Vivian gathered herself but didn’t stand. She crept sideways on her knees, a hair’s-width at a time, listening simultaneously for the ground creaking beneath her and for any sign that would tell her where Thyran was headed.
When the light returned, Vivian sprang again.
This time, she didn’t charge. She got a quick glimpse of Thyran, allowing her to see the power gathering around his hands and where he was aiming it, and leapt out of the way. A stench like rotting meat reached her nose, burning as she inhaled, but Vivian was already darting toward clearer air.
Olvir was a few feet from the pair of them, she saw, kneeling and gripping the knife. His chain mail glittered. His head was bent, auburn hair falling over his brow. That was all Vivian could make out.
She wasn’t between him and Thyran any longer. A few swift steps took care of that. Then she darted inward, slashing at one of the sorcerer’s wings.
That stroke did get through. Ulamir arced down, leaving a silver trail in the strange radiance around them, and carved off a chunk of patchy pink and gray meat. Vivian saw what nobody had in a hundred years or more: Thyran’s blood was still red.
He opened his misshapen mouth for the first time since he’d landed. The sound that emerged, a thick, throatyhhhhhaaaahhhh, was equal parts anger and pain.
“Bitch,” he said when the scream ended.
It took Vivian by surprise—not the vulgarity or the malice but the simple commonplace nature of the insult. Thyran of Heliodar, the world’s near doom, spoke like any drunken idiot she’d met on the road, like a village boy who’d just lost at quoits.
“Yes,” she said, laughing. “And?”
He snarled, not quite a word but a pattern of sounds. Sickly fire whipped from his fingers and directly toward Vivian, far too fast to dodge.
* * *
Olvir didn’t look behind him.
He couldn’t, not even when he heard the blast, then the heavy thud and cracking. That meant a person’s whole weight had hit the mirrors. He hoped that person was Thyran, doubted it, couldn’t let himself check. To turn, no matter how briefly, would destroy all his resolve.
He concentrated on the knife’s hilt, put his head down, and ran. He welcomed the darkness, though it made the sounds more vivid.
Do your job, Vivian had said.Trust the people you’re with to do theirs.
She knew what she was doing. She knew what price she might pay, just as well as Olvir did, and she’d decided to take the risk. Olvir wouldn’t dishonor her decision now.
But gods, he wished they could have traded places.
When the landscape went radiant again, the knife was right in front of him. The mirror had closed on the blade an inch or so below the guard. Olvir thought that the cracks nearby might have been redder than the others, but that might only have been a trick of the light.
He fell to his knees in front of the knife. Trying to brace himself, not sure he even knew what he would be preparing for, he reached out and wrapped one hand around the hilt, then put the other on top of it, covering the gem.
And he remembered.
He had distance from the worst of it. The fragment wasn’t Gizath. Although the Traitor had left some of himself on the Battlefield, that part didn’t completely share his perspective. There was a hairsbreadth of separation between Olvir and the memories, adequate space to let him be aware that he wasn’t the one feeling tainted by what the Traitor viewed as his sister’s willing degradation, nor the one bent on saving her from her chosen fall.
In one sense, that fall had already happened by the time Gizath-he waited for Veryon in the early morning, with the sky turning pearlescent above the trees. Letar had already lain with the mortal—sickening notion—but more damage could be done, and thus more could be averted. Free of her attachment, she would come to regret her choices.
He, Gizath, could give her that gift.
Through a god’s memory, Olvir recalled the stonekin’s bright smile and cheerful greeting, both a little strained. There had been words before. Gizath had given him and Letar both a chance to turn away from their error, and his effort had failed. Despite that, Veryon wouldn’t insult his lover’s family, and he’d never suspect them.
Treachery was still a moment or two away from entering existence, after all.
It was easy to get Veryon to turn, easier still to sink the knife into his back. Olvir saw the stonekin’s emerald eyes, wide with confusion, as he turned in his final moments.
Then he witnessed the breaking of the world.
* * *
Red light shot up in front of Vivian, its bright, honest color a vivid contrast to the orange-gray strands of power it deflected. They whipped off at an angle, leaving Vivian unharmed.
