“I know. Just hold on.” I search his broken body, seeing him flinch as I brush his cracked ribs. Peeling the blood-soaked material away from his torso, I blanch. Even I can tell that the wound on his belly is a fatal one. He’s lost far too much blood already.
Trembling fingers reach up to brush my temple. “I know you don’t believe me, but I think I fell for you from the beginning. The moment you stared me down outside the palace. Those fierce, storm-cloud eyes of yours did me in.” He wheezes a laugh and groans in the same breath. “My fate was sealed from that very first day.”
My eyes sting. “Don’t talk. Save your strength. I’ll get us out of here somehow.”
“It’s too late for me.”
“No—” I shake my head, but he presses his fingers against my mouth, stalling the words tumbling out.
“I’ve been at war a long time, Suraya. I know about wounds.”
No matter how sad I am that he didn’t trust me enough, I don’t want him to die. “Don’t you get it? I won’t let you die.” I lean close, brushing his forehead with mine. “I restarted your heart once before. I can do it again.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about the Dahaka. Or who I was.”
I swallow my residual flicker of hurt. “It doesn’t matter.”
He nods, grimacing. “It does. I trust you with my life. I need you to know that.” A glower gathers on his brow. “How did Javed get you?”
“Jade and some runic web that’s inhibiting my magic somehow. I can still feel it pushing in on me.”
“Can I help?”
“No, I just need you to rest and stay alive.” I prop him against the stone slab and press his hand to his wound. “Keep pressure on it and promise you won’t die on me. I’m going to end this once and for all. And when I’m done, you’re going to have to come up with some really great, inventive, sexy ways to make all this up to me.”
He forces a weak smile. “When did you get so bossy?”
“I was always bossy.” I grin. “You were just too infatuated to notice my obvious character flaws.”
“I meant what I said, you know.”
His soft words sound like goodbye. Despite everything, despite the fact that he broke my heart, I swallow past the lump in my throat, refusing to entertain the possibility that this might be it, and meet his eyes. “Tell me again later when this is over.”
I square my shoulders and stand, feeling renewed purpose coursing through my body. For the first time, I feelalive. Not with magic, but with the force of my humanity.
My gaze finds Morvarid standing over the body of Vogon, a saber in one hand and my dagger clutched in the other, both dripping with his blood.
I bare my teeth. “That’s my fucking dagger.”
She lifts it and licks the blood-covered blade. “Mine, now.”
“Let’s finish this,” I growl, crouching to grab the closest weapons—two mismatched swords. I hook a thumb toward the window at the rapidly lightening sky. “Looks like you don’t have much time.”
Snarling with fury, she meets me in a shower of sparks as her saber collides with one of mine, the impact ricocheting up my arm. I narrowly miss being skewered in the skull by my own dagger, but weave to the side at the last moment. Still, a lock of my hair falls to the ground. She’s a skilled fighter, if the dead Scav general is any indication. Retreating out of her range, I glance down at the ordinary swords. Jadu blades would have been better. My magic, even more so.
But I have neither... only the skills my father taught me.
I dodge a vicious lunge, moving out of the way as she comes at me, mirroring me step for step. I parry a thrust, and my right sword flicks out of my grip, flying overhead. Sands, she’s good. Or maybe I’m just out of practice.
Switching hands with my remaining weapon, I nearly trip over a dead Scav, and she presses the advantage, her saber winging across my thigh. I wince at the bite of the blade as I attempt to scramble beyond the reach of her second strike with the dagger. This time I’m not fast enough. The edge catches my forearm.
Fires of Droon, that fucking hurt!
I almost laugh. My own blade drawing my blood. But I don’t feel any magic from it. As I think that, a slight glow lights up the runes I’d carved... the symbol of the stars for me and the moon for my mother. The star magic won’t hurt me, though the blade is still razor sharp.
“Careful, Starkeeper,” she croons, raising the tip to her lips and running her tongue greedily across the flat of it, this time lapping up my blood. “Don’t want to lose too much of this precious elixir. I need that heart of yours beating.”
I bare my teeth. “If you want my heart,magi,come and get it!”
