“This isn’t like the fire-forged dagger.” Iryana smirked, grabbing her collar with her free hand and pulling it to the side to show the new tattoo climbing over her shoulder. “This one is mine.”
She couldn’t look to see everyone else’s reaction, but she could hear their gasps. If she was right, almost no one knew Karvek was double-forged, which meant his people would think she’d done the impossible.
“Scared now?”
He didn’t answer, just tightened his jaw and adjusted his grip on his sword.
She spun the staff, not pausing long enough for Karvek to get an opening. She led their dance now, beating back Karvek’s sword until she saw him grimacing with each hit. Their weapons were a swirl of purple-black and blue.
They were both drenched in sweat, but she was gaining ground. Iryana was so sure she was about to win that when she felt a burst of pain in her shoulder, it took her a moment to register that he’d hit her.
Karvek’s lips peeled back from his teeth in a sneer. “Even with an advantage like that, you are too weak to kill me.”
Pain radiated through her, but a glance told her the blow had mostly cut through leather.
She needed to break his sword quickly or Karvek was going to kill her.
Her movements weren’t as smooth as she knocked his next blow away and smacked Karvek in the arm. He grunted, but kept swinging.
“You are weak, brother!” she heard Pyetar shout. “Weak and pathetic.”
Thank you, Pyetar, she thought. He knew what she was doing.
Karvek grew even more unhinged, his movements choppier. His brown curls had escaped their carefully assigned stations, making him look wild. Iryana led him into a wide cut, slipping her staff under his sword and snapping it up.
With a roar, Iryana brought her staff down on his blade so hard it rattled her bones and Karvek’s sword shattered. Her staff kept going, the end slamming into the ground, and she smiled dangerously at Karvek. She wanted to see the fear on his face, but she was just met with wild determination.
Karvek leaped toward her, and she didn’t pull her shield up fast enough. He caught her around the waist and threw them both to the ground. The staff flew out of her hands. The magic painfully returned to her.
Her back collided roughly with the stone road, and Karvek’s shoulder dug into her stomach, knocking the wind out of her. Gasping for air, Iryana drove her elbow into Karvek’s back and tried to wrap her legs around him. He rolled, slamming her back against the ground again.
She tried to summon her metal-forged sword, but she hadn’t recovered from him shattering it. Desperately, she tried for the staff again, but she couldn’t getthe form to hold in her hand. It had taken too much from her to pull that water-forged magic out of her the first time.
Before she could recover, Karvek’s hands were around her neck, and he squeezed. Panicking, she planted her feet on the ground and tried to wrench his body off of hers, but he had too much leverage.
She was about to die; they were all about to die. That fear choked her more than Karvek’s grasp, making her lash out with her nails, her fists, anything she could.
She formed one of her arrows, tried to jab the point into gaps in his armor.
Despite her blackening vision, her desperation, she couldn’t use her dagger. Not yet.
She gasped in slight reprieve as he let go of her neck to trap her hands between them and knock the arrow away. His weight pressed down on her. She struggled to fight against the hand gripping her wrists, but combined with his body weight, she could do nothing. His free hand returned to her throat.
He didn’t need two hands to strangle her. One would do; it would just be slower.
“This is a mercy,” Karvek seethed. “To let you die before you see how wrong you were. How your family will never truly accept you. How my brother will flee when he sees how broken you are.”
Her vision was blurring, stars dancing across Karvek’s face as he slipped into shadows. The world around them was silent but for the ringing and roaring in her ears.
But as he held her there, spewing hate into her ears, crushing her throat, Iryana focused on pulling her magic.
Chapter Forty-Five
As she lay pinned beneath Karvek, panicking as she struggled to pull in more than the slightest puffs of air, Iryana thought that was it. The end. She wouldn’t have enough time before she suffocated.
She kept pushing on her magic, anyway. At least she’d die trying.
Iryana had wondered if she would actually kill Karvek when the time came, or if she would knock him out and lock him away somewhere. But she’d been preparing herself for this moment. Had known Karvek would want to kill her in such a way, so personal—so intimate, after everything she had done to him. After she had betrayed him.
