Page 110 of The Blight of Hollowmire

Arden and I circle each other over broken stone.

I’m not in the finest form for a fight. My entire body aches—my shoulder throbs from where the axe tried and failed to take my head. My palms are slick with Renard’s blood, and my vision blurs every few breaths because grief keeps surging and making it difficult to breathe. As ever, my antlers send pain radiating through my skull.

“You’ve already lost,” he says, gesturing to Renard’s still body.

I say nothing, focused on Ulfrid’s lessons—on my opponent, and how he moves, and what our surroundings might offer.

He moves first, and while I suspected he’d be a capable fighter, I’m almost taken aback by how fast he is. His dagger slices across my ribs before I can pull away, and pain flares hot along my side. A thin dribble of blood—mine this time—begins to trickle down my side.

“Ah,” he says softly, warming to the success of his strike. “So you can bleed.”

I lunge, already making note of my mistakes—the movement too wide, too slow, and too angry. I need to regain my control. He sidesteps and slashes my upper arm, doling out another shallow cut that’s painful enough to make my fingers loosen around Ulfrid’s dagger. I tighten my grip before the blade can fall.

Arden smiles—the bastard.

“You know, I think you were more interesting as the monster—now you’re just another woman who thinks she has a right to justice that she doesn’t have the stomach to earn.”

He comes at me again. I catch his wrist, but he twists free and drives his elbow into the side of my face. White sparks burst behind my eyes. I stagger, taste blood, and nearly trip over a cracked paving stone. Fear finally slithers through me at the thought that I might lose.

Somewhere behind me, Nibblebones keens and I struggle to rein in my wild emotions. Arden presses his advantage, dancing forward in quick movements to cut my thigh, then my shoulder, followed by the outside of my forearm. Gods, each wound burns, and each one feeds his confidence until he begins to laugh and bounce from foot to foot, overly pleased with how he’s faring.

“You cannot best me this way,” he says, circling. “You might be fae, but I had to learn to win without the use of magic.”

“And without honor,” I shoot back.

He flinches, but recovers quickly.

“Honor is for children’s bedtime stories and weak men.”

He feints left, then opens a line across my cheek before I can guard against his blade. Blood runs hot down my jaw.

“I learned to kill with witnesses,” he says, his confidence making him crow. “With smiles. With laws. With men applauding me because I could do it better than the armies—better than the knights, even.”

“How proud you must be, you gutless worm.”

Rage flickers across his face, and he moves too close. At last! I let my knees buckle as if from weakness, and his eyes flash with triumph. He leans in, dagger angled toward my throat.

Oh, Arden. You should have asked Ulfrid about my fondness for fighting dirty. I thrust upward with everything I have. Ulfrid’s dagger sinks deep into the inside of Arden’s thigh, sliding into that soft, intimate hollow high on the leg where the veins pulse so close beneath the skin.

Arden gasps, and I glare up at him—then twist the blade.

For one second, his eyebrows draw down like he doesn’t understand the loss, but then… oh, then the blood comes. It pulses over my hand in hot, urgent surges. Arden drops his dagger and staggers back, clutching at the wound. His face empties of its smugness just like his body empties itself of its vital fluids.

“No,” he says, his tone disbelieving.

I rise. He swings at me with his fist, clumsy now. I catch the blow on my shoulder, step inside, and drive my knee into his stomach. He folds with a wet grunt. I hit him across the mouth with the butt of Ulfrid’s dagger, and then with my fist. The breath whooshes out of him, and he falls to his knees with a whimper.

Starving ravens—the sound is satisfying. I hate that it feels good to watch his life slip away, oozing down his leg as though these cobblestones have not tasted enough blood.

I hit him again, anyway. I hit him for Renard on the stones behind me, for every child and woman and man who starved because of his scheming greed, and I hit him for me—for all the cruelty he has visited upon me when I arrived here naked and hopeful. Arden collapses onto his back, one hand pressed uselessly to his thigh—blood welling between his fingers and spreading beneath him in a bright, widening pool.

I stand above him, feeling nothing—not even satisfaction—as his breath comes fast and ragged.

“Help me,” he moans. “Help me, and I’ll give you whatever you want!”

Rage simmers again. I kneel beside him, enjoying the way he flinches.

“You cannot give me what I want,” I hiss. “In fact, you took away the one thing that kept me from becoming a monster. The only thing I want from you is your life.”