“You think you can come into my house?” Polan snarled, pressing the attack with the heavy rhythm of a man used to drilling in the yard. “You think you can steal my property?”
Ky used his superior strength to batter through Polan’s guard. Steel clashed against steel, sparks flying in the moonlight. Polan gave ground, his expression twisting from arrogance to frustration. He was competent, a man who knew how to kill to protect his land, but he had never fought a Spur killing machine. Ky beat his guard down, step by step, forcing him toward thestairwell until he slammed his blade into Polan’s guard, locking their hilts together.
They were face to face, breathing hard.
“You ruined her,” Polan whispered, his eyes searching Ky’s face. “She was perfect.”
“She was a prisoner,” Ky gritted out, and shoved Polan back.
Polan stumbled, his balance wavering. But as he recovered, his eyes dropped to Ky’s bad leg, noting the way he favored it as he shifted his stance.
The arrogance returned, sharp and cruel. “Ah,” Polan breathed. “Broken thing.”
He feinted high, a standard soldier’s misdirection. Ky raised his guard to block the head strike.
It was a trap. Polan didn’t strike. He dropped his level and drove his boot directly into the side of Ky’s bad knee.
White-hot agony swallowed him.
The sound was a wet, sickening crunch that vibrated through his hip as the joint gave way. Ky collapsed to the stone floor, his sword clattering from his nerveless fingers. The pain was a blinding wave that wiped out all thought, greying the edges of his vision.
Polan stepped over him and moved toward Gessa.
“No!” The word was a useless, strangled plea. Ky tried to push himself up, but his leg was a mangled ruin beneath him. Reality and memory crashed together—the same agony, the same useless limb, the same feeling of being pinned to the earth while someone he loved was destroyed.
He could hear Gessa’s shouts, and they tangled with the memory of another scream, the one that had echoed in his soul when Dawn had been ripped from him.
Not again.
The thought was a bolt of pure, defiant fire in the agony.I will not lie here and listen to her die.
Night was down, but through the bond, Ky felt the faint, pained flutter of his life. He was alive. Ky had to move. He had to.
Using his arms and his one good leg, he began to drag himself across the stone floor, his world a nightmare of friction and fire.
He reached the edge just in time to see the horror unfold.
On the open-air parapet, under the cold light of the moon, Gessa and Polan were locked in a desperate struggle at the very edge of the low stone wall. Polan had dropped his sword. He wasn’t striking her. He was embracing her. He had his arms wrapped around her in a parody of affection, dragging her toward the drop.
“We go together,” Polan whispered, his voice sounding wet and intimate against the wind. “If you won’t be my queen, you will be my tragedy. We will be beautiful in the fall, Gessa.”
“Let me go!” Gessa screamed, slamming her heel down on his instep.
Polan hissed, his grip loosening for a fraction of a second. Gessa used it. She shoved him. She drove the heels of her hands into his chest with every ounce of strength she possessed.
It worked. Polan tipped backward, his center of gravity shifting over the abyss. His eyes went wide, the fantasy of the tragic end shattering into the reality of the fall.
But as he tipped, his hand shot out. It wasn’t a tactical move; it was pure spite. He clamped his fingers around her wrist like a manacle.
“GESSA!” Ky roared.
Polan went over, and he took her with him.
Her scream was swallowed by the rush of air. Her free hand slapped frantically at the stone, her fingers catching the edge of the parapet. She hung there, her muscles straining, holdingher entire weight and the dead weight of the man dragging her down.
Ky’s adrenaline-fueled crawl became a lunge. He ignored the scream of his own body and threw himself across the last few feet of stone, his hands clamping down on Gessa’s forearm just above Polan’s grip.
“I have you!” he roared, his muscles trembling.
