“Drop your arrow and call off your unicorn friend?—”
“No.”
“—or Teryn dies.”
Teryn bit back a cry as Morkai drew more blood from his wound. He sank back to his knees, his face white. He was losing blood far faster than Morkai. He’d die, even without a blood weaving.
“All right.” The words left her mouth in a rush. She let the arrow fall to her feet. “All right. I’ll call off Valorre. Drop Teryn’s blood.”
“Call off the unicorn first.”
She released a slow breath and sought her connection to Valorre. She sensed him on the hillside, his energy frantic, fatigued.Run out of range.
He rippled with defiance.The abomination will come back to the field.
It’s all right, she said, trying to convey her certainty. Her sense of calm amongst a storm of fear.Just do it.
She felt the unicorn’s grudging acceptance.
“It is done. The Roizan will return.”
Morkai turned his palm down. She noted that the blood didn’t fall. It only disappeared. That meant he still had it, the same way he still held her tiny drop somewhere. He took a step toward her, his face distorted with rage. “Stop fighting against me, Aveline. I have already won. Lela will be mine by the end of this battle. There will be no war. No surrender. It ends here. This is your last chance to choose me.”
She hobbled a step back, her injured leg screaming in protest. Catching her balance, she lifted her chin and tried to exude far more confidence than she felt. “You already know my decision. I will never choose you. And you haven’t already won. You’ve lost. You may have killed King Arlous and may think you can kill Teryn too, but King Verdian has fled to safety.” She didn’t know if that last part was true, only that she hadn’t seen the King of Selay on the battlefield yet. No one could see far in this haze. Her chest squeezed as she pondered her next lie, uncertain if there was a chance it could be true by now. The thought tinged her voice with sorrow, giving weight to her possible deception. “My brother is dead. You have no one to inherit Khero from.”
His lips tightened into a line.
“You made a mistake in keeping him on the battlefield,” she said.
Morkai spoke through his teeth. “He wasn’t supposed to be on the battlefield. I ordered him back to camp.”
Cora frowned. If her brother had been ordered to safety…why had he been out there? Had he purposefully sought her out? If so, why? Based on the anger he’d shown during their initial confrontation, it could have been for revenge.
She remembered how his eyes had briefly cleared of their sheen. It hadn’t lasted long, but for a moment she’d felt like she’d connected to a piece of his true self.
Perhaps it had been hope that had driven him after her.
Over Morkai’s shoulder, Cora saw the lumbering shape of the Roizan breaking through the dusty haze. It set the rock rumbling as it clambered toward its master.
The duke shook his head with a dark laugh. “You’re wrong about one thing, Aveline,” he said as he removed another one of her daggers. “I do have someone left to inherit Khero from. You.”
The Roizan ambled closer and closer, panting with fatigue, lips coated in froth. Morkai pressed his hand over the freshest wound and reached for the final embedded dagger. The one she’d plunged into his lower back when she’d first found herself transported onto the rock. His face contorted as he reached behind him and wrenched the blade free.
Cora stepped back, stifling a cry as her injured leg made contact with the rock. She angled herself slightly toward Teryn. He’d managed to remove his breastplate and now pressed his palm over his wound.
With the final dagger free, Morkai locked his eyes with hers. “If your brother is truly dead, then I need you more than ever to claim the throne.”
The Roizan reached the edge of the rock.
“But I don’t need you alive. All I need is your body.” A wild grin stretched over his lips, his pale eyes flashing with menace. He held his hand—the one still clutching her dagger—toward the Roizan. He hadn’t looked at the weapon after he’d removed it. His attention had been too fixated on Cora. Too engrossed in his own wicked plans to question whether Cora had any of her own. Didn’t think to wonder why Cora had stopped fighting him. Why she didn’t flinch or cower as the Roizan leapt upon the rock.
Morkai’s expression shuttered with relief, his free hand still pressed to one of his wounds. A wound that was surely knitting back together at that very moment.
It didn’t matter.
The Roizan’s eyes narrowed on the blade in its master’s hand, a blade forged from a white horn. It opened its salivating maw over Morkai’s arm and snapped its teeth shut. With a cry, Morkai faced his creature, eyes wide with surprise. The Roizan didn’t seem to see Morkai at all, not even as the duke swung out with his free hand, shoving at the beast’s snout, desperate to free himself.
Cora edged the rest of the way toward Teryn and linked her arm through his. Together they scrambled off the rock, tumbling to the root-strewn grass. She looked back at the rock just as the Roizan opened its mouth again, this time snapping its teeth over Morkai's head. Then his body. Blood poured between the Roizan’s teeth as he continued to crunch through flesh and bone. The monster devoured his master, his maker, until there was nothing left that could be called a being at all.
