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For King Artos rode right towards him, an entire army at his back.

‘Fuck…’ he breathed, his mind struggling against the haze of poison coursing through him.

He had to act fast.

With a final surge of energy, Wilder moved. He dismantled his shelter and hid the evidence of any form of comfort. Every task was like a hot lance to the wound in his arm, causing him to dry-retch with the pain of it. He realised with each action that for the first time in his life, he couldn’t fight. Not against one man, let alone an army.

And so he made a decision.

Wilder turned the horses loose, discarding their saddlebags at the foot of the mountain, where hopefully no soldier would enter the swirling mist.

He only took one thing.

The manacles Wren had made with the same foul venom that coursed through him now.

Holding the hefty weight of them in his hands as the drumbeat of the army’s march drew nearer, Wilder turned to Dax. ‘Make yourself scarce,’ he told the dog. ‘I don’t want Artos connecting anything about this with Malik.’

Daz gave a low bark and remained rooted to the spot.

‘Go!’ Wilder ordered, lacing his voice with authority, taking some of the much-needed strength he barely had. ‘Get out of here.’ He shooed Dax away, praying that he returned to his brother at the Singing Hare.

With a whimper, the mongrel retreated into the trees, and Wilder nearly collapsed with relief. He’d seen Mal lose too much for him to lose his canine companion as well.

His vision blurred, and for a moment, a wave of irrational anger washed over him. How had he gotten this far, only for it all to end here? For him to be so close to seeing Thea emerge from the Great Rite, only to be felled by a fucking scratch?

But he shoved those thoughts aside, urgency spurring him on.

He fell towards the tree where he’d left a coil of rope from his shelter. With a ragged gasp, he collapsed into the snow and worked the rope around himself and the trunk, his entire right side burning now.

When he could barely move, he twisted with his back against the bark to scratch something there with the tip of his dagger. A symbol, a calling card.

His dagger hit the snow, and he felt distant regret for all the care he’d taken with it only to leave it to rust in the wet. But the thought was fleeting as his breath turned shallow.

Just one more task, he told himself.One more thing and you can close your eyes.

He placed his wrists in the manacles, another wave of discomfort washing over him, and then he locked them in place.

‘What do we have here?’ came a deeply smug voice.

Wilder took a moment to rally his strength, to inhale a lungful of crisp mountain air, to be grateful that no one he cared for was here to witness his demise. He looked up into the handsome face of King Artos Fairmoore, his will no longer enough to keep the force of the venom at bay.

He met his enemy’s green-eyed stare without hesitation, without fear. ‘You need not have brought your whole army, Artos.’

‘A king of the midrealms is dead because of you,’ Artos declared. ‘An army to hunt you down and see you in chains is more than justified. But I see someone has saved us the trouble. It appears the rumours were true. I presume we have Althea Zoltaire to thank for your capture?’

‘She makes a formidable enemy,’ Wilder rasped.

The last thing he saw was Terrence’s yellow eyes, and the flap of his great wings against a bright blue sky.

‘I regret nothing,’ he murmured, picturing stormy celadon eyes.

Then, darkness swallowed him whole.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

THEA

Dawn spilt like blood across the vast and ancient glassy surface. Thea had been here before. It was the Great Lake of Aveum, or another of its likeness, situated amid the desolate expanse of an endless winter.