A shadow passes at my back and Malak’s furious face comes into view.
“It was not my plan to do this so soon!” he snaps. “Your brother was not supposed to die today.”
He steps to my left and I follow his movements, finally seeing what lies beside me.
A cry rises into my throat.
Skirra rests on the table to my left, his body chained to the surface, but he isn’t moving.
My heart slowly cracks. “Skirra?”
Malak raises his left hand for me to see that in it he holds a small object, rounded at the edges and no bigger than his thumb.
It’s made of finely interconnected parts, but I recognize some of them—a wolf’s snout and teeth. I watched him carve them while I gave my daily reports.
Now it seems he has brought them together into a design of two wolf heads on their sides with their teeth interlinked between them.
Malak leans toward me as his voice whispers over me. “Skirra’s soul is already mine.”
Tears burn down my cheeks as I try to stretch beyond my chains and reach Skirra with the tips of my fingers. “Have you not taken enough from me?”
Malak is quiet for a moment before he replies. “Nothing will ever be enough.”
He climbs up onto the table and kneels beside me, gripping his hammer in his left hand before he turns the small device onto its side, its sharp edge pressed against my skin above the location of my heart.
A shudder runs through me as I sense the power in his creation, the cold darkness that feels vast and empty and hungry.
He positions his hammer above it, ready to strike. “You may not survive this. But if you do, you will be my greatest creation. You will stand at my right hand while Asha stands at my left and nobody will dare betray me again.”
Without another word, he drives the hammer down.
The device strikes into my chest, its edge cutting through my flesh and bone, and all I know is pain.
I thrash against the restraints that pin me in place, desperately needing to fight back, to live, but my hope is crushed.
I’m roaring with agony, a sound that echoes around me as if it’s made by someone else, while much farther into the distance, the faint sound of hammering floats through the air. The students are still forging their medallions out in the northern field.
A cold breeze brings the scent of rain, but my throat is filled with the taste of copper, my own blood filling my mouth.
I have only one path left.
In that moment, I make the same decision my father made.
Death is inevitable.
There is no other way.
My deep light bursts around me, striking up across Malak’s face and body, turning the air around me sapphire blue.
I will burn out my light and take Malak with me.
But even as I thrash and struggle, even with this new strength beyond any I’ve had before, I can’t break through the chains that hold me down.
The darkness in Malak’s power drags at my light, seeming to feed off it, only growing stronger as he cuts open my chest and hammers his metal into my heart.
Deep within my mind, I’m running through the snow beneath a sapphire sky.
I’m chasing a leopard I won’t catch, not this time.
