Page 253 of A Warrior's Fate

Because behind her, she heard a cry, a roar, a clank of metal, and a thud.

She whipped around from the dead beast beneath her and found the killer clutching their side, their hand soaked in dark blood. Not of a bak but their own. There was a slice through their side, revealing pale skin beneath, scarred and welted.

They were on the ground, and the bak was closing in on them. It was also injured, bleeding from a wound where its thick neck and front shoulder met. Not deep enough to kill.

Isla only had a few seconds to act, bounding forward to get the bak just as it lunged to feast. It may have been vengeance or pride that had her maintaining a hold on the beast’s neck, allowing it to think it had a chance, before she let its blood run like a river with the others. Growling, she pulled, and it fell in a heap atop one of its brethren.

Isla stopped and listened down each path, pushing through the adrenaline and rush in her ears, past the scent of gore and death, for any other sounds, any scents. But there was nothing but trickling blood and water, heavy breathing, and the faintest crow of a crowd.

They were still fighting. Was that good or bad? She wouldn’t let herself be concerned by it. Wouldn’t peek through that door or check the bond.

Isla spun, just as the killer fought to sit up against the wall.

And with their movement. With their movement—

The hood of their cloak fell, their scarf tugging away.

And Isla was staring at the pained, paling, bruised, and scarred face of her mother.

CHAPTER 53

Isla stumbled back a step—another, another—until she lost her footing over the slung-out arm of a dead bak and fell into the opposite wall. It was shock or some conscious desire that had her falling out of her shift, her hands and knees meeting the cold, blood-covered stone.

She could barely make a coherent thought. This wasn’t possible. Her mother was dead. Her father had felt her die, their bond break.

She had to be hallucinating. Delirious and traumatized and exhausted. Maybe the witch had made this woman look like her somehow.

Shame mixed with the pain on the killer’s battered face, and Isla knew. This was real. It was her.

Her lip trembled. “Mom.”

“I’m sorry,” her mother said again, the words easier off her tongue a third time. Now Isla could see how jagged her teeth had become, cracked in places. Broken.

A very, very long time…

Isla’s entire chest caved in as ten years of lost time weighed down on it. Ten years that her mother was alive, tortured—and they’d stopped looking.

Before guilt could ravage her, Isla noted the blood. So much blood. Too much.

“No.” Isla crawled over, not caring how the stone cut up her skin. She would heal, but her mother wasn’t. Not fast enough.

She reached for the wound, pressing on it with two hands atop Apolla’s. Her skin was cold, but it wasn’t the first time Isla had felt its chill. Her mother had touched her before. Back in the house. She’d drawn on her arm, touched her head, pointed to the bak, herself.

The blood continued to leak beneath their hold. “Why isn’t it stopping?” Isla asked, voice wavering. “Why won’t you heal?”

“Need more time,” Apolla said between wheezes. “Healing is weaker now…the witch.”

Rage coiled in Isla’s gut, along with the shock they were actually speaking. Even if she’d been here all along, it felt like the last time they’d conversed was in her childhood bedroom before she’d gone to sleep the night her mother left.

Isla ground her teeth. “She did this to you.”

“Makes it easier for her. So I forget.” Isla nearly missed the free hand that came up to graze her cheek, the twisted, icy fingers covered in blood. Apolla wiped away tears Isla hadn’t realized were falling. “But I remembered you…I saw you…in him.” Her breathing became heavier, her eyes glossing over. “And it broke enough.”

The spell, or whatever it had been.

“Kai,” Isla breathed.

Apolla’s gaze hardened. “He’s in trouble.”

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