Page 198 of A Vow of Blood and Tears

Bane

With great agony came great determination.

The determination to perform one last deed in this life, and to make it a great one—a deed born not of selfishness, nor self-glorification, nor conceit.

Today I would win no thrones, no wars, no homages.

Today I would avenge the one I loved, the one the ancestors pushed into my path, and for her sake I would leave this world a better place.

If Cirri did not live, neither did I, but with my last breath I would bring Hakkon down as well. No more death. No more innocents led to the slaughter.

I would destroy him in her name and let peace fill the void he left.

As if in defiance of my hypocrisy, the wargs tore into me. They threw themselves against my armor, impaling themselves even as their teeth and claws seeked for flesh to rend. My wings hung heavy, a useless, limp weight of shredded flesh and bone.

The world was darkening at the edges, and still Hakkon resisted death, fighting with the same desperation, the sameecstasy that entwined into a single unnameable emotion on the battlefield.

His jaws clamped shut around my shoulder, digging deep, claws skating off the armored carapace of my flesh.

We were locked together, tooth and claw, and still he didn’t die.

He growled words low in his throat as he gnawed into me, a language indistinguishable to any beyond those of us who had walked in dark places.

“You could have been something,” he snarled. “We are one and the same, brother.”

I had once believed that.

Hakkon was my dark mirror, the reason I had done what I had done. The reason I had offered myself to the night, to the primal rage that lives deep in the minds of mankind.

My beautiful Cirri had been right. We were the same. I had been angry with her for seeing clearly only because… I was ashamed.

Penitent, but far too late. Remorseful, but that would not bring back the dead.

But with her death, all shame had died. All emotion withered into dust. There was nothing but emptiness, and the knowledge that I would end this day a dead man, my bright fire avenged.

Muscles screaming, I forced my ragged wings up, knocking wriggling wargs aside. They beat hard, once, twice, and I carried Hakkon into the air.

They were weak, soon to fail, but I could destroy him. I could make this last effort.

“Wewerethe same.”

I gripped Hakkon’s throat even as claws sank into my belly, white-hot fire tearing through me.

“But I tried to atone for what I’d done.”

His breath wheezed through constricted lungs, spilling hot cadaverous air.

Each wingbeat was agony, their shredded lengths struggling to carry us upwards. Into the clean air of the sky, away from the mad horde of wargs below.

The tower fell away; the doors were broken open, and rabid wargs spilled through, parting from the greater mass like droplets from a stream. The legions were nearly overrun, the knights slowly falling under their sheer abundance as Wyn’s blood sigils blazed crimson and began to die out, their power spent.

Whoever won today, I would ensure Hakkon would not be there to celebrate it. That was all I had left.

The warg in my grip let out a high, ululating snarl, thrashing against me, his feet striking out at my legs and opening deep furrows. Blood dripped onto the field below, painting the wargs, sending them into a frenzy.

It took everything I had, every last drop of willpower, to keep my claws buried in him. We would go down together.

But even as my muscles strained, digging deep into his throat and chest, shaking with effort as I prepared to rip him apart, there was a flash of color.

---