Page 255 of A Warrior's Fate

Isla dropped the barrier between them, but when she felt an overwhelming wave of the raw, volatile power, she couldn’t hear him. Not clearly. He was muffled and distant.

“You were missing a good fight.”

Isla whipped around at the voice and blinked into the darkness of where she was. It was a small, unused spectator’s room—private, likely for those of status to celebrate after events. All the furniture, tables and chairs, were covered in canvas tarps and dust. A figure stood in an opposite corner of the room, shrouded until her eyes adjusted. A male of sinewy build stepped towards her, and Isla caught the glint of a blade against the little bits of light streaming through.

She jumped to her feet, blood rushing to her head, legs unsteady. The man was masking his scent but from the look of his disheveled appearance—

Rogue.

Isla reached for her wolf but found it cowering. Her eyes widened.

The distance, the pulling away, the bond…

The rogue ran at her, and Isla couldn’t dwell. His teeth were bared but no claws, no light to his eyes, just his weapon. He favored his right side. Isla waited until the last moment and side-stepped. She swept out his legs and knocked the blade from his hands, claiming it as her own. There was no hesitation as she drove the knife into his gut and used his keeling over to slit his throat deep enough that he’d never recover. He clutched at his neck, gurgling and crumbling onto the floor.

Isla’s hands were shaking, her breathing shallow as she wiped his blood from her skin, mixed with that of another.

She went stiff and spun again.

“Mom,” she whispered into the dark, taking in the surroundings again.

How did she get here?

There was an exit in the far corner. She made a step to take it.

“A wolf’s pride is something to behold.”

She stopped at the coo, an unnervingly melodic tone, and from the exit emerged two more figures. One, she assumed was another rogue from his teeth, claws, and lightless eyes, and the other—a woman. She’d had the hood of her emerald green cloak over her head, but she dropped it to reveal pale skin and ink-dark hair. Her eyes were a bright blue, brighter than Isla’s, more pure ice. Cold in a way that made Isla’s skin crawl nearly as much as her wide smile did.

“I told him he wouldn’t be able to kill you,” the woman trilled, and then Isla noticed what she was hanging from her neck and perched on rings adorned on three of her fingers. Dark crystals. “But they’re so eager to prove themselves.”

Isla gulped and urged her hands to steady, keeping her ire concealed for just a second longer.

Think. Don’t just react. “You’re—”

“You’re,” the woman interrupted, plucking something from her cloak, her fingers delicate. Perfect. “Someone I didn’t expect to be such a thorn in my side, little mutt.”

Isla snarled, seeing her mother’s battered face, and saw red. She tightened her grip on her weapon, begging her wolf to come out.

This was her. The witch who’d been behind it all.

“You took my mother from me,” she gritted.

The witch tutted. “Your mother left you.” She examined her nails, the gems of her rings flickering. “She should’ve never come after me. None of them should’ve. It could’ve all been avoided.”

Isla had been so ensnared by the words, what they meant—that her mother hadn’t left to explore the southern territories but to capture Cassius’s escaped witch—she wasn’t ready for the witch’s rogue companion to catch her with something sharp.

Isla cried out, knees wobbling as the burning of poison lanced her veins. The rogue used her weakness to take hold of her, his strength too much as he pulled her arms back at odd angles.

She couldn’t manage it all. Him, the poison, her wailing wolf, the bond. Kai kept tugging at her, and she tried to scream, to tell him to shut her out and focus, but it was all becoming a blur. A thick fog settled over the bridge between them. As the poison worked through and dizziness overtook her, Isla slowly lifted her head.

She had to think. She needed to get out of this.

“You tortured her,” she panted, voice breaking as she thought of her mother bleeding, dying, alone.

“Tortured,” the witch said in breath. “I spared her from half the hell they put me and my sisters through in that prison.”

Isla ignored her, attempting to wrench free only to be dealt another jab. Turning her head, she didn’t catch the gleaming of a blade, but a cylinder filled with dark liquid and a crude needle at the end. Isla didn’t need to wonder what that amount in her system could do. She knew it would kill her.

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