It sounded different. Dark and whispering, a raw hiss, like she’d broken her back or punctured her lungs, or?—
“Gods damn you, Arawn,just go!”she shouted.
He lifted her anyways.
“No!”she yelled. She thrashed in his arms. “LET ME GO!”
“Stop it, Sora, just stop?—”
He paused to send another wave of glittering fire towards the wolves. And behindhisback, Cyrra screeched again, dragging an injured wing.
“We have to gonow,”Arawn said.
“NO!”
She shifted in his arms as he turned, almost falling from his grasp, and...
Pain.
Hismind registered it before his body did.
White hot pain shot through him, and then he felt warm, and wet, as blood stained his tunic. He looked down, horrified...
To find Soraya’s dagger dragging down his chest. Cutting through him...
As if he were an enemy.
And she...
She was fighting for the other side.
“Soraya?” he heard himself say. His voice felt like an echo, like a faraway thing that did not belong to him.
And he bled, the world turning dark at its edges, as he dropped her back to the snow.
“Get...away...from me,”she growled at him. He stumbled...and he felt cold. Like his fire was dimming inside of him. Like he was going todie.
Somewhere behind him, a blast of magic struck the snow.
Someone on his side had seen the fallen eagles, had come to his aid. He had seconds to get away...to save himself before it was too late.
He reached for Soraya, his own blood dripping from his hands.
“I said get away!”she screamed. She tried to call to her magic, invocating as if she’d use her wind to shove him away from her.
But no magic came.
As if the gods had heard her cry...and saidno.
As if that connection, that claiming from Avane, had been severed from above.
“Soraya,” Arawn whispered. “Please.”
He was heaving for breath now, as his blood stained the snow.Red,his mind whispered.Red, because you love the gods, because you have not defected in your heart and soul, like her.“Please, Soraya,” he sobbed.
But the truth was there, all over him. He knelt, holding his palms before him as if he were praying. Begging the gods, without words, to take back what she’d done to him.
Because it wasn’t an accident, thatcarvingof his body from cheek to chest. He’d seen her do it a thousand times, to their enemies.
