It is only a waste.
Kartok doesn’t even blink at his former ally. He comes for me, hands a blur, his curved sword slashing. I was grateful for his inhuman speed during our missions to ferry new recruits to the false Eternal Blue. Now I curse that speed as I struggle to free myself from Temujin’s dead weight. In a breath, Kartok’s blade is poised at the base of my neck, where the moonstone used to sit. Temujin’s warm blood drips from Kartok’s sword, spattering my chest.
“Take me to Them,” Kartok insists.
“I’d rather die,” I spit.
“But would you rather watchhimdie?” Kartok points his knife to the nearest pathway where Ghoa emerges, dragging Serik behind her. A Zemyan blade pressed against his throat.
CHAPTER THIRTY
GHOA
IAM DRENCHED IN THEZEMYAN PRINCE’S BLOOD.
A fact that would have pleased me not so long ago.
I’ve imagined killing him ever since I joined the Kalima. Eager to be the commander to put an end to Empress Danashti’s line. But that was before—when he was a faceless, nameless heir. Not Ivandar, my grudging accomplice. Ivandar, my unlikely ally.
Ivandar, my loyal friend.
He didn’t even put up a fight.
One moment I was standing beside him, ready to face down Kartok and his soldiers. Then my mind flared with frosty whiteness and my body was no longer my own. Kartok could still manipulate the ice in my mind, since our link was forged through Zemyan magic, which the First Gods can’t control.
My captive sword arm swung at Ivandar with lethal skill, slashing closer and closer as his energy flagged. When Serik tried to intervene with fire, I dove at the prince’s knees and brought him to the ground.
“It’s okay, Ghoa,” he panted. His strange blue eyes met mine, and I realized for the first time that they were the exact same shade as a newly formed ice dagger. So familiar and safe. Maybe even beautiful.
“I’m sorry,” I sobbed, helpless as my blade tore through him.
Ivandar folded in half with a groan. “Don’t be. It isn’t your choice.”
Hysterical, heaving laughter spilled from my lips as swiftly as his blood. He was right, and I couldn’t decide what was worse: the fact that I wanted to save him, or the fact that I couldn’t.
And now that same bloody knife is jammed against Serik’s throat.
After killing Ivandar, Kartok forced me to turn on my cousin next. But instead of killing him, my hands bound Serik’s palms together, to protect myself from the worst of his heat. My feet marched him into the hedge maze, never making a wrong turn. Leading him toward the sorcerer as obediently as a horse on a lead.
“What are you waiting for?” Serik growls. His throat knocks against the blade as he thrashes, wetting my fingers with even more blood. “We both know you’ve always wanted to kill me, so do it. You even have the perfect justification to murder me in cold blood: Kartok is controlling you.”
“In cold blood?” I spit back at him.Hehas always been the instigator of our feuds, blaming me for every problem in his life when it’s hardly my fault his father was a weapons dealer sentenced to Gazar. Nor is it my fault his mother fell to pieces in the aftermath. Or that Serik didn’t develop a Kalima power sooner. Or that my parents are caring and influential enough to keep him away from the war front.
Most people in his position would have recognized their good fortune and been overflowing with thanks.
But not Serik.
He has always been ungrateful, unreasonable.
Or have you been uncaring, unseeing?a quiet voice pushes back. A voice I want to blame on Kartok’s hold, but these memories are from long before the sorcerer’s influence. Only now they’re colored with new understanding. Lit from a different angle.
You turned your back on Serik when his power didn’t present. Not on purpose, not at first. You were off on missions. Training. Marching from battle to battle. But that’s not how Serik saw it. You left him, forgot him. Just like the rest of the world. Confirming his greatest fear: if you are powerless, you are nothing.
“Didn’t you hear me?” he growls, leaning into the blade.
I release a long, weary sigh, finally willing to accept my part. Finally ready to let this bitter animosity die. We will never defeat the Zemyans if we’re always wounding each other.
“I don’t want to kill you, Serik,” I say softly.
