He cawed back, limping after me on his injured leg. He fought with beak and talons, rending flesh as I struck out with my bow, taking out knees and slicing along ribs with the sharpened edge, even as my energy fled me bit by bit.
When at last we broke through the flood, my heart stopped.
Ericen fought Razel one-handed, his other arm hanging limp at his side, coated in blood. He favored his right leg, barely able to put weight on it, and a wound on his forehead leaked blood into his eyes.
The queen dove inside his guard, catching him in the jaw with an elbow. He fell back against the castle, his sword dragging along the earth.
Razel drove her moonblade down.
My arrow struck the blade from her hand. She whirled, but I already had another arrow nocked and loosed. It skinned her wrist, and she released her other blade with a snarl. Behind her, Ericen collapsed against the wall, sliding to the ground.
A dangerous fire burned in Razel’s eyes. “I wondered when you’d find me, Thia dear.”
I leveled an arrow at her. Never had I been so aware of the tension in the string, of the power coiled inside. Here, among the flames and the dying, the acrid scent of smoke breaking loose memories I’d locked deep, deep inside, my hands quivered. Not from exhaustion, and not from fear, but from the desire to simply let go. To let my arrow find her heart.
It was no less than she deserved.
Razel must have seen the battle playing out on my face, because she grinned like a salivating wolf. She stood tall, imperious in her gilded armor, and stepped toward me.
I stepped back, lifting my arrow. “It’s over,” I rasped. “The Sellas are dead. You have no weapons. Surrender.”
Razel laughed. “You’re too weak to kill me.” She stepped forward, and then again.
I held my ground, my hands trembling.
She deserves to suffer, as we have suffered.Elko’s words were a thunderstorm in my head.She deserves to die.
My mother. The crows. My people. Jindae. The Ambriels.
She’d killed so many.
So why couldn’t I kill her?
How many had died at my hand already, at the whim of Res’s power? What made this any different?
Why am I so weak?I’d spent countless hours lying in bed, asking myself that question. It had taken facing Razel, facing my past as well as my future, for me to understand I wasn’t weak at all. I never had been.
I caught Ericen’s gaze behind her. He nodded.
Survival took strength, and I had survived. Moving forward took strength, and I had forged a new path.
Forgiveness took strength, and I would not let Razel take that from me.
I would not become her.
“You’re right.” I lowered my bow.
Razel’s smile sharpened.
“But I won’t let you go either.”
I shot her in the foot. She snarled, the sound more fury than pain. Without batting an eye, she ripped the arrow from her foot and clung to it like a knife. Then she lunged, slashing.
I deflected the arrow with my bow. A piercing cry followed as Res struck, biting through the shaft and sending the arrowhead tumbling into the earth. He curled his body before me like a shield as Razel leapt back into a crouch, remnant lightning sparking through the crow’s feathers.
Razel rose with Ericen’s discarded sword in her hand.
I clutched my bow, fingers swiping for an arrow—and found none. My heart stuttered. Then Razel was upon me, a tempest of fury and steel.
