The assassin froze, arrested in mid-step. The herald had skewered him right through his armor.
Blood drenched Cai’s armor, leaking from under his breastplate.
The Sun Margrave stopped, looking straight ahead, as if the whole thing weren’t worthy of his attention.
The herald took a step forward and thrust, putting all of his strength into it. The spear emerged from Cai’s back. The assassin dropped his blade and fell to his knees.
The herald freed the spear with a sharp tug. Blood dripped from the black standard.
Cai fell forward, face down.
The herald raised his spear, bloody standard dripping in the wind, and started forward as if nothing had happened.
I exhaled.
Rumian was truly the fastest swordsman in Rellas. If there was any doubt, this cinched it.
The platforms were deadly silent. Rellas held its collective breath, unsure what it had just witnessed.
Slowly it sank in.
Cai was dead. The Sun Margrave was alive. Matheo was alive. My brother hadn’t died.
It was over. Finally, it was all over.
An eerie roar rolled through the sky, a bloodcurdling sound of something huge and enraged.
Tzeri screamed. It was a screech of sheer panic. The small beast shoved herself at Lute, trying to crawl into his jacket.
A shadow blotted out the sun, a dark shape, growing larger, its roar getting louder until it was deafening. It plummeted down and landed in front of the Sun Margrave, between him and the perron.
A dursan.
It was huge, larger than any elephant, larger than the statue, so big my brain refused to deal with it. Nothing that big should have been able to fly. Nothing that big should have had those enormous wings studded with spikes.
The dursan roared.
I had heard a version of this roar before. That sounded like the baby beast in the Harzi kennels, the one who was crying for its mother.
The hair on the back of my neck rose. The fractured facts snapped together into a crystal-clear picture.
The boy in the cellar who fell and broke both legs.
Silveren broke his legs somehow during his service and they bother him when it rains.
The crying baby dursan in the Harzi stables.
They have something that doesn’t belong to them. I came to retrieve it.
The magic voice, the one that wrapped around you like a caress.
Ralinbor of the Wilds inherited the power of Exultant Call from his father and the affinity for the dursans from his mother.
“Ah, but I wouldn’t be the counselor.”
“Who would you be?”
“The king, of course.”
