Panic had overtaken Six, had overtaken Ezer, too, and she yelped a warning as Six’s wing clipped a tall tree.
They careened sideways.
Everything blurred.
The last thing Kinlear heard was Six’s screech. He tried to hold on to Ezer, but his arms were so damned weak. And as she was torn from his grasp, he begged the gods to takehisbody, not hers, before they crashed against the snow.
And the world went utterly black.
26
He woke up falling.
Back in his dreams, back in the sky where he tumbled, wingless, past everything he had already seen.
There was Ezer in his arms, her lips against his, their hearts beating in perfect time. There was the Acolyte seated on a throne before them, an amphitheater of darksouls all around, chanting about the glory of their savior...
Just before Kinlear readied himself to thrust in the knife.
He usually woke up at this part.
He usually went barreling back into his own body, a dying prince once again. But tonight?
Tonight...the dream kept going.
He was no longer falling, looking down on it all from above. Now he was in his own body, standing right before the Acolyte with the blade in his hand.
A certain determination thrummed through him.
This was it. This was the end he’d been waiting for.
“Do it!” he wanted to scream, but he had no voice in this dream. He was a passenger inside his own future body, lookingat the Acolyte through borrowed eyes, as he begged himself to end this. “Kill him!”
But future Kinlear did no such thing.
Instead, his knees hit the ground.
And he bowed...bowed in utter reverence, before the Acolyte.
“No,” he thought. “No, this isn’t right.”
But his own lips formed different words.
“My Lord,” he said.
The Acolyte’s voice was young, accented like his. Not at all like the ancient, all-knowing, voice of a monster he’d expected it to be.
He swore the Acolyte saw through the dream-vision, saw through to the real Kinlearbeneath, in present day...as he turned his shadow-covered face to him and said, “Ah. The young princeling. Child of Draybor Laroux. Your eyes have been opened at long last.”
“I wish to join you, My Lord,” Kinlear said, but...but no, that wasn’t right, that couldn’t be right, for he was supposed to slay this monster. He was supposed to end him, here and now, for what he’d done to his people. For the lies he’d somehow sent across the Expanse to poison Soraya’s mind with, and everyone else who’d ever gone to join him.
He’d slayed women and children with his shadow wolves, innocent people whose lives were cut off short.
He’d nearly killed Ezer with them, too.
“I wish to lay down my allegiance to the Five,” Kinlear’s voice spoke. He was crying, weeping, as he added, “I wish to live forever...belonging to you.”
No.
