“Neri.” This time, the voice was Seth’s own. Perhaps it was a trick. Perhaps the goddess who held his mind in thrall had let him slip through, just for a moment. Seth gasped, “It’s all right.”
He would not beg. It wasn’t in his nature. But his pain was palpable. “Do whatever you have to,” he said. “I love you.”
“Are you a coward or a fool?” Ged demanded of Neri. “Do it, or condemn us all!”
Enough of this. Ysira pulled out Ogden’s syringe and rose, making eye contact with Jacen. His mind brushed hers, a deep anguish etched into his features.Together,he said, and as seamlessly as though it had sprung from both their minds at once, a plan materialized.
Jacen pointed two fingers at Seth. Seth screamed. For an instant, again, he sounded like himself.
Ged and Ysira both lunged. Ged at Seth, Ysira at Ged. His sword crashed against her knife. She stopped him from cleaving Seth’s skull in two, but the impact broke her blade and shattered through her arm like an earthquake.
She fell with a cry. But Jacen stepped up behind Seth, closing the distance. They moved in unison, their minds as one, too fast for Ged to follow. Ysira tossed Jacen the syringe. He caught it with his free hand. Plunged it into the side of Seth’s neck.
Seth’s shoulders slumped. His eyelids drooped, and his grip slackened on his blade as he fell into a daze, nearing unconsciousness. It was over—it was well and trulyover—but Ged wasn’t finished.
Ysira’s right arm was paralyzed as Iyelekirin knitted its bones back together. She couldn’t stop Ged from swinging his blade down and, in one sharp motion, slicing Seth’s sword hand clean off.
Jacen caught Seth as he fell, out cold, and stemmed the flow of blood from the stump with his own hands. Through a ragged gasp, all he managed to say was “Why.”
Ged stood over his brother’s unconscious, mutilated form. The expression on his face, so hair-raisingly close to vindication, made Ysira see red. He said, without emotion, “If you insist on keeping him alive, he’s less of a threat now.”
In the time it took Ysira to round on Ged, he closed the distance between them. He seized her, dragged her around, and slammed her against the wall. An involuntary cry escaped her.
“You killed my children, didn’t you?” He shook Ysira. “Didn’t you?” “They gave me no choice,” she gasped. “They would have gotten
Neri killed or delivered him to whatever insanity you had planned?—”
He shoved her harder against the wall. She struggled, but it was like trying to fight a statue.
“Don’t make me laugh.” Ged leaned in, close enough that she could feel his breath. “You’re the one who abandoned him.”
“Ged, enough!” Jacen shouted. Though he did not leave Seth’s side, the force behind his words distracted Ged enough for Ysira to squirm out of his grip.
“Abandonedhim?” she shouted, backing away, too enraged to care that they had an audience—or that Neri could hear every word. “I was eighteen years old. I had nothing. I had been left for dead. What kind of life could I have given him? Butyou”—she stabbed a finger at Ged—“you were the firstborn son of Avram fucking Semira. And it wasn’t even you who took him in; it was Lilaya, becauseyouwere too much of a coward?—”
“You should have known better,” Ged cut her off. “I did nothing to you against your will, and that boy was your responsibility as much as mine.”
“I did my part,” Ysira said. “I carried him, I gave birth to him, and I gave him a chance at the best life anyone in Zivora could ask for. Leave it toyouto use him as a human sacrifice instead.”
“Ahuman sacrifice?” Ged repeated, incredulous. “Is that what you think I did?” He pointed at the bones of the Lord of Fear. “If what I’m seeing here is any indication, I did him a favor.”
For an instant, Ysira forgot all about the awful choices at hand. After everything Neri had endured, the horrors he’d seen, the crushing responsibility with which he’d been burdened—the way Ysira, too, had pushed him there?—
A chasm opened up inside her.
What have we done?
Maybe she was no better than Ged, but she would let the whole world burn before she let him claim he’d done Neri a fuckingfavor.
Ged was still talking. “He would never have become a knight. He wasn’t fit for much else, he was defective, butnow?—”
Ysira hit him. Felt his nose break under her knuckles. First came a grim satisfaction—ruptured by a cold spike of terror as,faster than she could react, he seized her by the neck and started to squeeze. “This is for Damir.”
Ysira’s vision blurred. She kicked her feet, choking, refusing to look away as hate burned in Ged’s eyes. She would not look away. She would survive this, and one day, hers would be the last face he ever saw.
“Stop.”
The voice, this time, was Neri’s. Though it trembled, it rang out through the temple. “Let her go. Or I’ll make you do it.”
