Kai resets, lunges, and drives his sword between Moroslav's ribs.
Moroslav's eyes go wide with shock. Blood bubbles at his lips, dark and wet, as Kai pulls the blade free without a word. Doesn't look down as Moroslav slides against the intricate wall, painting a long smear of red.
For a moment we just stand there, breathing hard.
"Thank you," I manage.
Kai just nods, already turning toward the others—Lanz with Gwenna, Callahan flanking. "We need to move.Now."
The pathacross the island is brutal. Snow up to our knees in places, ice-slick rocks, gray light that shows barely anything. But it's faster this way, more direct. The road winds for kilometers around the perimeter of the island, switchbacks designed forvehicles carrying equipment and supplies. On foot, we can cut straight across.
Callahan—the only one not bleeding—carries Gwenna. She's barely conscious, her head lolling against his shoulder, wrapped up in my coat but still wearing that damned sarafan, the painted symbols on her face are smeared with sweat and tears.
“How much farther?” he pants. Not that he’d ever set her down.
None of us would.
“Quarter mile, maybe?” Lanz says. I’m glad he answers, because I have no idea. My head is throbbing, my feet burning with cold, and my body shaking from adrenaline as much as from the wind.
Moroslav is dead.
Kai glances over his shoulder at me. As if he can sense what I’m thinking.
“Almost there,” he says. “Listen.”
He points up, and I slow my steps, just barely, and I can hear it—the distant hum of something mechanical. An engine, maybe. Generators.
I nod, my heart is in my throat as we forge over the next gray rise of hill.
But he was right.
The airstrip.
The wind hits us immediately, unobstructed across the flat expanse, as we half-run, half-stumble down the slope. The plane waits in the open—no proper hangar here.
And standing beside it, arms crossed, coat whipping in the wind:
My father.
Relief. It’s all I can feel. He's here. He can help us, alert the pilot, we can get on the plane and?—
“Come on,” I yell to the others, slipping on the slick surface of the tarmac as I jog,runthe few remaining yards towards him.
"Father!” I yell. "Dad!” I skid to a stop, breathing hard, my head aching with the cold and the effort and the throb of the cut. “We need to get on the plane,” I pant. “We have to get out of here. We—they—they tried to kill her.” I run a hand through my hair.
"Slow down," he says. He looks behind me: at the other three, at Gwenna, taking in her strange attire, her painted face, her bleeding feet. “What on earth is going on?”
"Please," I say, my voice cracking. “There isn’t time to—she's the grail. Gwenna is the grail, she has the power, and they know it, and they want to kill her to…” I glance back over my shoulder. "We have togo.”
Why isn't he moving?I look with desperation into my father's one eye as his expression changes from one of confusion to dawning recognition: his lips parted, his eyebrows lifted.
“I know,” I say. “I know it’s a lot, and I'm I can explain more later. We just have to?—”
“Where's the fuckingpilot?" Kai cries. He doesn’t wait for an answer and stalks off to the control tower.
My father blinks, shakes his head. “You’re not leaving.” His tone is so calm and conversational I think I must have misheard him.
"What?" Instinctively, I step between him and the others. “Are you serious? Because of the fucking tournament? Moroslav isdead, Dad. There’s no one to fence. They tried tokill?—”
