Page 259 of The Edge of Darkness

I raised my weapon, but he ported, and when I whirled to find him again, it was Liam, dagger poised at the ready.

Some sort of pathetic sound escaped my throat. I stole a look at my brother’s corpse in an attempt to assure myself that this was still a trick. His body was where I’d left it, but the animated version of him that tauntingly stood before me muddled my mind and turned my own thoughts against me.

How could I be sure Killian hadn’t slipped further into some trick or compulsion? How was I to know, without a doubt, that the figure that stood before me wasn’t my actual brother?

No—stop!

That was exactly what he wanted. To confuse me. To make me second-guess everything. To make me weak.

I shook my head again, trying to clear my thoughts and doubts.

The moment my brother’s body launched toward me, I hesitated. I barely had time to lift my blade, and his forearm battered against my wrist. The dagger was wrenched from my hand. I watched it tumble to the ground several feet away.

Everything afterward moved in slow motion. His blade came down from above, but at the last minute, I reached with my left hand, catching it in my grip. I cried out as the iron split into my palm, but I pushed past the pain, and drove my right elbow into his face, telling myself that it wasn’t my brother’s. My brother was dead, and so was the king. I had watched them both die by my enemies’ hands. This was my enemy. And he would pay in blood.

The blow loosened his hold on his dagger, and I yanked it from his grasp, abandoning it to the forest floor as I lost all control of myself.

Time sped back up, just as a shriek worked its way up my throat and burst free in a scream. I threw my body into Killian’s and took him to the ground, driving fist after fist into his face. He took several hits that split his cheek and brow, until he was forced to shift back into his true self. When he did, the blood on his face disappeared, but his skin remained cut open.

For a moment, he lay there, stunned by the onslaught, but when he finally gathered his wits, he punched back with a vengeance. His knuckles struck my cheek just below my left eye, and stars broke across my vision. Then his hand was in my hair, yanking me to the side until I was on my back, and he was on top of me. He used his weight to pin my hips down as he raised his hand and punched me again and again and again.

A swirl of colors and lights danced in front of me as each hit rattled my skull. Something cracked. The coppery tang of blood flooded my mouth, and the familiar, stinging burn of a broken nose had me spitting and struggling for air.

I kicked my feet, bucking my hips to try and get him off of me. I wasn’t going to be able to get out from under his weight, so I grappled between his punches until I caught hold of his shirt. I fisted the fabric and pulled him down onto me. The move caught him off guard, and his arms flailed to his sides, but the moment his chest was on mine, I swung my leg over his and threw all my momentum into rolling him onto his back.

He let out a grunt and pushed against me, but I slammed a knee into his side and pressed my injured hand to his face, blinding him with my blood as I reached for his dagger that was only a few feet away. My fingers clawed at the moss and the branches but came up a few inches short of the pommel.

Killian yanked my hand from his face, twisting my arm until the rest of my body had no option but to go in the same direction. I yelped as I fell to the side, further away from his dagger, but closer now, to my own.

He wasn’t paying attention to the weapons; his crazed eyes were on me. As I struggled to get a hold of my blade, he scrambled on top of me once more, both his hands clamping down on my neck and squeezing.

Gods, the pressure, the pain . . . I choked, gasping for air and clawing at his wrists, but he pressed harder.

I summoned my light, but it remained pinned in place inside me, just like I was pinned beneath Killian. I didn’t know what was happening, or why I could not access it. Darkness crept along the edges of my vision, and my entire body thrashed in panic.

Desperate, I dug my fingers into the forest floor, reaching for something—anything⁠—

My nail caught on a metal edge. My dagger. I strained, blindly fumbling to get it in my grasp. When I finally closed my hand around it, I jammed it into Killian’s side. A bark of pain broke from his throat, and his grip on my neck loosened.

The world came back into focus as my consciousness cleared. I pulled in heaving breaths of air and shoved Killian off of me, yanking the dagger free in the process. He collapsed onto his back, and I climbed on top of him, then drove the iron blade straight into his heart.

I channeled all of my anger into the force I put on the dagger, ripping it down through his chest, inch by inch, repeating my brother’s dying words in my head. Kill them. Kill them all.

Killian gargled on his own blood, his panicked, bright blue eyes flitting between mine.

The blade undulated with his rough, faltering breaths, and I pressed it deeper, turning it, severing flesh and scraping against bone.

A barking cough spluttered from his throat. Another pushed a fresh slurry of red down his chin. His mouth opened and closed like a floundering fish. His hands, now weak and shaky, grappled with mine, desperately trying to remove the blade, to cling to life. He looked up at me like he couldn’t believe I had actually done it.

“You were mistaken to think that I would kill you gently.” I leaned further over him, pressing both palms atop the dagger. “Perhaps I was a gentle lady once, but many days have passed, and too many of my loved ones have ceased to breathe since then. I’m afraid I don’t know what mercy is anymore.”

I leveraged my weight against his body and snapped the handle off the blade, leaving the iron embedded deep inside his chest where he couldn’t pull it free. His arms fell limp at his sides as his power evaporated from his veins like smoke.

I smirked at the High Lord of the Woodland Court one last time and whispered, “Tell Æbon I said, ‘hello.’”

His eyes widened at the mention of the god of death, but his attempted rebuttal died on his quivering lips as his gaze went distant and his heart finally gave out.

For a moment, I sat and stared at him, trying to see the true familial resemblance between him and Breck. Killian was different in every possible way. I’d thought about it when I first met him, when he’d used the word cousin, and Breck didn’t deny it.