The Almighty Dominance novel Chapter 848

"Please." Her voice broke on it. "I can't marry him. I can't. But I can't let Grandpa die either. Please. You're the only one. Save my grandfather."

"Your family chose to believe him," said Alex quietly. "You locked my pill in a drawer. Why is it my business now?"

"Because I was wrong." The tears ran down, and she did not wipe them. "About the pill. About you. About all of it. I was wrong, and he's dying for it."

Alex looked at her for a long moment.

"Look at his neck," he said.

She turned.

On the old man's chest, the pearl had begun to smoke. A thin grey thread rose from it into the lantern light. The bark blackened. The pearl gave a small sharp crack, like ice on a pond, and the red line on the old man's arm stopped halfway to the elbow.

Then, slowly, it began to fade.

"Isn't that the charm the boy gave him?" someone whispered. "The bead on a string?"

"It is," whispered Nina. Her hand went over her mouth. "It is."

Mr. Wolfe drew one long breath, the first deep breath he had taken all night.

Hector's happy face fell to pieces.

Master Gregory had gone white to the lips. "Impossible. Nothing on this coast can break my curse."

"I told her to hang it in the doorway," said Alex. "Nobody listened. Lucky for him, he wore it."

He stood up.

He did not lift his hand to the sky. He did not say any magic words. He walked up the long table on the grass, past the masters, past the lanterns, past Tyler Hunt with a prawn halfway to his mouth, and stopped one step in front of Master Gregory.

"You cursed an old man to sell his granddaughter to your servant," he said. "So I'm going to slap you."

For one second the lawn was silent.

Then Master Gregory laughed. It was a real laugh, deep and long, and it rolled down the tables like the sea.

"Slap me?" He wiped his eyes. "Boy. Look."

He opened his black coat. The lining was sewn from top to bottom with little squares of yellow paper, each folded into a knot, row after row of them, more than anyone could count.

"One hundred and eight protection charms. Every one blessed in the capital. A knife turns away from me. A bullet loses its way."

He closed the coat and struck his own chest with his fist. It sounded like a man knocking on an iron door.

"And under them, forty years of iron body and iron skin. I have cultivated it since before you were born. Men have broken axe handles across my back for money." He leaned down, smiling. "Your slap will be a child's tickle."

"It's true," muttered an old master with a white beard. "I saw it in the capital. A butcher broke his cleaver on that arm."

"Go on, idiot," called Tyler Hunt, grinning again. "Tickle him."

"Go on," said Master Gregory softly. He turned his cheek to Alex, like a man offering it to a fly. "Slap me. Then kneel. Then give back every pearl."

"All right," said Alex.

He lifted his right hand. Not fast. Everyone at the table could see it coming. It was the slowest, laziest slap anyone on that lawn had ever seen.

It landed.

One sound. Short and dry, like a branch snapping in winter.

Every yellow charm inside the black coat burst into light at once, all one hundred and eight of them, and burned to grey ash in a single breath. The green rings on the master's fingers cracked.

And Master Gregory's head turned.

It turned to the side, the way a head turns from a slap. Then it kept on turning. Past his shoulder. Past where any neck could go. Until his face was looking backwards over his own spine, at the dark bay behind him, with the laugh still on it.

His body stood there one more second, as if nobody had told it.

Then it folded down onto the grass and did not move again.

Nobody screamed. Nobody could.

A wine glass slipped out of someone's fingers and broke on the edge of the table. Tyler Hunt's chair went over backwards, and Tyler went with it, prawn and all.

On the grass, the fat stargazer blinked. The empty look went out of his eyes. He stared down at his own hands on the lawn, then at the body beside him, and he scrambled away from it on his knees.

"He's dead," somebody whispered at last. "One slap. He's dead."

"Iron body," said the white-bearded master, very faintly. "Forty years of iron body."

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