Judging by the state of her armor and face, I’ve broken her ribs and her jaw. Probably one of her arms.
I’ve completely immobilized her, yet my rage only worsens.
Why should she breathe when the Vandawolf’s chest no longer rises and falls?
Once again, I’m at the bottom of a pit and there’s no way out of it.
Nothing to hold on to, nothing except the knowledge that I will leave this woman to die on the cold stone beneath her.
I rise to my feet and prowl toward Gliss.
The younger woman shrinks against the cave wall, her violet eyes wide and her face draining of color.
“Please—” she begins.
“What will I make of you?” I ask quietly. “Will you be ash or smoke? Or maybe stone? Something other than alive, because that’s what I can do.” I nod to myself. “I can make you dead.”
Hot, unwanted tears fill my eyes as I force myself not to look at the Vandawolf or listen to the silence where he lies.
“I can kill monsters. But I can’t save them.”
I ram my left hand against the stone beside Gliss’s trembling shoulder.
Her lips part, but the sound she makes is strangled. “Asha Silverspun. Please.Don’t do this.”
My voice is low. “How do you know my name?”
She stumbles over her speech, her gaze flitting from me to the Vandawolf. Then across the other two women. “I… We…”
As she speaks, my hand clenches and unclenches against the stone, my fingernails rasping against it. I’m not blocking her other side and that’s the way she shuffles, sliding across the rock in the direction of the opening.
Maybe she thinks she’ll escape that way and—who knows?—maybe she’ll make it to the mouth of the cave before I end her.
Or maybe she won’t.
Her armor scrapes along the stone, a screeching sound in the quiet.
“I’m sorry.” She gasps.
“For what?”
“I’m sorry they called him a beast.”
My eyebrows arch.That’swhat she’s sorry for?
A dark laugh rests on my lips. “Heisa beast.”
He’s adyingbeast. With no hope of being healed now. The hard reality of my situation has already taken root within my mind.
I won’t find my sister.
She’s long gone, and I don’t know where to find her.
As for the Vandawolf, I’ve kept him alive for longer than should have been possible.
He spoke to me earlier and those will be his last words to me, telling me I should have rid myself of him.
Gliss focuses on my face, her gaze following the tears dripping down my cheeks.
