Trick, admitting how much his childhood trauma still affects him.
My friend is gone.
My friend isdead.
I stare into a future without Trick in it, a future where this evil druid murders all of my friends, just like he killed thousands before.
And every fiber of my being vibrates with one overwhelming desire: Darnen has to die.
The Zhagarn have to die.
I reach up to the amulet, the action hidden by my position still bent over my dead friend. I make a single tiny adjustment, and the locket falls into my palm, leaving the amulet bare.
Then I clamp my mouth shut against the screams and the fury clawing their way up my throat, and I stand.
“I guess you win,” I tell Darnen, who’s smirking at my pain. My voice is flat and hollow. “I’ll get the key for you. Don’t hurt anybody else.”
I don’t know if it’s my words or the look on my face, but he hesitates before he nods and gestures toward the plinth. His Zhagarn watch me uneasily, then rush to press their bodies against the two walls, as far from the key as they can get without leaving the room.
“I’m sorry, Artemisen, if this is blasphemy,” I whisper, turning my tear-streaked face to one open wall, where the pale gold of early morning glimmers along the tops of the Panterran Mountains.
“Hurry it up, girl,” Darnen snarls, impatiently crossing the room until he’s standing barely a breath away.
Ismile at him, a huge and deliberately vapid smile, and press a hand against my chest. “A hug for good luck?”
Before he can react, I throw one arm around him and pull him close. Then I rise on my toes and, with fingers still wet with Trick’s blood, shove the naked amulet against the bare flesh of his neck.
And I laugh when he bursts into flames.
Thebravest people I’ve ever met aren’t those who don’t fear. They’re those who fear and yet move toward the challenge—fear and yet protect the innocent. Find a way to pretend your courage is greater than your fear, and soon it will rise to meet the danger and become so.
—Captain Wynona Wavedancer to her first mate on theSpindriftinCaptain Wynona Wavedancer and the Battle of the Krakens
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Ihold tight, but I don’t burn. Flames surround me, flickering over my face and body, enveloping me.
But I don’t burn.
Darnen, though, lights up like a pyre. A living, screaming, flailing pyre. He shoves me away and falls against three of his Zhagarn. They catch fire, too, and Darnen falls to the floor, dying.
In their haste to escape the inescapable, the Zhagarn in the cave end up colliding with more of their number who are swarming through the door.
So many of them.
But I’m still on fire, and they hesitate long enough at the sight of me—at the sight of their leader, burning and dying—that maybe I can figure out a way to at least save Elianna.
I take a deep breath and start toward them, while I’m still burning. I don’t know how long the flames will last.
From behind the Zhagarn, though, I hear a berserker’s frenzied roar, and I laugh out loud.
Kaelen.
How? Did the druid’s magic falter when he caught fire?
Does it matter?
Kaelen fights his way into the room, sword in one hand and dagger in the other, both dealing brutal death to everyone in his way. His gaze shoots directly to me, and the relief on his face wars with fear whenhe sees I’m burning.
