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The ringing in my ears made my head spin. Something wet and warm ran down my neck. Blood, from my ears, my face. But I survived, I was alive.
Razak ran from the pool—filthy purple cloak bellowing—toward Lark.
A dagger, he had a dagger. He couldn’t mean to hurt Lark after everything we’d just been through.
“Stop him!”
CHAPTER55
Lark
I’d been drowningin agony, swallowing it, breathing it, coated in its poisonous barbs—I’d invited the power in, I knew that much. I’dwantedit. But holding it took everything I had. Arin had been with me, for a while, his voice and his warmth soothing, and there, in his arms, I’d drifted.
But then the pain had surged, and the screaming began. The whole of the shatterlands screamed, and so did I.
It came and went like a firework through my mind, leaving silence and numbness behind.
Arin…
I blinked at the tiled walls, walls I remembered, but I couldn’t place how I’d gotten here.
“Lark!”
Arin!
I turned.
Not Arin.Razak straddled me, dropped, and his fist struck me low in the gut. “Razak?”
He leaned forward, filling my vision with his scarred and bloody face. “Brother. It can only be you and I. He can’t have you. Nobody can have you. We die together, and in death, we’ll be together, forever.” He pressed a dagger to his own neck.
“No.” I grabbed his arm. “No, don’t. Not like this.” He fought my hold, tried to drag the blade across skin, but it couldn’t end here, not for him. I held his stare, held his hand, and the dagger.
Draven loomed, and his face told me to let go, to let my brother die here, on his knees, straddling me. Let him cut his own throat and bleed out.
“You’re mine.” Razak sneered. “In life and death.”
I shook my head. “I’m not dying for you. And you’re not dying here. Draven, hold him.”
Draven grabbed a fistful of Razak’s hair, holding him still. I pulled his hand gripping the dagger away from his throat, then pried it from his fingers. We had him.Finally—we had him. Draven hauled him off me, and he went, stumbling while dangling from Draven’s fist.
“You rat bastard, you’re ours now.”
“No!” Razak howled. “You can’t do this.”
“No? The only thing keeping you alive is Lark. Once he gives the word, I’ll break your thin spine over my knee.”
Arin flew in, wrapping me in his arms. He hauled me upright. “Lark… Lark, gods, you’re all right?” He grasped my face. “You are all right? Did he hurt you? The dagger, I saw the dagger—”
“It’s all right.” I smiled, almost laughed at his outpouring of affection. “I’m all right.” I wasn’t, but it didn’t matter. “Is it done? Did you do it?” Cuts marred his face, and blood had dried a path from his ear, but he seemed to be well enough.
“It’s done. It’s over,” he said. “We did it, we broke them. It’s truly over.”
Almost. It wasalmostover.
Arin sobbed a smile. “Are you sure you’re all right?”
Tired, cold, aching, but alive. Which was the most I could hope for. I gripped his shoulder. “You saved me, didn’t you? Even though I told you not to.”
