Even when my whole body screamed at me to run.
My hands trembled so violently that I nearly dropped the little belt knife Erindor had shown me how to hold, how to use. It felt useless now, like a twig trying to stand against a storm.
My bones begged me to flee.
But I couldn’t. Not with my friends lying there.
Not with them bleeding because they had tried to protect me.
He was going to kill them all. Unless I stood up. Unless I tried.
Even if I died doing it.
Tears blurred the edges of my sight, but I blinked them back. My chest was shaking. My ribs screamed from where I’d hit the ground, but I didn’t move. I stood holding my ground.
Riven's presence felt like a cold breath on the back of my neck as his eyes bore into mine.
He cocked his head, almost amused. His sword, long and blackened and stained with fresh blood, hung loose in his grip. The smaller dagger twitched like a flickering flame in his left hand, fast, elegant, precise.
He looked at me like I was an insect that had forgotten its place.
I couldn’t breathe, let alone speak. But I forced my legs to steady. My fingers wrapped tighter around the hilt of the dagger until the edge bit into my palm.
“I’m not afraid of you,” I managed to whisper, the words catching in my throat, suddenly dry as dust.
But my hands, clammy and trembling, gave away the stark lie.
But it didn’t matter. I loved them more, and I would fight for them. No matter what.
He laughed wickedly. “You should be.”
Then he lunged.
I tried to move. Dodged left, but I was too slow. The flat of his sword slammed into my ribs, and I flew sideways. I hit the ground with a wet thud; the wind driven from my lungs. My side burned, and I gasped for breath.
He didn’t stop.
A hand fisted in my hair and hauled me up like I weighed nothing.
“Cute,” he muttered in my ear. “But you’re not a soldier. You’re a symbol.”
Then he threw me against a broken pillar, stone catching my shoulder and spine. My scream cracked through the ruins. I collapsed, and my face pressed to cold ash and blood.
I couldn’t move.
I couldn’t—
“Stay down,” he said, already turning his back.
And that…that was what lit the fuse.
I remembered my mother’s voice.
“Softness is a liability. A crown doesn’t cry.”
I remembered the screaming in the maze. The whisper in the canyon. The light that had bloomed from my chest.
I remembered Erindor’s blood on the ground.
