He looked down.
...and felt his heart give a little leap.
“Gods be damned,” Kinlear said to himself, as the wind sighed and the skeletal trees rattled in its wake, as if they were dry bones, finally awakened after a long slumber.
Just like the Veilblade sheathed on his hip.
10
He had a weapon.
A Veilblade.
Which meant, as Magus had suspected....hewas Veilborne.
A Seer, supposedly, though Kinlear had never seen a damned thing but his own death.
Still, the moment the shock settled, he ran.
Just like he’d wanted to do in Touvre, like he’d needed to do if he was to escape his own panic and rage...
He let loose.
Into the woods he went, his illness no longer able to reach him here. He leapt over a fallen branch, his bare toes hitting the cold ground as he landed. He laughed and kept running, the weight of the blade a reassurance at his hip. He slid his fingertips across a deeply gouged tree trunk as he passed by. His fingers fit perfectly into the five huge claw marks in the skeletal bark...one of the relics left here from the many times he and the monster had played a losing game of chase.
He thought of all the times he’d been helpless against it, all the years he’d spent running.
Not tonight.
Tonight, he had a blade.
Tonight, he was the hunter instead of the prey.
“Thank you,” he said to Magus, imagining the old man could hear him, and pushed himself faster.
Kinlear turned left towards the frozen river, where he leapt again. A flip and a roll, and he was back to running through the dead forest as fast as his dream-body could take him.
He was tired of dying. He was tired of being a victim.
He would slay his monster, the way Marin never did.
He refused to stop, even when the snowstorm came. Even when the wind howled and the trees trembled, and the snowbanks rose until Kinlear was trudging through it with all his strength.
He went back to the furthest place he’d ever been. The place where he so often met his death.
He smiled when he heard the telltale sound of breathing come from behind him. A stick snapped. And through the snow, his monster arrived.
“Princeling,” it crooned. “Why do you run from me?”
When he was a boy, it terrified him.
Now, he turned, holding his beautiful dagger between them. “I’m not running anymore,” Kinlear growled. “And you willnotkill me today.”
To his surprise, the monster paused.
It was large in frame...a head taller than him, with shadows that leaked from its dark cloak like it was caught in some kind of rogue wind. Amongst the dead trees, it looked starkly black. Depthless. He could see nothing of its face, only the long, dark claws that protruded from the edges of its once-human fingertips.
“A blade that walks between worlds,” the monster said. “Are you ready for the next?”
