Wait… what?!
“No!” My shout echoes across the clearing as all my numbness disappears. Rage, pure and hot, flows through me.
Kalith wears a cruel smile as he approaches, his copper metal streaming down his arm toward the ring he wears around his thumb, pooling in his palm before it shapes into a dagger.
He won’t even have to remove the black metal caging my brother’s body.
He’ll only have to stab Thoren between the chains.
“Stop!” I roar, shouting at Malak’s back. “What do you think I’ll do if you keep me alive? Do you think you can control me?”
I thrash at the chains holding me down, not caring that the thread through my body pulls and tears.
I’m ready to call on my deep light. I’m ready to die.
“Do you think I won’t slit your throat while you sleep?” I snap.
Malak whirls back to me, his voice harsh. “You wouldn’t get close enough.”
My own shout drowns out his. “How will you control me without my brother?”
Kalith has paused, his location now at the edge of my vision, making it difficult for me to see him, but there’s no blood on the blade he’s holding. Thoren hasn’t cried out. My brother is horribly quiet.
“You’d better kill me, Malak,” I snarl, hardly recognizing my own voice or the rage within me. “You’d better end me while you can because if you hurt my brother and leave me alive, I will hunt you.” My voice lowers. “And I will end you.”
Malak holds up his hand to Kalith. “Wait.”
He returns to me, stooping and reaching out toward the chain across my shoulder. It’s only then that I realize it’s looser across my body and the side of it is covered in dirt, as if I succeeded in dislodging it.
Malak brushes a few crumbs of dirt away from the chain, his eyes narrowed and his lips pursed, but he doesn’t immediately speak.
I lower my voice. “Keep my brother alive and I won’t kill you. As long as he’s safe, so will you be.”
He considers me for another moment. Then, “Very well. We have an agreement. Your brother will live.” He knocks the dirt from this hand. “You will do whatever I ask if you wish him to stay alive.”
My heart is darkening and my soul is sinking at the deal I just made.
But there isn’t anything I won’t do to save my brother now.
“What is your name, Boy?” Malak asks.
It’s a small rebellion, but I take it. “You will never know it.”
He studies me again as if he’s picking apart the pieces of my mind. “You fight like a wolf. You even snarl like one. And it’s clear that the beasts of this forest walk beside you.”
He gestures to Kori and Skirra before one corner of his mouth tugs up, the hint of a smile. “You areof the wolves, Boy.”
Then he mutters to himself for a moment. “Vanda…Of the…”
His lips stretch into a full smile as he rises to his feet and towers over me. “I will call you ‘Vandawolf’.”
Chapter 20
“Do not make any sudden movements,” Malak warns as he bends to me again.
With a brush of his right hand, he transforms the metal that’s caging me. The prongs rip up out of the earth and snow on either side of me, dragging dirt with them, confirming how deeply they were embedded—as deep as tree roots.
I take his warning seriously, not least because the metal may be retracting from the soil, but the claws sitting directly across my chest remain and so does the thread that speared through my shoulder.
