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Sarai stepped out of the way just in time, tripping me so that I fell flat on my face once more. I growled in frustration as I pushed myself up onto my feet.

Be calm. Calculate your moves. Don’t let your emotions control you.

The words my uncle had instilled in me when we trained replayed in my mind. But it was easier said than done. I looked over to where he was currently in battle with Volund maybe twenty feet away. The female warrior was dead on the ground not too far from them.

The wave of relief was short-lived when I suddenly felt something wrapping around my legs. I looked down to see a vine of water coming out of the nearby lake and slithering up my body like a python, constricting my legs, then my torso, then my arms. I tried to yank my arms out of the water-serpent’s grasp, but it held strong. Within moments, the pressure of it had me falling to my knees.

Sarai stepped towards me. Depravity shown in her diabolic glare, blood dripping from the side of her face where the rock had hit. Her long, slender fingers curled and coiled as she hissed an incantation under her breath. Within seconds, the water that surrounded my limbs began to boil, burning the flesh underneath it.

I screamed as pure agony enveloped my senses. It felt like my skin was being seared from the inside out as the boiling water scorched every limb. I fell forward onto my hands in insufferable pain, my uncle’s cries for me being drowned out by my own screams.

The torture was unbearable. I could smell my own flesh burning from my body, and the odor made me retch. The edge of my vision darkened as I could no longer bear the pain, the clanging sound of Volund and Balor’s swords slowly becoming muffled.

Sarai stepped closer, standing over me as I fell onto my side, convulsing in agony. My voice began to strain as my blood-curdling screams echoed around me.

Her magic was doing this – incinerating my flesh. And right at that moment, realization hit. The many scars that lined Elias’s body weren’t all from silver weapons. Many of them were burn marks. Boiling water, he had said, and I assumed it was thrown on him. But no.Shedid that to him. For three hundred years, she tortured him just like she was torturing me.

Deep rage began to overpower the pain. I glared at the witch who looked down at me with a sneer. Then with all the energy I could summon while under such distress, I slid my mother’s knife from its sheath and jammed it into the witch’s foot. Unlike a lycan, the weapon didn’t need to be silver to hurt her. It just needed to be sharp.

Sarai wailed in anguish, interrupting her spell. The pain of the boiling serpent immediately subsided and the water fell from her control, soaking my clothes. Blood poured from the new hole atop her boot where my knife remained lodged.

“Youbitch,” she shrieked, then kicked me so hard in the side, my body rolled a few times before landing on my back.

Before I could even try to pull myself up, Sarai threw herself on top of me, wrapping a hand around my throat.

“Why are you doing this?” I gargled as her hand tightened. I tried prying it off, but the residual pain of the burns made every movement agonizing. “Why do you work for him?”

She leaned in, her face just above mine, a terrifying craze in her eyes. “I’ll humor you before I kill you, little rat,” she hissed. “After my beloved husband died, I put a curse on his soul so that it would be tethered to this realm – so that one day he would be reborn. I hunted down a prophet to tell me who he would be reborn as, and they told me a Sprathian king.”

I gurgled as her grip tightened. She cursed her own husband’s soul so he would be reborn? Elias told me witches could do a lot of things, but…to be able to keep a soul from moving on to the afterlife? That seemed impossible, and diabolical.

“I waitedcenturies, working for these imbeciles, waiting for him,” she continued. “I did whatever they asked of me, whenever they asked. The moment Volund was pulled from his mother’s womb, I knew it was him. Felt his soul. At last. My Malakai.”

Oh gods. She was deranged.

“He promised he’d finally make me his queen if I help him finish out his master plan for power – to be the one true ruler of this world. And I will give him that world, even if I have to kill every last person in it. I will not lose him again.”

It was almost sad. And I would have felt bad for her if she hadn’t been responsible for so much of Elias’s suffering.

Gods. Volund was power-crazy and Sarai was love-crazy.

“You deserve each other,” I rasped out. “You’re both fucking delusional.”

Sarai only grinned, showing teeth, then whispered words in a language I didn’t understand. Panic rising, I attempted to fend her off, but water suddenly and quickly began pouring into my mouth and down my throat.

Sarai straddled me, one hand in the air and the other pinning me down as she chanted. I tried gasping for air, but only swallowed more water which seemed to trail from the small lake. I felt it gliding down my throat and consuming my lungs, which burned as they begged for relief.

It felt like Rebellia River and the waterfall all over again. Even though I was above water this time, water still filled my lungs. I was drowning. I needed air or I would die – slowly and painfully.

“Don’t kill her yet, you fool!” Volund’s distorted voice shouted.But Sarai either didn’t hear him or ignored him. I glanced up at her, murder in her silver eyes as she was killing me in such a slow, excruciating way. She removed her hand, no longer needing it to keep me subdued. Drowning me was doing a great job of that already.

“Aurelia!” Balor screamed my name, but it sounded distant – like a dream. I turned my head in his direction. He was overpowering Volund as his sword clashed with the king’s again and again, Volund stumbling backwards with each blow. But Balor’s attention kept turning back to me. It looked like he was screaming for me, but I heard no sound as I became closer to death.

Balor took one final big swing at Volund, making the king’s sword fly out of his grasp. Volund receded a few steps, his hands raised in defeat. Balor said something to him, then Volund slowly pulled the knives from his sash and tossed them far off to the side, one by one. When he finished, my uncle turned and ran towards me, abandoning his victorious fight with the king to get to me.

He made it a few strides before he slowed. Then stopped. Why did he stop?

My uncle’s sword fell from his grasp, clashing onto the ground.