I don't argue. There's nothing to argue with. She's here. She's staying. The rest is what it is.
Night comes.
The temperature drops hard. Frost forms on the exposed stones, and our breath clouds in the firelight. I feed the fire and Maren wraps my cloak around her shoulders, and we sit in the ruined hall and wait.
I feel him before I hear him.
The Rodvek oath stirs. Not the way it used to, grinding and immediate, demanding. The binding stone changed it. It's secondary now, muffled by the bond with Maren. But it's still there, and it knows its other half is close.
A sound from beyond the walls. Low. Deep. The grind of something massive moving through rubble.
Maren rises to her feet. Her hand finds mine.
“He's here,” I say.
“I know.”
The sound grows. Scraping. Dragging. The crunch of stone under weight that shouldn't exist. It's coming from the direction of the gatehouse, moving through the courtyard, and I can hear the breathing now. The same wet, wrong sound I heard in the ditch on the first day. The sound that has followed me for all this time.
Rodvek steps into the great hall.
His body is twisted, the proportions wrong, the armor that was once the same as mine is fused to his skin in plates of blackened metal. I've only ever seen him at distance. In darkness. In motion.
This is the first time I've seen what he's become in full light, and I can't look away. His face is gone. Hidden behind a mask of the same dark metal, featureless except for two slits that burn gold.
Not amber. Not the flickering edge I fight against. Solid gold, bright and constant, the color of a berserker who went under and never came back up.
“BROTHER.”
The voice. Grinding metal, broken glass, a sound that was once Rodvek's and is now something else using his throat. The word fills the hall, bounces off the broken walls, and the beast in my chest lunges against its door.
I let go of Maren's hand.
“Rodvek.” My voice holds. “It's Kovren.”
The creature takes a step forward. The floor shakes. Rubble shifts and falls from the walls. He's looking at me with those burning gold eyes and I can see the fury in him, the hunger, the years of rage that have eaten everything he was.
The beast surges, white-hot, clawing. I feel the heat climbing, the gold pressing at the edges of my vision, and Maren is behind me and if I lose this, if I go under, we're both dead.
I hold.
The binding stone bond holds, solid and warm, and I lean into it. Feel Maren's pulse running underneath my own, even and calm. She's not afraid. The bond tells me that. She's not afraid, and her certainty presses against the rage and the rage gives ground.
Not much. An inch. But enough.
“Rodvek.” I take a step forward. No weapon. No fighting stance. Just my hands open at my sides and my brother's name in my mouth. “Listen to me.”
“OATH-BREAKER.” He swings. I see it coming, the massive arm scything through the air, and I don't dodge. I brace. Take it across the shoulder, the impact driving me back three feet, stone cracking under my boots.
The pain is bright and immediate, and the beast surges behind my ribs.
I hold.
“The children escaped.” I straighten. Blood runs down my arm where the armor plating on his fist tore the skin. “Rodvek. The children you were protecting. They escaped. Your oath was fulfilled.”
He screams. The sound shakes dust from the walls and drives splinters of stone from the ceiling. He swings again, both fists, and I catch the blow on my forearms and the force of it drives me to one knee.
The gold floods my vision. I feel the berserker tearing at every wall I've built. The bond with Maren is the only thing keeping me on this side.
