I needed more torches, but that wasn’t an option. This one would have to count.
With only a few feet left between the vuk and me, I swept the torch in wide arcs and the animal paused, keeping a wary distance.
To make this work, I’d have to let the beast get closer.
I drew my hand back toward me, my heart pounding as the vuk approached. This would hurt me—there was no way around that.
I lowered the torch, my chest heaving as the vuk sized me up, ready to make a meal of me. Then it lunged, mouth open. The first vuk that had attacked me in the forest had shown me the way they handled their kill. As this one snapped at my neck, I turned, thrusting the torch into the vuk’s open mouth as deeply as it would go. Its claws shredded my shirt front, leaving me practically bare-chested, scratches bright and red with blood down my torso.
Fangs dug into my arm, sending shooting pain through me, then I yanked my arm back. A few jagged gashes marked my skin, but the stunned vuk fell back, a hiss of steam and smoke coming from its mouth. A foul, nauseating smell of flesh burning filled the air, and then it stumbled onto its haunches, legs wobbling.
Then the vuk pitched onto its side, dead.
My arm throbbed, the torn skin there feeling as though it had its own pulse. The vuk I’d thrown from the boulder continued to thrash and cry.
I might have broken its back.
This time, a large rock might do the trick. Even if I didn’t kill it, I could incapacitate it.
Despite everything, my heart squeezed with guilt as I approached the yelping beast. My fingers curled around the rock I’d grabbed. Better to put the damned creature out of its misery than to let it die slowly like this.
I crouched beside it and lifted the rock. Some of my blood dripped down from my elbow, splashing on the ground near the vuk. The white glow of its eyes lessened and it stilled, eyes meeting mine.
Soft. Sad.
It bowed its head, struggling onto its front paws as it knelt before me.
The tongue flicked, its great chest heaving. Grey fur poked out from between those scales and, for the first time, I saw the tame animal that Seren had said these vuks normally were.
The vuk held my gaze, a plea in its eyes.
Something shifted inside me. That they’d attacked me might be instinctual, but no worse than any other creature trying to survive might do.
“You deserve a better death than to be bashed in the head with a rock.”
I stood, tossing the rock to the side.
Blood oozed down my arm. A hush had gone over the crowd again. “Good enough for you?” I called to Haldron.
I glanced back toward where I’d left Seren and Amahle.
They were gone.
Godsdammit. I found Amahle in an instant—by the edge of the lake, leaning over the water.
A crack of lightning cut across the sky, then struck in the center of the amphitheater. Clouds billowed in, a sudden gale stirring the wind, the very ground trembling.
Searing pain ripped through me as lightning struck once again, nearer to me, then flowing through me, the sky seeming to rip in two as I fell to my knees, my head falling back.
A whisper filled the wind, a chorus of voices. Not Old Ederyn or any other language I knew, but something eerie and beautiful.
A scorching feeling came from my chest and I dropped my chin, my eyes widening as a rune sizzled against the surface of my skin, the remains of my shirt and vest burning away from my body, as though the rune had been drawn by the finger of the god of light himself.
Not just any rune—but one I’d seen many times before, the black and crimson tattoo of my father’s sigil, the Everspire—the tree of life, encircled by rune marks of the gods and goddesses of old.
My throat constricted, my body robbed of breath as the whisper continued, a vision filling my mind. A crown placed on the head of a boy, too young for the weight. Too young for the role. My nephew, Ivar.
The words of consecration, spoken by the High Magister filled my mind.
