The house stood in ashes, a pillar of stone at each corner and a chimney at the far back, crooked from the lack of support.

  Harrison strode through the corpse of a home, finding the shadow of a bed in the back, where a piece of the roof still stood. Shingles fell and cracked against the floor as Harrison disturbed the fragile structure.

  He turned back, meeting Rebekah’s horrified expression with an even, unemotional one. “He tried to burn the house down when he left. To destroy the evidence.”

  Or to destroy the knife, she thought, though she didn’t say as much. She cautiously stepped over the empty doorway and into the home, feet crunching over ashes and broken glass. Standing in the wreckage, Rebekah felt a kinship with the house, deep in her bones.

  With more tenderness than Rebekah had ever seen from the man, Harrison stooped and pulled a small wrapped bundle of cloth from the burned bed. Rebekah recognized it immediately for what it was: his daughter’s body.

  “I never got a chance to bury her,” he said, voice a whisper of wind ghosting over the broken piece of land. “Bundled her up when the fire started, but then I had to get out…”

  He fell into silence, staring into a face Rebekah could not see. She didn’t need to, she knew exactly how he felt.

  She shook herself with a start. She didn’t need to feel pity for this man, not after he caused so much pain.

  Her palm landed against the hilt of the cursed blade, a jolt of darkness chasing up it when she brought her hands down to her hips. “Let’s go,” she ordered, snapping the words so loudly another shingle cracked from the sunken roof and crashed near her feet.

  To his credit, he didn’t argue. He marched out of the building, leading the way out into the forest. As she had through their entire journey, Rebekah followed.

  They reached a small clove of trees, the small buds of flowers beginning to open across them, bark still stained gray from the cold. Harrison found a stone in the midst of the orchard, stained with dirt and slick from moss. He lowered himself onto it, brushing twigs and stones aside before laying flat on his back.

  Positioned against the stone, one hand holding his daughter to his chest, he turned slowly to look at her. “Will you now?”

  She pulled the dagger from her belt, dancing it between her finger tips before lifting it to Harrison’s chest, above the gaping wound The Duke had left. There would be no missing this time.

  Before she struck, Rebekah paused, a whisper in the back of her mind urging her to speak. “If I use this blade on you, can I bring my son back to life?” she whispered, wetting her lips with her tongue. Harrison lived on. What if she could manage the same?

  Stolen story; please report.

  His eyes remained the same, dark pools staring up at her, without a flicker of emotion. “Maybe. You’d have to feed the knife, like I did.”

  The answer wasn’t anything she hadn’t expected, but it gave her pause all the same. Maybe I could.

  No, she nearly dropped the blade as sheer disgust roared through her body, unattached to the voice of the dagger in her mind. I couldn’t.

  She lifted the dagger once more, then grabbed Harrison’s hand. His arm grew stiff, resisting against her touch, before softening into her grip and growing pliable.

  Rebekah wrapped his cold fingers gingerly around the hilt of the blade, digging the tip into Harrison’s cracked skin.

  “What will you do?” he asked in the quiet.

  She stared down at him, wishing she could feel rage at the question and only finding emptiness. Without her skin touching the blade, it was as if her soul had been left an empty pit. She could fill it, but was it worth it?

  “I don’t know.”

  Lifting both hands, she pressed them together above Harrison’s, plunging the dagger into his heart.

  He spasmed, arm jerking as if to drag the blade from his chest. She bared down on his hand, not willing to touch the blade but also not willing to let him keep on with his half-life. Darkness pooled in his eyes, consuming the little white left around the edges before fading out entirely.

  His body went limp, one hand still wrapped around the blade, the other curled around his daughter.

  Rebekah sat back, chest heaving. The rasp of her breathing was quickly swallowed by the empty forest around her, silence that she had not known for days greeting her.

  Trembling, she lifted her hand from Harrison’s, leaving the blade in his chest.

  I could take it—

  She stood abruptly, leaving the spot and the blade behind. It could rot into his chest and lay on the forest floor for all of eternity for all she cared, so long as she never laid her eyes on it again.

  And no one would ever know it existed.

  Rebekah stumbled onto the edges of town as dusk broke over the distance horizon, uncertain how long she’d been walking.

  She passed by her home, continuing further down the street. She could no longer go there.

  Rowdy voices and warm light drew Rebekah in, skin warming for the first time in days as she stepped into the heated tavern.

  Noise died down, eyes going wide and jaws slack as she stumbled up to the bar. I must look half dead, she thought distantly, and for the first time, realized she wasn’t.

  She sat at the bar, her mouth dry, and ordered a beer.

  Frederick, a man she’d known all her life, cautiously brought her the drink and placed it in front of her. His eyes trailed across her face, skin growing paler with each passing moment.

  “So,” he began as she took her first sip of the drink. “Did you find the monster who killed your baby?”

  She swallowed, placing the mug in front of her as warmth filled her stomach. Rebekah did not want to share her story as Harrison had; she did not want to lie. “No. But I did find the man.”