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Her needle thin blade came down, piercing between the two small bones of my forearm and going all the way through, pinning me to the ground. “You’re no soldier. You’re just a blacksmith.”
I screamed as she twisted the blade.
“I’m going to enjoy ripping you apart,” she spat. “If only the gargoyle was as fragile as you. He screamed when I broke him, too.”
An arrow whizzed by from the eastern end of the pass. She turned her head, but I didn’t need to look. I had already heard the beating of a thousand wings, the battle cry of the gargoyles as they came in behind, trapping the last remnants of Brenna’s army in the pass. Her army turned to face them.
I drew Persuasion and slid it across the back of her ankle, severing her tendon.
Brenna spat a curse and went down, howling and grabbing for her injured ankle as blood sprayed. Her foot hung useless. She would never stand again.
I grabbed the blade of her sword and pulled up, gritting my teeth as it slid up from my arm, unpinning myself.
“You insect!” she screamed and threw herself at me.
My head hit a rock and bounced off into a flaming fist. The tang of blood filled my mouth.
“Animal!” Her fist struck another blow. “Upstart pretender!” Another punch, this time from the left. “What do you know of magic? Of war? Nothing! You’re a blacksmith! I—” Right punch. “—will not—” Left. “—be defeated—” Right again. “—by ablacksmith!”
I waited for the next fist, broken, bleeding, unable to move. But it didn’t come. Through blood-hazed eyes, I watched as another fist came down, this one ashen, to grip hers.
Terror slackened Brenna’s face as she turned and met Cian’s red nightmare eyes.
“I told you not to touch him.” He let her fist go only long enough to draw back and deliver a punch of his own.
Bone shattered and her jaw hung lopsided. She tried to back away, to rise on her severed ankle, but her foot folded beneath her. When she couldn’t run, she crawled.
But Hellion was there, a shadow in the flame. They brought their khopesh down and Brenna screamed as they severed her hands.
Phantasm glimmered as Cian lifted it and brought it down in one decisive swing.
And this time, he took her head.
DeathandNightmaresscreamedthrough the pass that afternoon, but I was not there to witness the last of Brenna’s army fall. I was not there as Odan put his dagger through the eye of a djinn, or as Harif pinned two men with one arrow. I did not hear the victors chanting my name, or watch as Hellion slayed a hundred warriors with their magic. I didn’t get to witness Cian carve out Brenna’s heart and present it to Devonay on one knee.
Although I would hear about all of that over the next days as I recovered.
Instead, I lay half-dead in the makeshift infirmary inside the castle walls with the rest of the injured, whisked there by some well-meaning medic trying to save my pretty face.
I didn’t care about my face. Brenna’s sword had severed a tendon in my arm. I didn’t know if I’d ever hold a hammer again.
Cian and Hellion came straight from the battlefield and found the healers already hard at work to mitigate the damage. They were red and black head to toe, covered in soot and gore as they knelt next to my cot.
“How bad is it?” Cian demanded.
Sweat beaded on their foreheads as they worked, healing magic thrumming through me. “It’s extensive.”
“Cian…” I licked my swollen lips. Everything was swollen. She had broken my face, my nose, my jaw, and burned me from the inside out.
Hellion’s bloody fingers fumbled to grasp mine. “Don’t try to talk, Nevahn. Your jaw is broken.”
As if I couldn’t tell from the angle and the pain. Even with a broken jaw and a nose full of blood, I managed, “Cian, you’re… scaring… the children.”
I wasn’t sure he understood me until he turned to look over his shoulder. A pair of youngsters huddled harder against their mother, trembling at the sight of all the blood.
Cian threw back his head and let out a loud, bellowing laugh. When he did, I knew everything would be okay, even if they couldn’t save my face.
I remember little about the initial days other than the pain and all the hands on me, moving bones, shifting pieces. Low voices murmured around me day and night, each one a lance of unbearable pain.
