Page 145 of The Duke and the Disciple

What if I want them to know?

They’d kill you, Adrahn, and we’re not going to let that happen now. We’ve both lost all we can handle, haven’t we?

Sweat turned to shaved ice on Rahn’s face. It frosted his eyelashes. His trousers fused to his flesh where the stream water had landed. His heart was under an intrinsic pull to go to the barn and be with her, but no one else was coming for Marek. No one else seemed to have notice him slip away. There might not have been another chance, and it wasn’t Rahn she wanted to see at the end of a trialing night, but her husband.

Rahn keeled over to retch into the snow.

He continued, closer to where the fence crossed the stream. Marek picked up speed as the incline steepened, and Rahn had to push twice as hard on flat ground to keep up. He dug deep, dredging the final memory of the cursed night that had shaped him and his life forevermore.

When you remember tonight, Adrahn, think not of yourself as a monster but a slayer of them.

Rahn tripped but kept his momentum, half running, half flailing as he narrowed the last of the gap between himself and Marek. Marek paused at the fence line, bowled over in respiratory distress, and Rahn used the brief reprieve to draw his sword and shove the tip between Marek’s shoulder blades.

“The fuck?” Marek turned with a yelp.

“I should have done this the night you put your hands on her neck. You don’t deserve a trial. There is no fairness in you, and I’ll deliver none.”

“Tindahl? You self-righteous fuck?—”

Rahn pushed on the blade to shut him up. His hand already ached from the weight—the force. He remembered Drazhan’s words. “If she doesn’t survive this night, I will find you in the afterlife, where there are no limits to the deaths you will die.”

What’s the difference between being a monster and slaying them, Duchess?

“Whatever you need to believe it is,” Adrahn answered, driving his sword at an upward angle, straight through the monster’s heart. His hands shook against the resistance, but he held his ground, baring his teeth through the excruciating effort it took to turn and twist the sword until the blade was pointed upward.

Marek moaned and staggered away, then crashed into the fence with the twisted sword still stuck through him. His hands flailed as he looked at the steel tip protruding from his chest and then, with a slow, distrait look back at the scholar, he pitched forward over the fence and collapsed.

Drazhan surveyedthe carnage in breathless astonishment. Seven dead, none of them his. One was still missing, the one who mattered the most.

Never in his life had he regretted anything as much as not killing Marek Barynov when Aesylt had come home with the man’s handprints on her neck.

He’d sent Uli and the others to search the fields for Marek, holding Pieter and Valerian behind to help with Aesylt, who couldn’t wait another minute for the aid of Dereham’s healer.

They’d arrived mere moments too late.

Pieter and Valerian had wrapped Aesylt in as much cloth as Pieter had in the satchel he’d brought. She was unconscious, her breaths shallow and further apart with each passing minute. What he needed to do was lay hands on her and take it all away, but without knowing all the ways she’d been injured, he’d risk making it worse. If there was even a shard of a sword or dagger or that bloody pitchfork inside of her...

“You done?” he asked from the door, searching the field for any sign of progress.

“We need to bring the healer here,” Valerian cried. He sniffled and wiped his face in the crook of his elbow. “We can’t move her.”

“There isn’t time,” Pieter said. He sat back, scanning Aesylt, and exhaled. “We could make a stretcher from wood and one of our cloaks. Or...”

Drazhan marched over and descended to a crouch. “Where’s the wound entrance? Exit?”

Valerian pointed at two spots, one in Aesylt’s abdomen, the other inferred to be directly behind it on her back.

Drazhan slipped an arm above the penetration spot and hoisted Aesylt into his arms. Her head flopped back, her arms to the sides, and Pieter quickly folded them into place over her chest. The fury in the man’s eyes was the same that had been there when he’d quietly dispatched the koldyna while she was trying to melt one of Dereham’s guards with her dark magic. Aesylt might not want to marry him, but he’d earned Drazhan’s grudging respect.

“Valerian.” Drazhan moved to the door and checked both sides before turning back. “You have a choice to make.”

“Never them,” Valerian said, his head high. “I didn’t know Marek was here, Drazhan, or I’d have gotten Aesylt out of Voyager’s Rest the second I arrived.”

Drazhan wanted to know how Aesylt had convinced the boy to come at all—and why—but it could wait. “Both of you cover me. We move fast. Werun.” He adjusted Aesylt in his arms, avoiding looking at her. That could wait too. It had to. “Go!”

Rahn was sittingon the wagon’s gate when Drazhan came sprinting down the path, Pieter and Valerian a pace behind. He pushed slowly to his feet, his heart expanding with hope when he saw Aesylt dangling from her brother’s arms, her face tucked to his chest.

“Healer!” Drazhan cried. “Healer!”

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