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Benedikt notches his arrow. I have only a matter of seconds left to decide.
As I grip my bow, a swell of resolve rises up inside me. The same iron conviction that came over me when I lay dying in the Domi’s back hallway.
I want to live. There’s more I want to do.
Maybe, like then, I should let the gods decide just as I told the scourge sorcerers I would.
I position my arrow against the bow and open my mind to the trickster godlen with his wryly divine voice.If I ask my magic to guide my arrow, will you see that I don’t hurt anything I would regret?
My pulse stutters with the overwhelming voice that resonates through my body for the first time in weeks.I can guide the backlash, my wayward rogue. But you have to pull the string. The choices you make here can only be yours.
I swallow against the dryness of my mouth.
Yes. It’s my life. My choice.
I’m playing this game to win.
A mortal man’s voice reverberates through the forest. “Begin!”
My hand looses the arrow.
The bowstring twangs, and my power leaps with it. I hone it onto the arrow, narrowing it to my target with all the control I can summon.
Just this act. Just this once.
Land one shot so Benedikt can’t shoot another.
I might not be much of an archer, but I know how to deal an effective wound. Benedikt needs his arms to shoot.
So I simply have to disable them.
The power ripples through me, pulling the arrow on course—and part of me senses a branch somewhere far off in the woods cracking as it wrenchesawayfromits natural direction.
So much of my focus is on my magic that I barely remember to jerk myself away from the arrow Benedikt aimed at me. The vicious tip slices through the sleeve of my tunic with a stinging line of pain and thuds into the trunk behind me.
The break in my concentration jostles my magic. My arrow plunges into Benedikt’s shoulder—into the fleshy outer muscle, not right at the center of the joint where I’d have rendered his arm useless.
Benedikt sputters a curse and snatches at another arrow, his bow wobbling in his damaged but not disabled grasp. I whip another projectile of my own out of my quiver and notch it as quickly as my hands can move.
Please, please, please. I don’t want this to turn into the torture session the scourge sorcerers must be hoping for.
I don’t risk allowing any magic to speed my movements. Even with his injury, Benedikt moves faster than my inexperienced fumbling.
A second arrow thrums through the forest. As I leap to the side, my bow sways in my grip.
I have to do this. I have to end this—now.
Gods help me, truly.
I yank back the string and release before Benedikt has a chance to position a third arrow. My second careens toward him, my heart aching with the power bleeding out of me, hurtling it straight to its mark—
He tries to dodge, but my magic either catches him or makes the arrow veer. It slams home, digging into the sinews that attach his arm to his torso.
An anguished groan bursts from Benedikt’s lips. His arm sags, the bow slipping from his grasp.
He slumps back against his tree, blood coursing in a wet streak down his tunic. His fingers dangle limply. He gropes for the bow with his other hand, but there’s clearly no way he can shoot one-armed.
“No!” he shouts. “No, I swear, I was telling the truth. I don’t know how—“
