“No,” he says. “She betrayed me. She kept her knowledge of Asha’s power from me and then she fled before I could force her to make Asha a hammer. My sister is a traitor.”
“Betrayal.” I nod. “It is a terrible thing.”
While I speak, Malak swaps his hammer to his right hand and transfers his medallion to his left palm. The pulse of power within his palm was bright when he was holding his hammer but now, with a medallion stretched across his palm, the energy becomes a constant stream.
“No more pretense,” he says.
I shake my head at how many times I saw him use his power and assumed he was using his right hand. The way he would brush his left hand across a thing while keeping the focus on his right. Or the way he would use both hands to mask the action of his left.
No wonder he chose to forge alone in his orchard, where he couldn’t be seen.
“You could give Asha your hammer,” I say.
I’ve never seen a hint of guilt in his expression before, but there it is. Just for a second.
“Asha was branded weak and abnormal,” he says. “For me to let her use my hammer would be to admit my own abnormality.”
“Of course,” I say. “Normal Blacksmiths are right-handed. Your power would be questioned.”
“No matter what I can achieve and create, my people hate what they can’t understand.”
Again, I shake my head at him. “So you left her to a life of pain.”
“Pain is all we are given,” he snarls. “Anything more must be taken. She has proven she will not take what she deserves.”
She is ours.
She must live.
As Skirra’s impulses wash through me, I exhale quietly into the air that reeks of blood.
“If she will not take power for herself,” I say, “I will take it for her.”
With that, I leap toward Malak, strength exploding through my legs, carrying me farther and faster than I could have ever jumped before.
He swings his hammer at me, a forceful hit with his non-powered hand, while energy flows visibly through the medallion on his left palm.
But a wolf’s strength and speed are now mine to use.
I grab his right wrist, deflect the hammer’s blow, and punch my free hand toward his chest to propel him away from me before he can touch his medallion to my skin.
As he skids backward, his medallion transforms into a black shield, but I’m just as fast, following him as quickly as he tries to retreat, punching through the metal.
It caves and tears, and Malak’s wide eyes come into view behind it.
He gasps. “I made you too strong.”
It seems he did.
With a cry, he throws himself farther backward, retracting his metal while both of his arms swing forward. His sleeves pull upward and that’s when I glimpse all the medallions lining his arms. Ten of them. Maybe more.
He snatches up a new one and throws it at the ground, a thin thread forming to maintain the connection between the band and his powered hand.
The medallion expands across the courtyard, metal spikes forming in an instant, their sharp tips shooting up around me so quickly that I’m forced to jump back to avoid them.
Another three bands streak from his hand, this time in the form of spears. I dodge the first two and catch the third, crouching in the clear space I jumped into before I throw it right back at him.
He pitches himself to his left, narrowly evading the spear, which thumps into the courtyard wall andtwangsin the air.
