Page 149 of Fortune's Blade

I would not give her the satisfaction of showing fear, although I did feel it, no one could have done otherwise in her presence. But I felt something else, too. Because she wasn’t the only one who battle loved, whose blood sang with it, who had been born specifically for it.

I was terrified, but I was excited, too, so much so that I forgot one small matter, but Ray did not.

A sword! A sword! Get to a goddamned sword!

Ray’s distant, distorted voice echoed through my mind, and I dove, just under the slashing blow the startled goddess aimed for me. I hit the ground hard, on my left shoulder, and it felt injured, probably from one of the blows I’d taken in the skies. But right now, it felt good, too, like the lip I’d just bitten through. I smiled a bloody smile, and grabbed one of the fallen colossi’s abandoned weapons.

It was huge and bitterly cold, but the unbroken edge gleamed in the sunlight, and although my mind was busy telling me that I couldn’t lift that thing, that it was the length of a railway car, that it would break my arm to even try, lift it I did.

And found it surprisingly light in my grip, as if it had been made for it, so much so that I snatched up another after dodging several more blows. And stood up with both of them in my grasp, mirroring my mother’s former stance with her short swords. And causing great Athena to pause again.

“Who are you?” the harsh voice rasped. “What are you?”

It was the same strange language that I had instinctively known before, and which now tumbled off my tongue as if I had been born to it. “Destiny,” I whispered, and struck.

The battle that followed wasn’t one that can easily be described. I had fallen into crazed fury in combat many times; it was practically my default. But this was different.

This was art and poetry and music: the rich red blood splattering the pale blue of the sky; the sighs and grunts and pants of exertion, each telling their own individual story; the ringing together of swords in a staccato, brutal rhythm. This was pure adrenaline pounding through my veins, a strange, overwhelming, savage joy because this was what I was meant for. If I had ever doubted it, I did so no longer.

Fortuna had done her job well, and designed a creature who lived for war, breathed it, reveled in it. But so did Athena. And for every blow I landed, she struck two. Most of them I parried, but not all, and while I bled her, she bled me back, and she bled me more.

The odds were supposed to be even I thought, as a brutal blow struck one of my swords from my hand, sending it flying. I was built to match my opponents, to counter them one on one! It was why I had wanted her blood, to take her form, to be her equal—

And maybe I was physically. But five hundred years of practice paled beside five thousand, or five million, for all I knew. Her skill was simply unparalleled, and I was outmatched.

This wasn’t going to work.

I’d no sooner had the thought than she laughed, loud and echoing, perhaps having glimpsed it in my mind, for I did not know what her powers were. Or perhaps simply seeing it on my face, in my faltering steps, in my rapid breathing. Hers had not changed, had never quickened even the slightest, as far as I could tell. Indeed, she seemed to draw strength and vigor from combat, as if her love of it overrode any toll it took of her.

She must weaken eventually, but I doubted I would be here to see it.

I doubted I would be here to see anything for much longer.

And she agreed.

“Destiny,” she mocked, with a wicked twist to her lips. “Yes, one of us will taste it soon, I think, just as Fortuna did. And her spawn, your . . . mother?”

I didn’t answer, but I didn’t have to. That keen intellect had already seen the truth. And had no problem exploiting it.

“Yes, your mother. Sad, to give birth to a child just to watch her die. Do you hear me, wretch?” she called out, her voice echoing over the battlefield. “I am about to slay your child! Are you watching? I hope I left you enough life for this, for you to see the final blow after all the trouble you’ve caused me!”

A shield hit me in the face that she hadn’t had a second ago, and her foot tripped me up, both happening so quickly that I had no chance to dodge. My feet were swept out from under me and I hit the ground, rolling even as I saw her sword flashing down, despite knowing that I wouldn’t be fast enough. I could only hope that Athena was wrong, and that my mother would not see this, wherever she was.

And if she was close, I did not see her. But I saw something else, something . . . unexpected. For another sword parried the killing blow, and the clash was so loud that it cracked across the battlefield like a lightning strike, echoing off the mountains and ripping apart the skies, sending the ravens flying again, this time in startlement.

They tore through the air in a scattering of black, and I looked up to see something that my brain could not fully take in. It was my father, but not as I knew him. But as a literal giant of a man, taller than Athena, and looking at the goddess with such all-encompassing rage that I barely recognized him.

And then the ice sword he held scraped all the way down her blade, a rusty, ringing sound that felt like it deafened me before it reached the hilt and he shoved her away. “My child, too,” he hissed, through fully extended fangs.

Right before a fight started that made mine look slapdash by comparison.

Not because my father was better with a sword, although he had practically been born with one in his hand, learning to fight almost before he learned to walk. But because of sheer, animalistic, all-encompassing fury. It was the blood rage of a master, and a first-level one at that, fighting for family, honor, and perhaps, just perhaps, for love.

I stared at him in wonder, because I couldn’t quite believe it. But it must be true. I didn’t know if it was for my mother or for me, but no one fought like that for any other reason, not caring if they hurt, not caring if they bled.

He was struck a hundred times as he pressed her, with both of them moving so quickly that I could barely see the fight, and could only track it by the way the rest of the field’s combatants surged out of the way. He was injured so many times that even his prodigious healing abilities weren’t enough anymore, and he was soon covered with blood. But this time, so was she.

And he never faltered.

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