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“My fate is my own,” she shouted, turning her shoulder to let a glancing blow slide off her armor. All her training came rushing back, every bit of footwork and swordplay.
Taristan puzzled over her as he sparred, his brow tightening even as he kicked at her legs. She barely dodged, almost losing her balance.
As she spun, Corayne caught a glimpse of Sorasa scuffling with Isibel. Her legs still squeezed her throat, using the strongest part of her body to subdue the Elder. It lasted only seconds, before Isibel recovered enough to throw Sorasa off, letting the assassin roll into the roses. Sorasa was up again in a second, a dagger in hand.
Andry was luckier, facing down a blind wizard. It seemed an even match, despite Ronin’s magic. His curled fingers, powerful as they were, aimed and missed. The force of his magic blasted mere inches from Andry’s face, blowing a hole through the roses.
“You are beaten, Corayne.”
Taristan’s voice made her whirl and she reacted, dropping under another sweep of his sword. He glared at her over the blade, his grand cloak torn away to show the old leathers beneath.
Corayne saw him as he was once, before the Queen of Galland joined her fate to his own. A rogue alone in the world, a mortal man born to nothing—and somehow everything.
“This realm will fall,” he continued, grim. She expected him to gloat, but his pale face remained as stone, unfeeling.
“And you will fall with it,” Corayne snapped back at him, adjusting her grip. Her vambraces lashed tight against her forearms, the clawed edges gleaming like the edge of the Spindleblade. “Don’t you understand that by now?”
His next strike was lazy, tauntingly so. No matter her training of the last few months, Corayne was still no match for her uncle’s long life in the gutters of the world. He danced within her guard and slammed his shoulder against her chest, sending her sprawling backward to land in a heap of armor.
He looked down on her with a grimace. “Better to stand victorious at the right hand of a god than to die nameless and forgotten.”
His sword fell like a bolt of lightning.
Corayne raised her forearms, the steel edge of her vambraces catching the blow. The force of it shook her entire body and her muscles screamed in protest.
“There is no victory, Taristan!” she growled as he recoiled from the strike. In an instant, she scrambled to her feet again. “I have seen the Ashlands. I have seen what he will do to this realm and every other.”
Dust. Death, she thought, even as the same tempting whisper braided through her mind. What Waits hissed, inches away, yearning to cross through. She remembered His shadow in the Ashlands, the outline of a monstrous king. It wavered beneath a dying sun, surrounded by a land of echoes and corpses.The destruction of everything anyone ever held dear.
Corayne set her feet, wrapping another hand around the Spindleblade to grasp it with all her strength. Taristan glared, the pair locked together as the rest of the world boiled around them.
“You will be forgotten either way, another mind broken beneath the temptation of What Waits,” Corayne said, desperation in every word. “You are just a tool, Taristan. Mortal as the rest of us.Nameless.”
She did not expect Taristan to care, if he even listened to her at all.
Her voice shook. “Useful until the second you aren’t, until the moment he casts you away to find another fool.”
To her shock, Taristan did not move forward, though his sword remained between them. Locks of dark red hair stuck to his sweaty face, a few strands moving with gasps of breath. Despite the white veins crawling under his skin, and the edge of red flaring around his eyes, he looked more mortal than Corayne knew he could be.
Rare emotion darkened his gaze, the black eating up the hellish red.
Confusion, Corayne saw.Regret.
“I know what he promised you,” she bit out. “A purpose. A fate.”
Again the whispers curled.The infinite realms wait for you.Cursed as Corayne knew the offer to be, some part of her heart sang for it anyway.
“I know what that feels like, to someone like us. Torn as we are, abandoned and lost.” Her eyes stung again, her gaze swimming. “But it isn’t real. All He brings is death.”
It erupted around them now, the evidence of it in every inch. Blood poisoned the air. The corpse army still surrounded the courtyard. They hung back, as if watching some horrific play.
“Be done with this, Taristan,” the wizard sneered, his empty eyes trailing red tears. He sent a blast of magic over Andry’s head. The squire dropped, narrowly avoiding the spell. It caught Isibel instead and she snarled, stumbling back.
“The Spindle is here,” Ronin continued, oblivious. “We need only open the door and walk through.”
“Towhat?” Corayne roared back. “Where do you think this ends for you?”
Taristan’s gaze shifted, his eyes sliding out of focus as something crossed his mind.
