The three men moved as one, blades raised.
There was no time. He would not make it.
He could not kill them all.
“The witch, Tristan!” Father Perero shouted as he pushed himself away from the doors and cracked his staff over one Arathian’s skull, driving the man backward. “Kill her!”
Tristan’s stomach clenched at the thought.A woman.
He had never killed a woman before.
The witch flung back her head, her laughter echoing through the smoke-hazed air, sharp as glass. “Kill me? Do you truly think you can kill me?”
He didn’t know. He didn’t know if he could.
Lord, please. Grant mestrength.
Gritting his teeth, Tristan heeled Valor into a hard charge, reins clenched in his left hand, sword ready in his right. He veered straight for the woman. The witch. He had heard the stories. Every Elmorian had.
But not even those stories could have prepared him for the sight of an unarmored woman walking straight toward him as if he were nothing at all—not a knight in full plate barreling straight for her. Not a man armed with a hand-and-a-half sword honed to a deadly edge.
Nothing.
The witch flung wide her arms, as if welcoming him in when there was but a horse’s length left between her body and his. She breathed in deep. The very air around her seemed to tighten, to shift. A strange scent filled the air—acrid andwrong.
And then she exhaled.
Fire.
It burst from her mouth in a wide, focused stream, hotter than any forge—a column of flame roaring straight toward him. The world vanished behind a wall of orange and white. Heat washed over both him and Valor, slamming into his breastplate with such force it nearly tore him from the saddle.
Pain. It exploded through him, white-hot. Blinding. He was going to die here, roasted alive inside a metal suit.
For a full heartbeat, he was back in the darkness of his long sleep, unable to move, unable to speak, trapped in a body that refused to answer him even as voices prayed over him, begging him to wake—
Olivia.Her face flashed through his mind—the first thing he saw upon finally waking. Olivia. It was Olivia.
His warhorse screamed, rearing and bucking. The reins slipped through his fingers.
Valor bolted.
Off balance, Tristan desperately gripped his sword in both hands and swung wildly. The blade met something solid—resistance and then nothing at all.
Immediately, the flames ceased, as if someone had slammed a door shut, sealing them in. Cold air rushed back the moment the heat dissipated, sucking the breath from his lungs.
Valor screamed, half-mad with pain and terror, and bolted sideways.
The world lurched; sky and stone traded places.
He hit the cobblestones hard.
The impact rang through his armor. For a moment, he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. He just lay there, every nerve humming, the taste of smoke and copper thick on his tongue.
Somewhere to his left, Valor’s hooves thundered away, uneven now. His poor horse vanished into the maze of streets with a strangled whinny—hurt but alive. Guilt twisted in his gut. He should have been at his stallion’s side, calming him, tending to him.
Not lying broken on the stones while the city burned.
Was it truly over? It had felt like a lifetime.
