My breath snagged. “They’re alive?”
“Perhaps.” Renwell shrugged, lowering his hand. “Perhaps not.”
I pointed my sword at his chest, still several feet away. “Tell me the gods-damned truth.”
Renwell tossed his bow aside and pulled his sunstone sword from its sheath in one smooth motion. “Make me.”
The taunt echoed from years of training together, but I was too angry to care.
I lunged for him, and he quickly sidestepped, tapping my shoulder with his hilt.
Snarling, I swung again, but he disappeared. Again and again. I struck, and he evaded like we were back in my gods-damned nightmare.
I stabbed air again. “Fight back,” I rasped, my body on fire with pain and exhaustion.
He tapped the tip of his sword on a bloody patch of dirt. “As you wish.”
He lunged before I drew breath and knocked my sword out of my hands with a bone-rattling hit. Then he kicked me in the stomach.
I sprawled on my back. The stars shifted and blurred above me while I gasped for air.
One moment. Defeat could happen in one moment, and I’d let it.
Renwell’s face filled my vision as he leaned over me. The sharp point of his sword nipped at the soft skin of my throat.
“That’s for ever thinking you could beat me at my own game,” he whispered. “And this... this is for the marks you left on me.”
Horrible, stinging pain sliced across my cheek.
I screamed, jerking my face away from his blade.
“Now we match, little monster,” he snarled in my ear.
“Renwell!” shouted a hard female voice.
His head snapped up. He straightened away from me, sword at the ready.
“Nikella,” he murmured. “Ever the survivor, I see.”
Nikella? Thank the gods. If anyone could defeat Renwell, it’d be his sister. I’d seen her take down a dozen of his Wolves.
I lifted my fingers to my burning cheek. I felt blood, then a searing pain, and drew them back with a hiss.
I tried to drag myself away, but Renwell slammed his boot on my chest, pinning me like a bird with broken wings on the cracked cobblestones.
My chest heaved under his muddy boot, trying to draw in enough smoky air. My torn shoulders screamed. But the humiliation that filled my soul was a different kind of agony.
“Let her go, Renwell.”
I couldn’t see Nikella, but I clung to the steady command in her voice.
“I’m not quite done with her, sister.”
“Yes, you are. Just as you are done here. Order your ship to cease firing.”
Renwell smirked. “They won’t until I’m back on board.”
“And what if I kill you here and now?”
