“I have liquid bane in my saddle pac—”
“No,” she gasps.“W-with your sword.Please.”
I pause, feeling her request stack upon my shoulders like a brick.
Giving her a terse nod that carves me up on the inside, I pocket the necklace and take the weight of the weapon, lowering its tip to the left side of her chest.
I hold her stare, a million words trapped behind the clamp of my lips.
Words won’t ease her pain or stop her flesh from rotting—won’t restart the night and bring her family back—so I hold them in, letting them scour my insides and fuel that pit of venomous rage waiting to unleash.
“Prom-m-mise.S-save her,Rhordyn.P-please.”
She’s already gone.
“I promise,” I say, holding her gaze.
The lie does its job, relieving the tightness from around her eyes, but the cost is a phantom skewer through my chest.
I promised her a safe house, too ... and now her family’s dead.
She offers a sad smile, and an iridescent tear paves a path through the filth and blistering flesh on her cheek. “D-do it.”
“I’m sorry ...”
For everything.
She opens her mouth to speak, but I don’t give her a chance to feed me the lie I can see brewing in her eyes. I plant lethal pressure down the sword and draw a gasp from her split lips.
Wide, glassy eyes darken with the shadow of death, taking on a depthless serenity I can’t look away from fast enough.
She would have dished me placating words—told me it’s okay.
It’s not okay.
I hang my head and pretend the stars aren’t staring holes through my back.
But they are.
They always are. And they always fucking will.
Letting my rage bubble to the surface, I pull the sword free and push to a stand.
Smooth. Cold.
Detached.
Without a backward glance, I charge toward a billowy flame devouring the fallen remnants of the thatched roof, then round a mound of blackened bricks and pause in a slab of shadow ...
Vruks. Three of them—eyes black bulbs, bodies much larger than my stallion and heaped with bulging pockets of muscle that shift beneath slick, gray fur.
Neither canine nor feline, but somewhere trapped in the middle.
Huge.
Mighty.
Merciless.
