His gauntlet connects with my jaw.
The impact is tectonic. It lifts me off my feet and throws me backward. I crash into the reading table, sliding across the wood before tumbling to the floor.
I taste copper. Darkness fringing my vision, and a high-pitched ringing in my ears.
"Imas!" Leora screams.
I see movement in the corner of my eye. Soldiers are pouring into the room, stepping over the wreckage of the door. They wear Malek's colors. Two of them grab Leora.
She fights them. She is small and exhausted, but she fights with the ferocity of a cornered cat. She claws at their faces, kicking, twisting.
One of them strikes her across the face.
The sound of the slap cuts through the ringing in my ears.
Rage, pure and blinding, floods my veins. It is not magic. It is something older.
I scramble to my knees, spitting blood. My jaw feels unhinged. I reach for my sword, my fingers scrabbling against the stone.
"Get off her!" I shout, my voice raw.
Malek steps between me and Leora. He kicks my sword away, sending it skittering across the floor.
"Watch," he commands me.
I look up. The soldiers have her. One has twisted her arm behind her back, forcing her to her knees. The other has a fistful of her hair, yanking her head back, exposing the long, pale line of her throat—the throat I kissed only minutes ago.
She meets my eyes. Her face is streaked with tears and dirt, her lip split. But she is not looking at the knife at her throat. She is looking at me.
Despair crashes into me.
I should kill her.
The thought is a jagged shard of ice in my heart. I should summon the last dregs of my strength, snatch a dagger from my boot, and throw it. I should end her life before Malek can touch her. Before he can drag her back to his dungeons and break her piece by piece.
It would be a mercy. It would be an act of love.
My hand drifts to my boot. My fingers brush the hilt of the small knife I keep there.
I look at her. I imagine the light going out of her sapphire eyes. I imagine the silence she brings turning into the eternal silence of the grave.
I can't do it.
I am weak. I am selfish. I would rather see her suffer and live than be the one to extinguish her light.
"Please," I whisper to Malek. It is the first time I have begged in my life. "Take my head. Let her go. She is nothing. She is just a slave."
Malek grins. "She is everything, Imas. She is the reason you are weak. And I am going to make you watch while I carve the weakness out of her."
He turns back to me. He raises the axe high above his head, preparing for the execution stroke.
I try to move. I try to crawl toward my sword. But my limbs are heavy, weighed down by the crushing gravity of my failure.
Malek brings the axe down—not to kill me, but to slam the flat of the blade into my shoulder.
CRACK.
Bone shatters.
