Snap. His jaws gnashed together, and I remained frozen, terror rooting my feet in place.

The window. Better to die from the fall than torn apart by this half-man, half-wolf thing. Better to die clean than shredded by teeth.

But I couldn’t move. Like the sight of the dead warg in the woods, the primordial roots of my brain screamed at me to remain still, overriding any desire to end it.

I brought my hands to my chest, resting them there. The pain of moving them cleared my mind.

When I took a step back, Miro snarled, a sound more like pain than anger.

That makes two of us, I thought, but you deserve it. You deserve it all.

He followed me, angling to cut me off from my only escape, lurching with every step. His stertorous panting filled the air between us, more saliva spilling over to leave silvery pools on the floor.

I was so close to the window, heart pounding so hard I tasted blood in my throat, and everything happened at once.

A thin, dark shadow unfurled itself from the shattered door, rising tall. Miro howled in agony, muscles bunching, and he lunged, jaws snapping wide open for my throat.

Thorn barreled into him with a crash, the sickening sounds of thorns piercing flesh, and Miro immediately turned on him, directing those warped teeth to the golem’s arm.

The thorns tore his mouth, shredding his tongue, and the warg screamed. Thorn wrapped his arms around Miro, squeezing tight, blood dripping between every point their bodies touched.

Miro screamed again, and gave one last burst of effort to get to me, breaking free of Thorn, claws scrabbling at the floor and leaving deep gouges as he half-crawled, half-lunged towards me.

I threw myself backwards, slamming into the wall with a sharp expulsion of breath, bright lights dancing in front of my eyes as the pain ricocheted through my hands once more—but I needn’t have.

Because Thorn, made with Bane’s blood, saved me.

The golem gripped Miro, dragging him back. He locked a spiny arm around the warg’s throat and squeezed, driving the needles through Miro’s throat.

He struggled backwards, the two of them lurching in a violent dance, and threw himself through the window, still wrapped around Miro.

They dropped away in silence, leaving me panting there in the empty quiet of the tower.

I gasped for breath, fighting off the urge to pass out, the blackened blooms before my eyes, arms quivering uncontrollably.

And when I had control of myself, I counted.

Many long heartbeats passed, but nothing came up the stairs. I shuffled to the window, closing my eyes for a brief moment before I looked down.

Miro’s twisted body lay far below, the one wide eye staring upwards now glazed and empty, his spine contorted in a way no living being could survive.

Thorn had shattered from the fall.

Parts of him were still recognizable… half a hand, a twitching foot, what might have been his jaw.

But nothing remained of him save an explosion of thorns, thrown wide, spread across the ground among Rose’s trampled petals.

I blinked, looking at his destruction.

No, it was not quite a circle. It was a savage ruin.

But it was close enough.

My throat ached, swelling up tight; I gazed back at the battlefield, where Bane and Hakkon remained locked in snarling, shredding combat, the monstrous vampire desperately beating his ruined wing to rise up.

My fiend was bleeding from a thousand wounds, his face half clawed away, his wings bitten and torn.

Was I willing to gamble my life on folk tales and fairy lore? More importantly, was I willing to gamble his life?

I flinched as Hakkon angled those too-long jaws for his throat, drawing fresh blood.

Yes. I was willing. The whole time I’d been looking at the deciphered ritual wrong, because I hadn’t possessed all the keys to unlocking it. If I was right, if what Hakkon told me was true… it could help.

Maybe. But gambling on a maybe was better than doing nothing at all.

I nodded to myself, acknowledging that I was going to throw everything I had into this final action, the last thing I would ever do.

It would be worth it, simply to save Bane.

In a circle of thorns, I said silently, with blood freely given.

I held up my shaking, sluggishly-leaking hands. My blood was his. I’d offered it to him in life, and it was his in death.

Not allowing myself to think of the promise that would never be fulfilled, my crushed hopes and dreams, I looked out at Bane as he fought on, my heart both aching and full.

Tears shed in love.

I allowed them past my chest, through my aching throat. They spilled down my cheeks in a silent fall.

I hadn’t cried from love when we married, but I would cry for it now. He’d come for me. He loved me. And now he must flee without me. That was all that mattered.

I see you, and you hear me. 

He had. I let them flow, making no effort to hold them back.

I turned from the window, to descend the stairs and water Rose and Thorn with my tears of love, my offered blood. My one last hope that there was something left to save any of us.

A furious growl echoed up the stairs, rising into a crescendo of a hundred voices, merged into one singular, monstrous echo.

Wargs.

I heard their claws scrabbling on stone, their high yips and excited, panting breaths, coming closer. Drawn by blood, the door now wide open for the feast, nobody left to guard me.

As the first claws ripped at the opening Miro had made, I fled back to the window.

Let the tears flow, let the blood run. They were getting in, fighting each other to be first to devour me, manic snarls drowning each other out.

One way or another, I would die here. The only choice left was how I chose to die.

I made myself look at Bane one last time, said, I love you, to unhearing air, and tipped myself over the edge.

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Chapter 48 Bane

With great agony came great determination.

The determination to perform one last deed in this life, and to make it a great one—a deed born not of selfishness, nor self-glorification, nor conceit.

Today I would win no thrones, no wars, no homages.

Today I would avenge the one I loved, the one the ancestors pushed into my path, and for her sake I would leave this world a better place.

If Cirri did not live, neither did I, but with my last breath I would bring Hakkon down as well. No more death. No more innocents led to the slaughter.

I would destroy him in her name and let peace fill the void he left.

As if in defiance of my hypocrisy, the wargs tore into me. They threw themselves against my armor, impaling themselves even as their teeth and claws seeked for flesh to rend. My wings hung heavy, a useless, limp weight of shredded flesh and bone.

The world was darkening at the edges, and still Hakkon resisted death, fighting with the same desperation, the same ecstasy that entwined into a single unnameable emotion on the battlefield.

His jaws clamped shut around my shoulder, digging deep, claws skating off the armored carapace of my flesh.

We were locked together, tooth and claw, and still he didn’t die.

He growled words low in his throat as he gnawed into me, a language indistinguishable to any beyond those of us who had walked in dark places.

“You could have been something,” he snarled. “We are one and the same, brother.”

I had once believed that.

Hakkon was my dark mirror, the reason I had done what I had done. The reason I had offered myself to the night, to the primal rage that lives deep in the minds of mankind.