Page 144 of The Duke and the Disciple

Just a little more, Aes,she heard Hraz say. The real one. The one who had taught her, played with her, loved her. Died for her.

Marek stumbled over. She brandished the pitchfork. His eyes widened in warning. “You couldn’t hurt me with that on a good day.”

“Is that why you haven’t taken it from me yet?” Aesylt steadied her grip when a tremor seized her hands. The ink blots in her eyes dilated, spreading. She was fading, faster than she wanted, and Marek wasn’t wrong. She no longer had the strength required to run the tines through him. Holding it aloft was already too much.

But there was one thing she could do. She would fail, but she would die a warrior’s death. “If you’re not afraid of me, prove it. Draw your sword, and we’ll settle this as men would.”

Marek’s mouth flashed wide in a cackle. “You want to...fightme withthat?”

“If you’re so confident, why isn’t your sword out?” She knew exactly why he hadn’t drawn it. The brute wasn’t wearing one at all. Only his guards were armed with steel, and they were across the barn, where she needed Marek to be.

“I don’t have to fight you.”

“Because you know I’ll win, even as I am now?” Aesylt resisted the swoon with everything she had. She held tighter to the pitchfork.Come on, come on, come on.

“You’re delusional, just like the rest of the Wynters.”

“And your fear of me is all over your face.” Aesylt lashed her tongue across her lips. “Right there, corner of your mouth.”

Marek’s hand traveled there before he realized, grunted in disgust, and swung it away. “You want me to carve you up like a wintertide boar? Fine. Feist will heal the parts I require.” He stormed away, his boots crushing the boards with booming stomps.

“Be quick about it, Marek. She’s lost a lot of blood.” Feist spoke with all the warmth of a post.

“Aye, but the bitch doesn’t need arms or legs to bring a child, so give me a fucking moment, Feist, and then you can have her.”

Aesylt pursed her mouth and breathed in shakily. She whispered the names of her ancestors, loud enough for her own ears only.

“Fuckinggiveit to me,” Marek demanded, wrestling with a guard’s belt.

She squirmed until she was leaned up against a bale of hay, shifting her legs until they were under her. Onto her knees, she rose. She transferred the pitchfork to her other hand and, wincing and trembling, lifted it over her shoulder. Tears rolled down her face as she strained to draw her arm back, fighting the overwhelming need to just let go.

On the wings of this life or the bones of the next.

Marek turned.

Aesylt’s mouth peeled back in a scream that exploded from deep in her belly. It was the very last of herself. Flesh ripped and peeled as she stumbled to her feet and released the pitchfork in a roar of fury that sent her hurtling back into the darkness before she could see where it landed.

Steel and shoutssounded from a barn ahead. Valerian started to run, but Rahn snapped him back.

“Look,” Rahn whispered, watching a lone, hulking figure ambling down the hill in a hurry. Valerian said something under his breath, something likeoh nooroh fuck, or maybe that was Rahn filling in the silence with his own internal monologue.

But Valerian definitely said, clear as a whistle on a cool night, “Marek.”

Rahn fixed himself on Marek’s location. It didn’t seem the man had noticed them yet. He was wrestling with something long, like he was trying to pull it out of himself. “Go to the barn, Valerian. Drazhan and the others will be there.”

“You asked me if I would hesitate,” Valerian stated, glancing from Rahn to his brother’s harried shuffling. “I told you I won’t.”

“And I’m not asking you anymore. Aesylt needs you. Go.Go!” Rahn wrapped his fingers around the hilt of the sword Drazhan had made him, but it was the wet leather of his father’s dagger under his palm. In one single stroke of fate, Rahn had changed the history of the Rhiagains forever, and no one but he and Teleria knew. Had the boys lived, the crown would not be in such conflict, because there would have been three heirs, not one insufficient one. Sweet Torian would be alive because he would have been nowhere near the ascendancy. Whether Imryll would have still been put in the prince’s path, and therefore Drazhan’s, was unknown, which meant so was Rahn’s eventual landing in Witchwood Cross and his fateful meeting of Aesylt.

But Rahn had not then nor ever had the gift of foresight. He wasn’t thinking about the crown’s future that night on the cliff of the Isle of Duncarrow, but of the one stolen from him, and gods knew how many others. It had never been a question whether he would kill the boys who had killed his family, only how fast he’d realized his potential. For some, there was no justice suitable but death.

Marekwouldhave justice, but Rahn was leaving nothing to chance.

Rahn skittered down an embankment and followed a stream at the bottom, aiming to head Marek off at the fence line. He bent as low as he could go and still move, holding his position and his sight of Marek. Water splashed onto his trousers when he slipped into the riverbed. The sound alerted Marek, who perked and swung around in search of the source. When he did, the moonlight caught the side of him, revealing a darkened spot on his abdomen.

Rahn ducked low and waited. Marek pushed on.

No one ever has to know,Teleria had said as she held him on the rocks, both of them sobbing for all they’d lost.

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