Morkai raised his empty palm.
To Teryn’s horror, streams of his blood began to float from his wound to dance through the air between him and the mage.
In a matter of seconds, the duke held a ball of Teryn’s blood in the palm of his hand.
51
Cora was forced to watch the horrible scene unfolding before her. Roije and Salinda’s attack. Roije’s severed arm. Teryn charging Morkai. Salinda wrapping Roije’s wound and helping him limp away. Cora lost sight of them in the haze, but she was close enough to see Teryn and Morkai’s fight. Close enough to watch as his plate was rent open.
She could hardly peel her eyes away, even as she struggled to free herself from beneath the dead horse. At least none of the enemy soldiers had seen her, nor had anyone found her brother. With the plumes of dirt clouding the air and mingling with the bloody chaos of battle, Dimetreus looked like any other dead body.
But he wasn’t.
She could feel his life force even as he lay prone a few feet away.
Her pulse thudded wildly as she watched Morkai step toward Teryn. The prince was frozen, his hand over his heart, his eyes on the ball of blood. She clawed her hands into the dirt, tried to pull her bottom half free. There was a sharp pain in one of her legs. Likely fractured from the horse’s fall. Her shoulder screamed where the stallion had kicked her.
Morkai lifted the ball of blood higher and let it rotate in his hand. Teryn gasped, raking his breastplate with his fingertips as if desperate to reach his heart. She remembered that sharp pain when Morkai had used her own blood against her. But could he kill with it? She knew he could weave death by merging it with a deceased person’s blood, but what could he do with just a single source?
Teryn winced. His sword clattered to the surface of the rock.
Morkai dropped his broadsword.
Cora’s heart slammed against her ribs as she realized what he was going to do.
There were several bodies littered around the rock.
Gaping wounds.
Sources of blood.
Morkai lifted his free hand toward the nearest body. Tendrils of crimson rose like ribbons toward his palm.
Cora renewed her struggle, straining against the horse’s weight.
Stop fighting.
The demand came from within her. Not a voice but a feeling. She ignored it.
Stop struggling.
She only struggled harder.
Slow down.
Feel.
She gritted her teeth against the urgings, raging at them, hating them. How could she be expected to slow down andfeelat a time like this?
A spike of resentment shot through her. Resentment at her own futility, her weakness, her stupid worthless magic?—
Subtle awareness cleared a path through her anger, something soft and yielding. She continued to rage against it, but it was stronger than her resistance.
It was her magic.
She suddenly knew what this was. Another challenge.
Hot angry tears streamed down her cheeks. She didn’t have time for a challenge. She didn’t have time to slow down and turn inward. Not when Morkai was transforming both sources of blood into threads—threads that were now beginning to twine together.
