Page 137 of The Cruel Dawn
I roll away, but not fast enough. His paw snaps the pauldron off my left shoulder. The pewter armor, as cracked as it is, barely protects my skin and bone. Chunks of my breastplate, greaves, and vambraces fall into the dirt. I spot bleeding sores on my knees and the backs of my hands. I taste my own poisoned blood each time I swallow. Every time I blink, I see traces of someone I lost.
Jamart. Vinasa. Tisen…
My whole body hurts, screaming, “No more.” I’m about to give my body what it wants.
The four otherworldly snarl at me, teeth wet and filthy with another creature’s flesh.
I consider letting the windwolves take me, but my head shouts louder than my body, “Fuck dying by windwolf. If you’re losing Vallendor, make your death an epic death.”
Fine.
Ihold up Cruel Dawn, even if it hurts both of my arms to do so. “Whose blood will stain this first?” I point Cruel Dawn at the wolf pacing in front of me. “Will it be yours?” Without looking, I gesture at the wolf lurking to my right. “Or will it be yours?”
“You may kill us,”the pacing pack-leader says,“but you will still fail.”
“Yeah,” I say, “but you won’t be here to say, ‘Told you so.’”
The new blade swings easily through the air, slicing the head off a wolf who has no time to howl before he dies. Another windwolf leaps toward me, and I slide beneath him and cut him open along his belly. The steaming tangle of the wolf’s guts splashes across the dirt before the rest of his body does.
The last two wolves pause as I stagger to my feet.
I blink and see Veril and Lively and Mother…
The greaves that had been protecting my shins lie on the ground, no longer adorning my calves.
“Care to join your pack?” I ask the surviving wolves.
“We will die anyway—today or two days from now.”The windwolves howl again and charge at me.
“See you, then, in two days.” Even as I slit one’s neck and behead the other, I’m overwhelmed by sadness. Even the otherworldly have given up on the possibility that I’ll save this realm.
Anger. Lowly windwolves no longer fear me, not even with my amulet or Cruel Dawn, the strongest blade in the realm.
Pain rips through me, sharp and insistent. My muscles throb, and the once-solid armor jostles against my body, now a heavy burden. Each blow jolts my ribs, my spine, and my arms.
Loneliness sticks to me more than any physical sensation.
I fall to my knees, a gasp of pain on my lips. My mouth tastes like burned butter and stagnant water, overripe berries and rancid meat. I taste anger, frustration, exhaustion… I taste good things polluted and turned sour.
Vallendor will never be the paradise it was intended to be because I was never the god it needed or deserved.
“So you’re just gonna lie down and surrender?”
34
Jadon squints as though he can barely see me. His color-shifting eyes are now bloodshot slits. Other than the uncertainty in his gaze, he looks as though he already owns more than half of this damned realm. He’s grown since I saw him last: he’s as tall as the shortest Mera warrior now, and his cap-sleeved leather tunic and breeches are tighter on his muscular frame. His thick hair looks like he was carried here by the wind. The damning marking has spread past his forearm, now nearly at his shoulder, and it glows on this dawn like a newly created realm. His skin has deepened to the light tans of a peeling eucalyptus tree. He smells of smoke and sweat, and his voice crackles like flame in my direction. And then he smiles.
Trouble has found me.
My stomach twists, and saliva fills my mouth.
The protective shield that Elyn wrapped around me back on the night the abbey fell has dissolved. Now, the power that Jadon carries in his mere existence smothers me.
“I’m not sitting, I’m kneeling,” I say, crawling away from the slain windwolves and staggering to my feet. “Do I look like the type to surrender?”
Jadon chuckles and nods toward the dead otherworldly. “You didn’t look like you were having fun.” He pauses, and his smile broadens. “Was it something they said? Or…” He cocks his head, and his gaze drops to my hand. “Is it because you’re no longer wielding my gift? Where’s Fury, my love?”
My love?
