Once Kinlear cut his hand … he would be revealed.
Because he would bleed red instead of black.
‘Ezer,’ he whispered, turning sideways to lock eyes with her from the shadows of his hood. His words were so hushed and so fast, she could hardly decipher them. ‘I tried to tell you before in the cave, but … you kissed me before I could say the rest.’
The wolves snarled again.
‘When I said I’m falling,’ Kinlear whispered and smiled … but it wasn’t quitehissmile. ‘I meant, I’m falling out of love with the gods.’
And then his hand slid from hers, and something strange raced through her. A cold, unsteady sort of feeling, like the world had just turned sideways.
She watched in horror as he knelt. And instead of driving the blade into the Acolyte’s chest … instead of doing what he’d promised …
Kinlear Laroux bowed.
‘My Lord,’ he said.
‘Ah, the young princeling,’ said the Acolyte, ‘Child of Draybor Laroux. Your eyes have been opened at long last.’
His voice was human. It was young and accented like Arawn’s, heavily northern, and …
And she recognized it.
‘I wish to join you, my Lord,’ Kinlear said. ‘I wish to lay down my allegiance to the Five.’ He was crying as he added, ‘I wish to live forever … belonging to you.’
The Acolyte inclined his shadowed head.
‘A final test,’ he said, ‘and you will be welcomed here, my child. You will befree.’
There was nothing Ezer could do, nothing she could say, as Kinlear took the Sentinel’s blade and split his skin wide open.
For a second, Ezer felt like she was floating. Like she was outside her own body as she watched him bleed.
And it was not red.
It was a deep, soulless black.
He was gone.
Kinlear Laroux, child of the king, a loyal servant of the Five …
He had defected right there before her and joined the other side.
Suddenly, she couldn’t breathe.
She couldn’t even gasp his name as the Acolyte lifted a hand and sent a bolt of shadow into Kinlear’s chest.
It melted into him, and before her very eyes, he shifted.
Hechanged.
His hands, long and beautiful, morphed into darksoul claws. He screamed through the pain of it, and she watched in horror as his eyes. His beautiful, moonlit silver eyes, shifted to a darksoul black.
He did not look at her as he walked away. He followed after the other darksouls, a part of them now. She noticed, with a pang in her chest, that he had no limp. No cough. And he stood so tall, so proud … that she knew, somehow, he’d been healed of his ailment. Just as Soraya said.
But at what cost?
He was gone.
