“You saw him.”
“I saw him.”
Viktor’s throat scraped raw.
“And I won’t lose him again.”
He crossed to the brazier. The copper caught his reflection in red. His face, his hair—too long, too much like the life he’d been living, far from the life that had been taken.
“Make me his mirror. If Zeporah can’t tell which twin she faces, I’m close enough to take her throat.”
He took the field-knife from its sheath and wrapped a leather tie around his hair at the nape. The old habit of braiding hesitated in his fingers—then he drew the blade.
Steel whispered.
Hair fell.
He bound a second tie higher, closer.
Cut again.
Shorter now.
Harsher.
The heat from the brazier kissed the back of his neck. He lifted his head to the copper and a different man stared back—angles sharper. A soldier’s crown instead of a prince’s mane.
“I saw him, Azrikel.”
His voice sent shivers over canvas dark.
“I’ll climb their shoulders. Rip through their sight. Shatter what binds him.”
The Midnight—Azrikel—stood with him in the hush.
“Together, brother.”
“Into Oustinon.”
“Come, Tory.”
Azrikel’s shadow made flesh.
“The moon rises.”
Chapter One Hundred Four
Rise of the Ruakite
The Ruakite roared into the storm. Ashakar answered.
The blade had shorn him.
The helm crowned him.
The armor claimed him.
Viktor mounted Vorathen with fire already licking his scars, his hands, his breath.
