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Then I opened my eyes and stared straight into hers. They were crystalline blue. Clear, determined, strong. I thrust a thick blade of ice up from my chest and through her own.

Her eyes went wide and she coughed, choked as she tried to inhale into shredded lungs, then coughed again, spattering my face with bright blood, once, twice. She collapsed onto me. The shard of ice protruded from her back, split clean through leather and ring mail. Blood dripped down it in thick globs, cooled and coagulated rapidly by the ice.

One of the soldiers pinning my arms swore, and I moved the power to my hand, sending another ice blade shooting from my palm. He was ready, and better armored than the woman had been. He ducked low, letting the ice shatter against his plate, but he grunted under the force of it.

The two stood and dragged me from under the dead soldier, yanking me to my feet. The soldier who had gagged me kept the gag tight, tying it behind my head as I thrashed. And as I struggled, I saw how greatly I was surrounded. A ring of soldiers, a hoard of them, all on me, pushing, grabbing, shoving. I flung another blade of ice at my attackers and missed.

“Halja!” I heard Byrgir’s voice again, closer now.

As they tried to bind my hands, I glimpsed him through smoke and dying flame, mud and burned trees. He was fighting his way toward me. Feral, desperate, like death incarnate. He cut through soldier after soldier, clearing a path with fists and feet along with his formidable sword, occasionally firing off a repelling blast or flinging summoned flame into an attacker’s face.

But there were so many. Too many. He was drowning in soldiers, attacked from all sides. Garmr fought in a blur of fangs and gore beside him, but could not clear the way between us.

That was the last I saw of Byrgir.

Fighting, slashing, pushing toward me as a giant wolf flanked him, the two of them carving and tearing a desperate path of blood and pain.

A blindfold was pulled roughly over my eyes and cinched tight. I screamed into the gag, thrashing against my bonds as my cracked ribs protested. My throat felt torn ragged, aching with the force of my muffled scream. I was kicked, lifted off my feet, then carried and dragged.

I thrashed and fought, doing my best to drive my knees into my captor, which only gained me threats from the soldiers. I was lifted and thrown over the back of a horse, my broken ribs grinding together as the saddle dug into my side. I kicked and struggled still, but they pinned my legs and bound my ankles together.

The blindfold slipped up my forehead with my struggling, and I could see glimpses of Rhyanaes, smoke and flames through the trees as the horse galloped away.

Nobody followed.

I saw no pursuers, no witnesses to the direction I traveled, save one. Byrgir had seen me go. His words echoed in my head.

Stay close to me.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Iawoke in darkness. Pain ripped through my left side with each breath, and I could not inhale completely. I coughed. Flecks of bright red blood splattered the hand I held up, searing pain the answer to my movement. Short, controlled breaths were all I could manage. My right shoulder ached deep in the joint from catching the sword blow, and the gash it had left burned. Luckily, it wasn’t much more than skin deep. I don’t know how long I laid there, immobile and aching. My existence was one breath to the next.

A light flared in the dark, the bright line of a crack in a door and entering candlelight. My head pounded and I struggled to clear my blurred vision.

“Awake. Good,” said a woman’s voice. “Ah. I told them to fix you up. Clearly they didn’t listen.”

A woman’s face glowed in the candlelight, the single source of illumination casting shadows on her wrinkled face. She used her candle to light several more, bathing the small room in a warm glow. A contrast to cold, bare stone walls. She bore the same three piercings through her lips that I had seen on the anchorites during my visit to the Temple in Avanis, but no chain bound her mouth.

She crouched beside me and placed a hand on my broken ribs.

“This will hurt,” was all she said.

Roaring, searing pain shot through me. It felt like she was burning my skin, melting through to the bone. I felt my ribs shift under my flesh, pulling at already torn muscles, and both her hand and my skin glowed with a deep blue light, almost black at its edge. I screamed.

As quickly as it began, it was over. The pain ceased, the light faded, and she removed her hand. I took a shuddering breath and felt no resistance, no pain.

“What the hell was that?” I choked.

“Healing. Better now?” she asked.

I nodded, and sat up. My head still rang with pain, my shoulder was stiff and aching, but I could move.

“Let me see your shoulder,” she commanded.

I flinched away from her touch, but she grabbed the injured shoulder and steadied it in her view. I bit down on the groan I wanted to emit. She placed her hand over the torn flesh, and the same dim light emanated from it, along with a similar answering pain. Less intense than repairing my ribs had been. When she was done, I leaned over and put my head in my hands, trying to regain my breath.

“Here, drink this. All of it.” She set a large glass jug of water on the table beside the cot where I lay. “I’ll return with food.”