Father doesn’t give Kalith another moment to prepare himself.
He leaps forward, a pure predator, matching Kalith’s speed and strength now.
Within seconds, he’s deflected Kalith’s sword attacks and whirled through the snow to snatch his own sword out of the ground. The other Blacksmith, who was crouching beside Father’s weapon, doesn’t jump out of reach fast enough before Father’s hand wraps around his throat.
There’s an efficientcrackbefore Father drops that man to the snow and plows back to Kalith.
Kalith backs away into the clearing, stepping closer to Thoren and me, as if he’ll use the threat to our lives against our father.
Father leaps into the fight again, and I can hardly follow the strikes and parries and deflections as he beats Kalith around the clearing, sapphire light clashing with copper metal.
Kalith’s metal gleams and flows, moving so fast and transforming from shape to shape so quickly that the heat from the copper radiates out from him and the snow at his feet beginsto melt. The ground turns to sludge, water splashing up around them.
As they fight, I try to sense where the final Blacksmith might be—the one who used his black metal on me and Thoren. He knocked us to the ground, but he seems to have chosen to stay out of the fightandout of sight.
I can’t tell if Father is conscious of him, too. Every time he glances in our direction, his focus is on me and Thoren, but every now and then, his gaze rests higher than us, as if the threat is behind us, quietly waiting.
I hold my breath when Kalith’s weapon transforms from a dagger into a whip with a blade’s edge and, when it whirls at my father, it slices through the tree trunk behind him without even slowing down.
The whooshing sound it makes turns my blood cold. The tree groans and splits a little but doesn’t topple.
But Father uses Kalith’s outstretched arm against him, cutting down toward it, forcing Kalith to retract his metal to protect his arm before Father slices it off.
The moment costs Kalith.
Father beats him back across the clearing, closer and closer to us, ramming his sword against Kalith’s metal armor, dinting it over and over across his chest and neck and arms, and the only thing Kalith seems able to do is to protect his head.
When Father aims a blow at Kalith’s face, Kalith’s metal swarms up across his cheek, stopping the blade that would have sliced his head in half.
Theclangas Father’s blade meets Kalith’s metal is immense and the force knocks Kalith down.
The Blacksmith hits the ground, his eyes closed, appearing unconscious.
Just as Father would ram his blade down through Kalith’s now-vulnerable neck, a black spear flies out of nowhere toward Father’s back.
He spins to the threat, plucks the spear from the air right before it would hit his spine, and rams it down into the sludgy snow.
The sapphire light around him is unwavering, still burning bright while footfalls sound from behind me and the man from the shadows finally strides into view.
His black cloak swishes as he moves, and I catch sight of a black hammer resting at his waist, the same color as the metal that’s wrapped around us.
Black hair falls below his shoulders and obscures his face, except for a flash of pale skin and inky-blue eyes that send a chill through me.
A single, black band of metal is wrapped around his right hand. Several black rings circle the fingers on his left hand, along with a metal covering over his forefinger that’s sharp at the end and shaped like a talon.
Father doesn’t miss a step as he strides to meet the dark-haired man, his sword ready. “Malak Ironmeld.”
But of course. It’s the leader himself. It would explain why the other Blacksmiths seemed so conscious of this man earlier.
Malak doesn’t reply and, confusingly, doesn’t form a weapon with his metal, silently prowling forward to meet my father, whose sword is raised.
It happens so fast that I nearly don’t follow it.
Father’s sword strikes down.
Malak’s left hand flies up.
With two fingers, he stops my father’s blade from descending and at the same time, his right palm connects with my father’s chest.
