Page 87 of Morfran, Dark Lord Reformed

She laughed. “I knew it. Knew you’d come here and return as the hero. But I promise you this.” She spanned out her arms, grinning, the makeup powders across her face smeared enough to expose the green hue of rot. “Whoever kills me dies as well.”

He paused.

“It was the last enchantment this ring would spit out,” she said. “A spell of offensive armor. However I die, that individual will die in the exact same way.”

So that was the catch. Something inside his chest released, and he exhaled quietly. “I’ve sent hundreds to their death. What’s two more?”

He lunged at her. She screeched, sawing through the air with her knife, which he narrowly evaded by swerving aside. She didn’t let up, however, and slashed thrice at him in what could only be described as precise, swift death thrusts, all of which almost landed lethal blows.

He kicked her in the knee, knocking her backwards. He swung his blade to cut her down.

She ducked, came up, and slashed him across the knuckles.

He blinked in surprise, the cut stinging.

She snickered but didn’t answer his question, leaving him to realize on his own that even though when he’d left her a year ago she hadn’t known how to wield even a practice stick right, she’d changed that. She’d trained for this.

She was quick after that. Almost too quick. He was trying to cut her down with a longer-range sword, whereas she was spinning, pivoting, and popping up behind him to deliver quick, painful slashes that he couldn’t fend off.

Fine, then. If she wanted to fight in close quarters, then he could do that as well. Bronwen’s dagger was in the pocket of his breeches. He swept it out now, discarding his sword behind him, and began countering her blow for blow, catching a slice in the ribs here, a gash to his collarbone there.

He landed a nasty cut to her scalp, to which she let out a hysterical howl of a laugh before headbutting him, right in the chest where Gueldefore’s bolt had struck him earlier.

Black spots washed over him at the pain. But he was already moving, already bringing his hand up to stop her from stabbing him in the eye—

Her knife went through the palm of his hand, coming to a stop at the hilt. He groaned, hot pain rippling through his fingers, down his wrist. She was forcing him backwards, towards the wall, grunting at the exertion.

He stopped trying to hold her strength back, recoiled, and as she fell forward, slapped her across the face. Hard.

She staggered back with an oof, toppling over an armchair. While he had a spare moment he peeled her knife out of his palm, seething and cursing every name he could think of until it was out. Black spots were returning, threatening to take him.

No. He fought. Stay awake. Stay awake and take her down.

She’d done a backwards somersault to catch her fall, and was still crouched like a wildcat on all fours, her hair in tangled streaks of black about her body. He held both her knife and Bronwen’s dagger, and before he could consider which to throw—his chest wound was inflamed again, and he couldn’t quite grip Bronwen’s dagger with his left, while his right side was free but he wasn’t right-hand dominant—she pounced at him with an animalistic scream that slapped the ceiling almost before it slapped his ears, and he raised his left hand up and—

The dagger buried into flesh. Morfran sucked in a terrible breath with her. They both stared down at the weapon embedded deep into her thigh. He hadn’t been able to raise his hand soon enough; the pain in his chest was too great.

“Oh, Morfran,” she said, almost mockingly, through her pain. “Don’t you know anything?” A small, wicked smile formed on her lips. “Thigh wounds are like shoulder shots. They’re never fatal.”

She then rammed his sword through his stomach, spearing it so it went cleanly out his back. He choked, dropping both weapons, his hands instinctively flying to the foreign object skewering through his body.

She wrenched it out.

He collapsed, and this time the black spots returned at the corners of his vision, appearing and reappearing like the coming and going of a tide.

His ex-wife tugged out the dagger in her thigh with a lack of self-preservation and gazed at it with morbid curiosity before tossing it aside and gripping his sword with both hands.

“Darling,” she murmured, limping in a slow circle around him. “If you had told me this is how it’d end between the two of us, I would have thought you were crazy.” Her voice hitched on that last word, her eyes glassy and distant. They regained focus, however, when she stopped at his head. “Would you prefer to bleed out? Or— Oh, this would be more suitably ironic.” She placed the tip of the blade against his throat. “Morfran the Beheader, beheaded by his beloved wife.”

She raised the blade high over her head. He swallowed the blood in his mouth and shut his eyes before he could watch his end come swooping down.

Ravana let out a strangled choke. His eyes flew back open. The sword still hung up in the air like a flagless pole in her arms. But protruding out of her chest, right where her heart was, was the black tip of a dagger.

Whoever had stabbed her in the back wrenched it out, and Ravana fell, hitting the floorboards beside him. He saw her eyes flit to her killer, right before they fell back on him, and he saw, before she died, the gleam of a wicked smirk on her lips.

No.

With groaning pain, he rolled to his side, pushed up, half in panic, half in disbelief—