Closer.
The scent of her filled him again, clinging to his senses. Her lips parted in another restless sigh. Her chest rose and fell, the curve of her throat bared to him, unguarded.
Rakhal lowered the dagger until the edge kissed her skin. A whisper of steel against warmth. The barest pressure at her neck.
One slip of his hand. One flex of muscle. And it would be done.
The war would end.
Thousands saved by the spilling of a single life.
The shadows tightened around him like a noose, steadying his resolve.
Kill her.
It should have been easy.
The next step always was. The blade cutting down, parting skin, finding the artery beneath. A pulse severed. Blood spilling warm across the furs. Her life extinguished in the space of a heartbeat.
So simple. So clean. So final.
Rakhal steadied the dagger, shadows curling tight around his wrist, guiding him, urging him. His breath slowed, the familiar calm before the strike settling over him like a shroud.
And then?—
Her eyes snapped open.
Wide. Clear. A sudden blaze of awareness where there had been only the flutter of restless lids. For a fraction of a heartbeat they met his, unshielded, unflinching, the lamplight glinting against the dark of her gaze.
The dagger hung poised against her throat. The shadows hissed, restless, eager for blood.
But she was awake.
Her face remained still, blank as carved stone. But her eyes?—
A flurry of emotion rippled through them in the span of a breath. Fear first, sharp and raw. Shock, confusion, the disorientation of waking to death poised at her throat.
And then—change.
The fear burned away, shuttered behind something harder. Realisation flickered, quick as lightning. Understanding. Calculation.
Impressive.
Rakhal’s grip on the dagger did not falter, but his thoughts shifted, noting the speed with which she mastered herself. The battlefield had forged her, no doubt. She was not a coweringhuman girl to whimper and beg. Even here, staring into the eyes of death, she was measuring, assessing, deciding.
The shadows hissed against his ears, urging the strike, the spilling of her blood. But for the first time, he hesitated not from weakness?—
but from respect.
“Wait.”
The word was soft, almost a whisper, yet it carried authority. Enough to make him hesitate, blade still pressed to the hollow of her throat.
He shouldn’t have paused. She was dead before him anyway. The shadows coiled tighter, urging him to finish it, to spill her blood and be done.
But her eyes held his, unwavering.
“Pray to your god,” he murmured, voice low, shadow-deep. He could not tear his gaze from hers. The words came unbidden, rough-edged, drawn from some place between instinct and restraint. “I’ll make it quick.”
