The metal had spilled all the way out into the hallway and, losing my balance slightly, I slid down the incline until I’d landed on my butt right in front of Koltar.

He was on his feet in an instant. At the same time, our eyes fell on the axe on the floor between us. Choking in a gasp, I lunged for it, but Koltar’s arms were longer. His claws seized it and then swung. I braced for the blow that I knew I wouldn’t be able to dodge in time.

The blow landed with a metallic clang, and I had a second to think that was very odd before the burst of pain came.

But it didn’t come.

I opened my eyes just as a second clang split the air. Koltar was bringing the axe down in sharp movements against the chain that bound his other hand.

“He should have killed you when he had the chance,” Koltar hissed between blows. The chain began to weaken and warp. “Then we would all be safe.”

“Oh, please. You don’t think Joleb would have killed you, too? He’s got you chained to a fucking wall!”

“Not for long,” Koltar said. “And even if he had decided to kill me, I do not fear death. It just means I will be carried in cotton to the Mother’s fields all the sooner.”

“Yeah, right, like she’d want you in her fields after everything you’ve done,” I spat. God, talking this much was making my head pound with hot misery.

With a hard yank, Koltar wrenched the chain apart. His hand came away from the wall, the metal cuff still locked around it.

I assumed he’d drop the axe then.

But, alarmingly, he didn’t.

He straightened, his grip tightening on the handle. My heart crawled all the way up to my throat when he turned to face me with that weapon in his hand. I stumbled back into the mess of the hoard room and grabbed the first sharp thing I could find – a short, pointed sword. As Koltar advanced on me, I knew with chilling certainty that if I had to kill him I would do it.

“The Mother knows that all I do, I do for her,” Koltar said, his voice hard and rising, like he was delivering a sermon. “If I have to kill one to preserve her path, surely she will not turn from me for that.”

He raised the axe. I tightened my hold on my blade.

The brave man gets his soup and the brave woman gets to see her mate again.

She gets to live to tell him his father’s name. And to tell him that he’s a father now, too.

I would never be willing to give up that moment with Skalla. I screamed and swung the blade.

Without actually knowing I’d done it, I activated the same white light on the sword that I’d seen on Joleb’s blades. Maybe it was heat or electricity or some other alien form of energy, but whatever it was, it sliced through Koltar’s wrist like the man was made of butter. There was no way, even with a sharp sword, I’d normally be strong enough to drive it right through his scales like that. But there I was, severing his hand like it was nothing at all. The hand and the axe both fell to the floor with a sick thump. Blood spewed from the stump, and even as I held my sword aloft between us, ready to strike again, I found myself stammering out a frantic, “Sorry!”

Why the fuck are you apologizing? He was going to kill you!

I wasn’t sure if that was Elvi’s voice or mine, but whoever’s it was, it was right.

“Never mind,” I panted, jabbing the sword shakily towards him. “I take that back.”

Koltar moved as if in a fugue, apparently not noticing or caring about his missing hand or fallen axe. He reached his remaining claws for me, aiming for the throat.

But before I had to lift my sword higher to defend myself, he halted so sharply and suddenly it was like someone had shoved against his chest. And the next moment was very confusing, because there actually was a hand at his chest, only it wasn’t attached to a person. I thought that somehow it was Koltar’s own severed hand, only, no, this one had dark yellow-ish scales instead of Koltar’s blue ones. The yellow-scaled fingers were still clutched in death around the handle of a... something. I couldn’t actually tell what the weapon was because it had been buried hilt-deep in Koltar’s chest.

There was no question who’d done it. I doubted Skalla had even seen me in here yet, and even so, he was still saving me. Doing it in perhaps the most gruesome way possible, by literally ripping another man apart and hurling the entire severed hand and weapon like a fucking dart, but still.

Koltar stared blankly down at the fist jutting out from his chest. He lifted his bleeding stump of a wrist, remembered dazedly that his hand was gone, then used his other one to peel the yellow-scaled fingers from the weapon’s handle. He dropped the lifeless limb, then looked as if he was going to try to pull out the weapon sunk into his chest, but he didn’t get that far. He collapsed down onto his knees, then fell forward onto his face without another sound. He didn’t pray. He didn’t beg for forgiveness. He didn’t breathe.

He was dead.

Now that he was no longer an immediate threat I had to fight, horror rose in my throat at the scene before me. I vomited violently, my body heaving and fighting to spew up whatever was left inside me, even though there wasn’t much. The act of retching made my head spin. I kept the sword in one hand, plastering my other against my forehead as if that would somehow ease the pressure inside my skull.

I have to find Skalla.

But in the end, he found me. Not exactly intentionally. He burst through an outer wall into the hallway, his limbs locked around Joleb as the two of them wrestled, frothing with berserker power. Joleb still had a handle on one of his blades, and he wrenched it up, slicing through the thinner skin of one of Skalla’s wings, driving the white glow of the blade upwards until it hit bone. Silver blood poured from the wound, and I screamed.

It was my scream, more than any pain he could have felt, that sent Skalla spiralling into an even more virulent state. His entire frame spasmed and pulsed, his scales jutting outward like spikes on horrifying angles as he locked his fingers around Joleb’s throat and lifted him high into the air with only one powerful hand.

I dropped my sword and smacked my hands over my mouth, sobbing against my sweaty skin, needing so badly to call out to him but not wanting to distract him now. Joleb bucked and swung his blade down onto Skalla’s snout, but thank fuck it didn’t seem to have much of an effect on his scales the way it had on his wing. He was made of stronger stuff than a regular Bohnebregg male – my own experience with Koltar had shown me that a white blade like that should have cut right through his scales.

But it didn’t. The blade bounced off, like a skate not finding purchase against ice, and with a shouted curse, Joleb locked eyes with me.

And then he hurled it.

My hands fell away from my face and it was like they moved through thick honey, because everything seemed to have slowed. The blade rotated end over end, handle over blade. I knew, rationally, that it must have been moving fast, because it looked like a glowing ring and it whistled through the air as it came for me, but still, it didn’t feel fast. Skalla’s maddened eye rolled in his head. He saw me. Saw the blade.

Saw that he’d never make it in time.

There was no time even though that blade moved so fucking slow.

Even my breathing was slow. A calm, deep in-and-out as death hurtled white-hot towards me.

Skalla dropped Joleb and then the slowness winked away and everything happened fucking fast. Like he was punting a hockey puck across the rink, Skalla used his power to send Joleb skidding bullet-quick along the floor. Just when the massive, sliding warrior would have taken me out at the knees, Skalla drove his fist high in the air from the other end of the hallway, and Joleb jerked upwards with a rough movement, his body levitating in the air before me. The unmistakable sound of many bones crunching at the same time rattled my teeth, and then, before I could take another breath, was the jarring thunk of impact. A bright white point appeared at Joleb’s back, right at the level of my eyes. The blade he’d hurled with his own hand was now buried in his guts.