avadari is gone," he said, sounded devastated. "She disintegrated into dust…"
"So, humans cannot find more out about us," she said gently, tracing the full lower lip, watching the flesh scattering. It was not morbid; underneath there was nothing but a swirling blackness filled with a million stars as though their insides were a reflection of the night sky.
Leaning down, she traced a soft kiss against the pale forehead and began to sing quietly once more.
She did not want to see as her sister vanished into the wind, so she kept her eyes shut even as the weight on her lap eased and then finally vanished.
She had lost everything that ever meant anything to her. She had failed to keep any of them safe. She could not even do something so simple as keep them safe.
Had she only kept Cain's attention for a little longer, she might have been able to kill him. She might have been able to spare her sisters of their deaths. She might have been able to save them both had she not left. The sight of Letari's joy at her appearance bit at her, her heart breaking.
She did not scream and rage this time, she simply sat with her eyes closed, the tears flowing freely. She made no attempt to stop them.
Epharis made no attempt to touch her either; he merely remained with her and kept guard while she suffered in silence.
How had she been so blind as not to realise he would go after them? She had assumed that he had suffered the same mental injuries as her after their kiss rebounded.
Why had he not been incapacitated? She did not know, and she did not care enough to try to figure it out right then.
Finally opening her eyes, she pushed herself to her feet and turned back to the cave.
Entering it as though in a dream, she took only two things: a small black cat pendant she knew Letari had loved dearly, and a delicate hairpin Letari had given Ava for her birthday so long ago.
It was a long strip of silver with an elaborate swirling pattern on either end, and two strings of little silver beads stretching between both ends.
The little black cat had been what led to Letari turning herself into a cat at every opportunity.
She saw the sword, Orenmir, and picked it up, placing it on the bed. Reaching behind her, she pulled out a single vial and spread it over the mattress, picking out one of the larger candles from the sconce on the wall. Turning to see Epharis standing in the mouth of the cave, she threw the candle onto the powder.
The cave shook as the powder erupted in flames so hot, they were blue, the sword melting in a minute with a terrible, keening scream.
Leaving the cave, the pair stood a few feet back as the fire spread to consume everything inside. Eventually the rocks themselves caught fire and evil flames spilled out, to be quenched by the rain.
Slipping the necklace around her throat, she clutched the cat tightly, the pin clenched in her other hand. They watched the burning cave, right up until it collapsed and what remained of the demonic fire was suffocated by the dirt.
There was nothing left for them in that place. There was nothing left for her in any place, and she turned slowly to the lich, seeing his fear at her empty eyes.
She had no purpose anymore, her purpose for existing was now gone, her sisters were gone.
Stretching out her hand for the lich, she barely felt it when he took it.
She would take them back to Ayathian and she would wait there for a time. If she did not feel her sisters, she would kill herself, and she would sever the connection to life. It was nothing more than a ribbon, it would be easy.
With this plan in mind she was glad that, if nothing else, she would be with her sisters again soon—all three of them would be dead.
Together at last, the way it should have been all along.