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Gireth slapped his hand on the railing a couple of times. “That’ll do it, boys.”
Chairs screeched on the terrace, and soon the front doors to the villa swung open. Gireth emerged, glaive in hand, and immediately moved to Aeyis’s side, keeping distance from Renton.
Fine. Renton would apologize later. Honestly, they all needed to have a conversation about what they were doing here, lingering as if they wanted to be something more. Maybe a strong, efficient team. If that was true, they needed to clarify some rules.
Aeyis gave him estimated coordinates, and soon the orb spat them out on cracked ground that oozed heat from the sun’s unforgiving rays. It took a few more uses of the orb before the promising scent of electrified storms lured them into a Ruzgorn camp.
Fury propelled him into the crowds surrounding a large clearing among their dusty canvas tents. He shoved barbarians aside until he had sight of the fighters causing a ruckus. His lungs compressed.
Tenah was on the ground. Flames surrounded her, keeping a furious warlord from slicing into her with his curved blade.
Renton pushed the last row of Ruzgorn aside, prepared to leap in front of Tenah, but something latched onto his armor and tugged him back. With an elbow cocked, ready to slam into the culprit, Renton spun around.
Vesara stood before him, a dagger raised to his throat. “Don’t you humiliate her.”
“You going to kill me, Kala?” Renton leaned into her blade. She’d caught him on the wrong day.
With an eye roll, Vesara sheathed the knife back into her bandolier. “No, but all of them will kill us if we interfere.” She motioned to the wall of red-cloaked devils surrounding them. “It only ends when one of them is dead. If she wins, she gains the warlord’s rank and magic.”
Renton’s gaze drifted back to Tenah, his frown deepening. She’d clambered to her feet, her flames rising like a wall behind her. Shallow cuts bled along her arms and sunburnt cheeks.
“You were supposed to watch over her,” Renton accused.
Vesara rested her forearms on the rickety fence separating them from the field. “Don’t act like you didn’t have my narcissistic personality figured out from the start. I wasn’t keen on letting her burn through me to carry out her goal.” After a pause, she added, “She can’t stew on her demons, Ren.”
Muscles in his jaw worked. “How long have they been fighting?”
She tipped her head to the side, her short hair parting to reveal a cluster of tiny suns inked into the flesh behind her ear. “You don’t want to know.”
Renton fastened his arms over his chest to keep from reaching for his blades. “She hits the ground again, and I’m going in.”
But the way Tenah was working powerful bolts of flame into her opponent? This clearly wasn’t an even match. She wasn’t fighting against the warlord. She was fighting to wrap a leash around Chaos. To tame it.
She was risking everything. Every drop of her being, all in pursuit of protecting innocent lives. Not because of an addiction or an obsession with power.
Renton knew she hadn’t cared for those shadows at the gathering, but their souls obviously meant something to her. Motivated her enough to never want to witness that kind of horror again.
Seeing Tenah clawing and raging against the darkness inside of her tilted his world on its axis and cast it in a new light.
Thiswas a protector.
Not someone who tracked down diseased shadows to slaughter them without second thought. He’d robbed them of a chance to heal. Robbed their families of a loved one. While he’d felt justified at the time, stretching himself paper thin under the belief that he’d been purging the world of threats, in reality, he’d only made it worse by feeding the bloodshed.
Aeyis was wrong. Renton didn’t deserve happiness. But what others deserved from him was someone better. Someone with the skill to fight for them, not against them. His path forward would look a hell of a lot different.
Right after he let Kherathi carve the shard out of his heart.
Chapter28
Tenah
He’s scared of us, Chaos purred into her mind.
Tenah clutched a bloody hand to the long cut down her forearm, willing the hot pain away. She wasn’t certain how long they’d been fighting, only that her legs were no longer stable and her lungs couldn’t suck in enough fresh air through the smoke of their magic. Mercifully, the smoke mostly hid the circle of enlivened Ruzgorn caging them in, though their shouts had become nothing more than indistinguishable chants, voices blending together.
Chaos unfurled tiny branches of electricity through her channels and chirped from her gathering bolts of flame.Give them the blood and marrow of their almighty warlord. Take what is yours.
Biting into her lip until blood pooled in her mouth, she strived to bend it to her will. To understand it. To break it.
