Blood! Give us your blood!
Katell’s grip tightened.
Saturius choked, eyes bulging in sheer terror?—
“Katell!”
Through the thick haze of her rage and the swirling black smoke, a tall figure emerged, golden armour shimmering across his broad chest.
Dorias.
He didn’t shout. He didn’t draw his sword. He simply looked at her, slate-grey eyes full of quiet understanding.
His presence washed over her with the sudden relief of a lungful of air after drowning, threading through the chaos, the smoke, and the screaming voices clawing inside her skull.
“Katell,” he said gently. “Let him go.”
But her grip didn’t loosen.
She couldn’t take in Dorias’ warmth.
Not now. Not when it felt like a betrayal.
Because his warmth reminded her too much of Sinope—fierce and kind andgone.
Tears welled, unbidden. Her fingers trembled around Saturius’ throat.
“I failed her,” she choked out, pressing the back of her sword hand to her mouth as though it could muffle her grief. “He took Sinope’s eye.”
Dorias took a step closer. “No, you didn’t fail her.”
Katell shook her head, furious tears streaking her cheeks. Why couldn’t he see what she’d done? Why wasn’t he as disgusted by her failure as she was?
“I promised her…” The words broke apart in her throat. “I—I swore no one would ever take them. But he killed her and took her eye!”
She raised her blade, holding it inches from Saturius’ glimmering eye. Her heartbeat pounded in her ears. She couldn’t let him keep it.
But Dorias moved, kneeling beside her, and wrapped a warm hand over hers, steadying the shaking blade.
“No, my love,” he murmured for her ears alone. “You destroyed her eyes in the arena. You made sure no one could ever take them. And then we buried Sinope together, remember? That isn’t her eye.”
His words cut through the haze, unlocking a memory that surged forward—the sombre burial at Bruna’s necropolis crashing into her mind.
The blade slipped from her fingers, but Dorias deftly caught it and slid it through his belt.
The voices went silent.
“I—” She blinked, and the arena faded from her vision. Blood-soaked sand gave way to frozen snow and sodden earth, the black smoke drifting in thin wafts.
Around her, the groans of soldiers she’d wounded in her frenzy pierced the stillness of the night. Thocero knelt beside a young man, barely older than Arnza, whose eyes were wide with pain and fear. The crowd stood frozen in horrified silence.
Dorias’ thumb stroked the back of her hand. “You were confused, caught off guard. But you’re safe now. Just let him go.”
Her hand remained clasped around the legate’s throat. One by one, she forced her fingers to release him. Tyrrhenus coughed and scrambled back, dragging in rasping breaths as he put distance between them.
Katell’s gaze drifted past him to the ground.
Thick black smoke coiled over the frozen earth, spreading in a circle around her. A living, pulsing thing, it swirled with eerie grace. Tendrils licked outwards from the centre where her rage had ignited it, curling along the blood-smeared ground and brushing against the boots of the watching soldiers, who dared not step closer.
