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Then it was gone.

All because I’m not strong enough to do anything that matters.

Chapter Seventeen

Agnar

I blow out a heavy breath and let the sword fall. My heart hammers, adrenaline pulsing through my veins.

That was way too damn close.

The alicorn had been fast. Faster than an animal that size and that sick should be. One moment, Esme’s hands glowed like gold on the mare’s neck, and the next, the mare’s jaws were snapping for Esme’s throat. Esme had been so enraptured in…whatever she was doing, that she didn’t notice me swing my sword. I damn near wrenched my shoulder out of the socket pulling the swing back so I wouldn’t lob off her arm along with the alicorn’s head.

The alicorn’s ravaged body smells even worse now. The infection rushes to the surface as death slackens the animal’s muscles.

Esme kneels in the pooling blood, staring at what’s left of the creature’s face. She’s oblivious to the yellow-green and black streaks hidden among the crimson. Horror and grief paint the lines of her face, tears falling down her cheeks.

Reaching down, I grab her arm to nudge her away from the rot.

She shakes me off to pet the dead beast, mumbling empty comforts I can’t hear as she runs both hands over the alicorn’s neck. Evening light filters gray through the oak’s branches overhead and casts everything in shades of charcoal and ash. Even the blood looks dull, like someone drained the color out along with the life.

“We need to move.” I jostle her arm as gently as I can manage with so much adrenaline coursing through me. The gesture is rougher than I’d like, knocking her off-balance. “Soon.”

Esme stands slowly, as if she’s aged a hundred years. She rotates toward me, crumples, and then starts punching me in the chest.

I let her use me as a release. Holding all that emotion inside only allows it to fester, leading to unhealed wounds that never cease bleeding.

She stops after a few more blows. “Why did you—“ A sob cuts her off. “Why?”

“She was attacking you.” I gesture at the corpse with the bloody blade. “In case you missed that part through all the glowing hands and whispering.”

“But you didn’t have to—“ She hiccups. “You didn’t have to kill her. I could have⁠—”

“Could have what?” I gently shake her shoulders, hoping to rattle her brain loose from the apparent shock. “Continued petting her while she tore out your throat? Was that your plan?”

“I was helping her!” Esme shrieks. “And it was working! The light was working. She recognized me and asked for my aid as a Warden. She knew my intentions before she…before she had that seizure.”

She whispers the last word like it’s the answer to all her prayers. Except I know what I witnessed, and that wasn’t a seizure. What I saw was an animal attacking with intent to kill. After decades of war, I’ve interacted with enough wounded alicorns to differentiate between an injured one and one that’s trying to slaughter an enemy. “You would have died. That alicorn was beyond your reach, Esme. Your healing lasted maybe three seconds before the infection took over again.”

Esme jerks her arm free and storms over to the tree she climbed to escape the alicorn. “You don’t know that. You don’t know that it wouldn’t have worked. If you’d just given me a little more time⁠—“

“I watched her eye.” The image of the alicorn’s rolling, rabid iris will be burned into my brain for a long time. Esme’s right about the animal asking for help, but I’m right too. “I saw the exact moment she stopped behaving as a wounded creature and became a weapon. I stood back and gave you both a chance, but then the infection seized control again, and you were too close. It was either you or the alicorn, and I picked you, and I’d do it again.”

She shakes her head as if she can deny reality through sheer force of will. “You can’t just go around killing things⁠—”

“The fuck I can’t.” Laughing bitterly, I lift my sword, flipping it back and forth to reveal the wear and tear along the blade. “It’s my specialty. You’ve seen my resume.”

Esme’s cheeks whiten. “This isn’t funny⁠—“

I slide the sword back into its sheath. “Depends on how you look at it. Either way, at least it’s honest. If you want pretty lies about the necessity of violence and the nobility of tough choices, find someone else. Me? I killed twelve men on the road. Killed a farmer with a pitchfork through his guts. And now, a sick alicorn.”

She gapes at me before clamping her jaw shut.

I meet her furious eyes and hold them. This is something she has to understand, both about me and the nature of the world, so I stalk closer to her as I speak. “I’ve killed injured alicorns before, and I likely will again. No good comes from hesitating. Sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind, and I’m damn good at killing things.”

Esme stills save for the muscle twitching under her left eye. “You’d know about cruelty.”

I rear back, ceasing my stalking as her words land harder than her punches did, hitting on a memory I buried deep within myself and the earth. Something I’ve never even told Sterling. After it happened, I swore I would never speak of it again. Otherwise, I’ll remember the screaming. How every building in Blackwood Valley melted to slag.