My body reacts instinctively, pulling away as the dagger cuts through the air in front of my neck. I don’t move fast enough, and the razor-sharp blade nicks the skin of my throat. Immediately, a soft hiss of air comes through the wound as I gasp.
The Lizard I’d taken after falling is still making me fragile. That should have been a scratch, but now it’s so much worse.
My hand goes to the wound as I stumble backward. Jorren stares at me with a mixture of shock and determination on his face. Iassess the wound while he stands still. “You should still be Lost. I didn’t release you.”
The dagger cut through my windpipe, but barely. I won’t bleed out. If I can survive long enough, the Lizard I already took will heal this too. It’s a small cut.
I back away from him, my hand still covering my throat. He knows nothing about my powers. Not about my ability to heal, and not about my Marks. I could kill him right now, and I probably should, but the look of confusion on his face stops me.
“You’ve always been strange, Fiona. Nothing about you has ever made sense. Why’d you have to join these trials? Why didn’t you leave after Darian died? You don’t have your protector anymore. You were sure to lose this race. If you were anyone else, I’d have already killed you. You’d be dead on the ground. But you refuse to even stay Lost.”
He looks as if he’s going to move toward me for a moment, but then he stops, his eyes on his dagger as it glints with crimson in the moonlight. “I didn’t want to come here. Did you know that? I’m not a warrior who’s faced death time and time again. I’ve spent my very long life learning to wield the power of Kaelith as best as I can. I’ve sought power and knowledge rather than murder my friends. I’ve defended myself, but I’ve never gone in search of violence. Not until now. Not until Kaelith demanded it of me.”
He looks up at me. “Kaelith told me in a dream that he needed me to join Nyxthos’s trials. He said I needed to do my best to win. I endured the Shadow Road for him. I saw my parents age and die again. I held them as the life went out of their eyes. I watchedas my brother’s children were taken from him by the Undying. I wasn’t supposed to be a warrior, Fiona. I was supposed to be a scholar. I was at the University of Carradan when Kaelith claimed my kingdom as his, when my king became my champion.”
He shakes his head. “Now I’m standing in front of someone I called friend, another one of the Lost, and I have to kill you. I have to, or I’ll die, never to Return. I don’t want to become Nyxthos’s champion. I just don’t want to die. Don’t you understand that?”
He steps toward me, his grip on the dagger tightening, and I prepare myself. I don’t want to kill Jorren any more than he wants to kill me, but I can’t lose. Not now. The bubbling in my neck stops as the wound scabs over, the first step in healing. It’s too late to say anything, though, as Jorren makes up his mind.
He charges me, but as he said, Jorren is no warrior. He doesn’t have the speed of Elara or the nimbleness of Isola or the strength of Rurik. His powers are useless. He is no different from any other human. He seems slow. Frail.
I sidestep his stab and grab his hand. Using his momentum against him, I twist his arm, turning it toward his chest, and with as much kindness as I have, I slide the blade between his ribs and into his heart.
He stops suddenly. “You’re still my friend,” I whisper. “You always will be.”
A tear rolls down his cheek, but he doesn’t say anything, and I lay him down on the grass. I run my hand over his hair as I grit my teeth. Kaelith sent him here to push me, to aid me. He’d knownDarian would want someone smart, and gods damn it, Jorren is one of the cleverest people here.
“Don’t fight,” I whisper as I run my hand through his black hair. “Let go and be at peace.” I look into his eyes and can’t keep the tears from falling as he lets out a final breath. The light leaves his eyes. I run my hand through his hair one more time. “Rest now, Jorren. Thank you for being my friend. The world is a dark place, and you were kind when you didn’t have to be. I won’t forget you.”
I linger for just a moment before standing up. He deserves to have someone hold him, even in this terrible place. He never belonged here. I stand up and leave the only Godforged I’ve met who hated violence behind. I don’t look back down at Jorren, but I don’t wipe the tears from my cheek either. He’s gone, but he’ll never be forgotten.
The blue mist is gone, and I run again, chasing the scent of fear. Through a forest of duskthorns, oaks, and willows, I hear the unmistakable sounds of skryths and veilrunners. I also hear the hoot of owls and the shuffling of leaves that could be rabbits or foxes.
They’re sounds of life. As a friend lies dead in the forest in my wake, the living await me. The ones who need to be protected as well as the last person who needs to be defeated. I know Isola wasn’t fooled by any of Nyxthos’s tricks. She’s far too clever for that.
So, as I run toward the ruin of a temple, I’m not surprised to see her burst from the forest not far from me. She’s not as fast as I am,but she has a lead. She might beat me there, but when she turns around, I know this won’t end in a race.
The air around her turns red. The grass at her feet turns gray and then to ash. It’s so similar to the vision Kaelith had shown me. “Turn around and run the other way,” she says. “That way I won’t have to kill you.”
“I’ll die if I lose, so I don’t see why I’d just give up. You know I can’t do that.”
I pull the bow from my shoulder and draw a flame arrow. I cried when I killed Jorren, but I won’t cry when I kill Isola. He shouldn’t have been here, but Isola was meant for this. Without a moment of hesitation, I fire the arrow, and it flies true.
But that red-hued air expands just slightly, and as the arrow crosses that terrible boundary, it turns to ash. It’s just like Azric said. My bow, flame, and lightning will all fail against that sphere of death that surrounds her.
Instead, I run, hoping she’ll have a hard time shifting into action rather than defense. As I get closer, still a very safe distance from that red air, she points at me, and pain sears through my leg. I fall. Hard. I catch myself, but my bow goes flying. My leg doesn’t hurt anymore, but it’s numb. From my hip to my toes, I can’t feel anything.
I look at her with shock in my eyes. Azric had said she could use the touch of death at range, but I hadn’t understood how far. She smiles at me. “Priests aren’t the only ones with secrets, Fiona. You should have recognized that.” She’s panting with exertion, and I wonder if she could manage that again.
But I can’t run anymore. The red air around her has faded, but I remember what Azric said about how she’d probably feign exhaustion. “Yes, I realized you were a Priest. I don’t know why you thought you could hide it from all of us. Darian knew as well, didn’t he?”
“He did,” I respond, and I activate the Mark of the Spear that runs across my collarbone as I raise my hand. A single charge of lightning. The lightning erupts from my fingertips toward Isola in a spiderweb of light, but I see the red appear around her as soon as I raise my hand.
Every strike of the lightning misses her, arcing around her to hit trees and grass. “You still haven’t learned how the Undying’s powers work, have you? I was there when Rhaskar Thorne held Sylvantia against us. I was there when he stood against the might of Lysara and won. It was only because we gave up. You know that, don’t you? We found out that because of an oddity in the way Returning works, if a Priest kills one of us, we don’t come back. We decided we’d just pick you off when we needed to regain our strength. That way, we wouldn’t have to worry about anyone losing any troops.”
She raises her hand, and this time, I see the line of red leave her fingertip. It moves through the air as fast as lightning, but as straight as an arrow flies. It strikes my right hand, and I scream in pain before it goes just as numb as my leg.
“Why did you think you could hide that from us? We deserved to know.”
