This strike hit an already burning truck, dusting part of it to ash and sending the remaining pieces exploding outward, although Bleddyn barely seemed to notice.But my counterpart did, and something about it caught her interest.That gave me a small amount of relief, because she stopped trying to force me to jump him every minute.
Only that left the question of what she was doing instead, and why wasn’t I reassured?
“My father never believed in me,” Bleddyn was saying, as if nothing had happened.“That ‘big oaf’, he called me.Dumb, slow-moving, useless in and out of the challenge circle.That’s why he insisted on fighting Sebastian himself, even when he knew Cyrus was standing in for his brother.He didn’t think I could win, and maybe I couldn’t have.
“But neither could he.
“And after it was all over, everybody started rallying around Farkas, as if I didn’t exist.Not that he challenged me for the top spot—oh, no, he was smarter than that.I might not have been able to beat Cyrus, but I could tear his scrawny ass apart!”
“That’s a bet,” I agreed, as he batted aside the half dozen weapons I’d enchanted on the fly and sent blasting at his head.
“But everyone started acting like he had and that he’d won,” he complained, crushing a levitating gun into a ball of metal and throwing it away.“They turned to him to decide things, to lead the clan in all but name, to determine revenge—
“Which was nothing!Farkas was going to knuckle under and crawl, at least until the war was over.Was going tosubmit.”
“But not you,” I said, as a bunch of Weres stampeded in between us, chasing some fleeing mages, and then a tent came flying at me hot on their heels.Bleddyn had used them as cover, so it was on me almost before I saw it in the darkness.
It tried to wrap me up and blind me long enough for him to end this, and was incinerated for its trouble.But the effort left me gasping and wondering how long I could keep this up.He was draining me.
“Hell, no!”he said, “He was myfather!I might have hated the bastard, but this wasn’t about love; it was about pride,clanpride.To forgo revenge would have marked us as second, as followers, as lesser, and I wasn’t the only one who thought so.
“But the wolves who came to talk to me didn’t know shit.I could challenge, but I couldn’t take Cyrus or Sebastian, and if I appointed someone else as my champion, could they do better?After what people had seen Cyrus become, couldanyone?
“And if they lost, there was a good chance those same people would turn on me, name me a coward and troublemaker, and let me take the blame.And I knew better than to think Farkas would bring his faction to my rescue when I saw the way he looked at me.
“He could hardly keep from sneering when I was clan leader!Me!Not him!”
A lone mage ran by, not attacking, but looking panicked, as if fleeing another fight.He was probably trying to reach the hole in the outer ward caused by the God Killer, which was still flapping open, letting in glimpses of bright sunlight.But he never made it.
Almost casually, Bleddyn reached out, and the next second, the man’s chest was torn open, and he was missing something.Something that the leader of Rand stuffed down the way a kid would eat a candy bar.The mage fell over, Bleddyn wiped his bloody mouth, and sent a couple dozen pieces of heavy-duty trash at me, all at once.
Almost like the heart he’d just consumed had strengthened him.
Almost exactly like.
Andshit.
I fought off the latest attack, but my magic was getting low, and my stamina lower.But he could replenish his whenever he chose, so my odds were only going to get worse.I had to come up with something fast, and that gap in the shield was looking better all the time.
I had allies out there.I didn’t know exactly who, but I knew of one, at least.And if Sophie’s leopard could distract Bleddyn for even a second, maybe I could make something happen.
Slowly, I started circling that way, conserving energy and not attacking, because it was the only shot I had.
“But Farkas thought otherwise,” he continued.“And so did those bastards who came to me at night, wanting me to name them champion, to give them a chance to gain standing—so they could use it to overthrow and replace me!
“I wasn’t that stupid.I knew what I needed: what Grayshadow sought, and you had.If I had magic on my side, I could take Cyrus.I could take anyone!And I had magical ancestry, too, or so the family stories said.Maybe I could find it.
“Only it found me.”
“That night at the council,” I said, to keep him talking, because he threw less shit at me that way.
“Yeah, and soon my third started talking to me, telling me that we had been great once, long ago.That Rand had ruled every Were for a thousand miles.That many of us had magic then, before the gods took it away, strong magic, blood magic, and he’d used it to make us masters of all.
“But then a rival showed up, a Were who wouldn’t pay the price for our protection, and openly challenged.And he had magic, too, but not enough to stand up to a group of us.We found him out alone one night and shredded the bastard before the elders could arrive for the fight.
“It should have served as a warning to anyone else who would defy us, should have ended it.But he had a mate...
“And you know all about that, don’t you?”
