The arrow has hit her in the shoulder. She has moments to think it’s all gone wrong before she hits the ground, the thin, razor-sharp point driven even deeper into her muscle by her face-first impact with the dusty stone. Ice spreads through her veins before she can move, and it’s all she can do to raise herself on her elbows and kind of shift her knees. Mercer. Where is Mercer?
Voices are talking over her head, but they sound like white noise. No words, just slight rises and falls of tones. But she manages to get herself onto one elbow, blood dripping from her shoulder, her limbs like lead. He is walking toward her, sword out, and all she can think to say is help me.
Then he stabs her.
She remembers it because every time she takes her armor off, there is a four-inch white scar leading from directly over her heart to the left side of her ribs. She remembers lying, unable to move, while Mercer ran and her blood formed a pool on the floor. The cut was deep, and it was nothing but luck, and perhaps a god--or two--was looking out for her, that kept her alive.
This is why when Mercer raises his bronze blade to match her ebony knives, she doesn’t grin or smile like she usually does--she bares her teeth and tells him clearly and calmly that he’s hers.
The life leaves his eyes, and his soul enters the black gem she holds against the death wound. When his blood has washed from her fur, and the metal water of Irkngthand is gone from her throat, she goes to High Hrothgar, climbs to the long precipice the Greybeards use for meditation, and throws the soul gem as far out into the snow as she can.
She thinks it’s more than fate that catches it in the wind and smashes it against the rocks. Mercer’s soul breaks into a thousand tiny black pieces. He’ll arrive in the afterlife both at the mercies of Nocturnal and split into those thousand tiny pieces. He’ll never have peace, she thinks, not one moment of rest for an eternity.
