A muscle slashes across his cheek—but there’s no answer to come.
He stares Rust down.
My gut worms with each passing millisecond—that harrowing, frozen fear that Samick will concede.
Not just concede, but… make the logical choice.
The choice to hand me over, and all of this ends.
The burden ofmeends.
I would do it.
I would hand someone over to spare my friends.
I would hand anyone over to spare Bee.
The tears are cold down my cheeks.
Samick plants his boots, firm. A fighting stance. Prepared and ready.
He speaks a single unintelligible word.
But the sound of it loosens something tight in my chest, and I feel like I can breathe again. Not much, but enough.
Because that was undeniably a rejection.
That stance was a message.
You’ll have to go through me.
Samick must have a bargain of steel with Dare.
Rust takes a menacing step closer.
Whatever he says, I don’t understand. It’s aimed at Samick. And I don’t think it’s about me, because whatever he says—it pisses Samick right off.
Frost blooms.
It starts at Samick’s fingers. Pale skin threading with white, ice forming between his knuckles, as delicate as lace. Then it spills down the length of the glassy dagger in his fist, spreading, growing, as intricate as snowflakes multiplying faster than I can track.
It’s not the cold air.
It’shim.
Rust snarls an animalistic sound, raw and utterly vicious.
It throws me back into the puddle, cringed.
The moment that stale, dirty water splashes up around me, there’s an explosion of urgency on the road, and it’s feral.
Two walls of fae collide.
Samick and Rust clash.
Their daggers take the brunt of the impact before they shove back from each other.
Neither of them wastes the step.
