Page 225 of A Vow of Embers

I had to stop her.

Because her claim was true—her skills, her muscle memory, were returning to her. She came at my left side, where I had dropped my shoulder, and managed to superficially slice at my neck. I moved out of her way just in time, but I could feel the blood dripping down my skin. I lunged toward her but my blade landed harmlessly against her breastplate, and it gave her another chance to cut me on my upper arm.

I did not have armor on but I wasn’t going to let that be a detriment. I wouldn’t allow her to defeat me. There was too much at stake.

Calling on every bit of my anger and training, I probed and found her own weaknesses. She failed to properly protect her right side and I stabbed her under the arm again, drawing another cry of pain. She growled and swung at me, landing a surface slash on my cheek, and I used that moment to lance a deeper wound into the side of her neck. She managed to get many slices on my forearms, my cheeks, my shoulders.

But she was worse off. The wounds I inflicted on her were deeper, while my own were superficial. I was no longer allowing her to get close enough to do real damage, and every time I permitted her past my defenses, I was doing so in order to lash out at her. Anger built andbuilt inside me as I stabbed and cut and punched and kicked as if the lives of everyone I loved depended upon me winning. I funneled all that anger into my movements and it gave me a strength I had never known.

I was unrelenting. I never let up, never allowed her to breathe or regroup. She was barely fending me off, each pass weaker than the last. I hammered down blows on her, determined to make her pay for each life that she had allowed to be stolen.

Ignoring the pain I felt, the ache in my muscles, the stitch in my side, I kept striking and striking.

Until, at last, she suddenly fell to her knees. Demaratus had once told me that hand-to-hand combat was often nothing more than a test of personal endurance—that the one who ran out of their strength first would be the one who died.

Lysimache had no more fight left in her as blood poured down all over her body. Sweat streamed down her face and she was breathing hard. She threw her sword to the ground, probably in an attempt to stay my hand so that I wouldn’t kill her.

“I surrender,” she said, lifting her hands.

Surrender? Impossible. She deserved death. She deserved worse than death for what she had done.

This might have been a trick, something meant to lure me into a false sense of security so that she could strike, but I was prepared. Rage thundered inside me as I went over and grabbed her by the hair, jerking her head back so that I would have a clean shot at her neck.

“I am a servant of the goddess,” she said. “You have taken vows to not harm me.”

“You do not serve the goddess. But if you ever believed in her, say your prayers now,” I said through clenched teeth and raised my xiphos. She would pay for the death and destruction she had wrought.

She laughed, and I saw the blood coming out of her nose. “We are the same, you and I.”

That made me hesitate.

“All that I have done, I have done out of love for my sister. For the vengeance she is owed,” she said, and I heard how she wheezed. I must have broken some of her ribs. “You would do what I have done. We are the same.”

Demaratus’s words filled my head, and I remembered the story he had told me about the Daemonian king who told an unfaithful servant, “I would kill you if I were not so angry!”

I was too angry. I had been too angry for a long time. If I struck her down now, wewouldbe the same. I would be like her. I would be using my overwhelming desire for revenge, for what she had done to Locris, to the women here at the temple, as an excuse.

I had to stop giving in to those kinds of emotions, letting them overwhelm and control me.

Getting answers was more important than my need for vengeance.

Xander’s voice filled my head.You can choose to be different. To change things.

I released her hair and took a step back, ignoring the shock on Lysimache’s face.

A moment later Suri returned with a rope. She asked me with her eyes what had happened.

“Lysimache thought she might go out in a blaze of glory, but we are not done with our conversation,” I told her. “Tie her up.”

I kept my xiphos pointed at the high priestess while Suri went behind her and wrapped the rope around Lysimache’s wrists, making sure it was tight. “I am done talking,” Lysimache said.

“We’ll see. Now get up. We’re leaving.”

Lysimache stumbled out of the gymnasium, barely able to propel herself forward. I stayed behind her, within striking distance. Suri had the same idea, keeping close to my left side with both of her daggers drawn.

Kunguru monitored us, flying from rooftop to rooftop along our path.

Zalira, Ahyana, and Io waited by the archway. I saw the questions in their eyes as we approached. There would be time to answer them later.