Page 238 of The Well of Ascension

Zane looked up through the mists, looked up at her.I’m dying,he thought.

Her atium shadow hadsplitat the last moment. Two shadows, two possibilities. He’d counteracted the wrong one. She’d tricked him, defeated him somehow. And now he was dying.

Finally.

“You know why I thought you’d save me?” he tried to whisper to her, though he somehow knew that his lips weren’t properly forming the words. “The voice. You were the first person I ever met that it didn’t tell me to kill. The only person.”

“Of course I didn’t tell you to killher,” God said.

Zane felt his life seeping away.

“You know the really funny thing, Zane?” God asked. “The most amusing part of this all? You’re not insane.

“You never were.”

Vin watched quietly as Zane sputtered, blood coming from his lips. She watched cautiously; a knife to the throat should have been enough to kill even a Mistborn, but sometimes pewter could let one do awesome things.

Zane died. She checked his pulse, then retrieved her dagger. After that, she stood for a moment, feeling…numb, in both mind and body. She raised a hand to her wounded shoulder—and in doing so, she brushed her wounded breast. She was bleeding too much, and her mind was growing fuzzy again.

I killed him.

She flared pewter, forcing herself to keep moving. She stumbled over to TenSoon, kneeling beside him.

“Mistress,” he said. “I’m sorry….”

“I know,” she said, staring at the terrible wound she’d made. His legs no longer worked, and his body lay in an unnatural twist. “How can I help?”

“Help?” TenSoon said. “Mistress, I nearly got you killed!”

“I know,” she said again. “How can I make the pain go away? Do you need another body?”

TenSoon was quiet for a moment. “Yes.”

“Take Zane’s,” Vin said. “For the moment, at least.”

“He is dead?” TenSoon asked with surprise.

He couldn’t see,she realized.His neck is broken.

“Yes,” she whispered.

“How, Mistress?” TenSoon asked. “He ran out of atium?”

“No,” Vin said.

“Then, how?”

“Atium has a weakness,” she said. “It lets you see the future.”

“That…doesn’t sound like a weakness, Mistress.”

Vin sighed, wobbling slightly.Focus!she thought. “When you burn atium, you see a few moments into the future—and you can change what will happen in that future. You can grab an arrow that should have kept flying. You can dodge a blow that should have killed you. And you can move to block an attack before it even happens.”

TenSoon was quiet, obviously confused.

“He showed me whatIwas going to do,” Vin said. “I couldn’t change the future, but Zane could. By reacting to my attack before I even knew what I was going to do, he inadvertently showed me the future. I reacted against him, and he tried to block a blow that never came. That let me kill him.”

“Mistress…” TenSoon whispered. “That is brilliant.”

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