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Infuriated, Ailsa slashed her nails across a man’s throat, her mouth aching as blood flowed.

To her right, two Circines warriors turned on each other. One of them started screaming, the agony rending her ears. Iron blades rose and fell, and then others piled in.

Then, suddenly, a group of them was brawling instead of dealing with the enemy.

Seizing her opportunity, Ailsa grabbed Kayla by the arm and propelled her forward.

However, another group of warriors converged on them then. Suddenly, she found herself separated from her mentor and surrounded by silver eyes and glowing tattoos.

The bite of peat smoke and pine caught in the back of her throat.

Jaw set, she dodged a cleaving axe and drove her knife up under the man’s ribs, twisting viciously.

The warrior toppled backward, taking her with him.

And then, for an instant, there was just him and her.

Their gazes locked, and she watched the silver light drain from his gaze.

Cornflower-blue eyes stared up at her. He was young, barely older than eighteen winters, she guessed. His mouth worked soundlessly, blood trickling from the corner.

I didn’t want this. The words rose from her memory, taunting her—the plea of a different young warrior, less than a moon’s turn ago, in a tattooing alcove in Craeg Aonaranach.

Somewhere ahead of her, Kayla screamed her name.

Ailsa didn’t hear the rest of it. The battle had gone soft and distant, like sound underwater.

Niall, and her urgency to reach him, faded.

All she saw was a frightened young man who’d been forced to fight in a battle he didn’t care about.

Her breathing seized.

Moments earlier she’d wanted his blood—had wanted him afraid—but now, nausea rolled over her. And as it did, her body went cold.

Fuck.

She was in the middle of a battlefield, and her blood-hunger disappeared as suddenly as if someone had blown out a candle.

Still gripping her dagger, she rolled right, yanking it out of his body. Scrambling backward, hands and boots slipping in the mud and blood, she forced herself upright on unsteady legs.

Shit. Shit. Shit.

A blade flashed to her left, and she twisted away. Not fast enough though. Hot pain lanced down her right arm. She staggered back, getting out of the way, as an enforcer took on the warrior who’d just cut her.

Her dagger was still in her hand, but her grip on it felt wrong, clumsy.

It was as if she’d never trained with Darach or Bree.

What’s wrong with me?

Everything around her was now a blur—shouting from every direction all at once—and without the bavaan, she was just a woman with a knife in a crowd of people trying to kill her.

Someone crashed into her from the side then, and she went down hard, biting her tongue as she rolled clear of stamping boots. Clutching the dagger like a lifeline, she looked around wildly for anything—anyone—she recognized.

An axe slammed down into the ground just inches from her head, and she rolled again, panic grabbing her by the throat. “Darach!”

35: IT’S OVER