He’s not wrong. Stopping this fight will be a balance—if I’m even able. Because if I stop it too soon, they won’t have gotten out all their aggression. If I stop it too late . . . well, I can’t think about that.
My hands knot into fists, clenching and unclenching. I’m ten feet from them now, able to see the rage in Lukain’s gray-red eyes and the determination to win in Skar’s gold-red ones. The nobleblood is bent with a scowl, jaw firm, and Lukain has his fangs bared.
“I told you not to trust this fucking fiend, Sephania!” Lukain bellows. He goes for another attack, is quickly rebuffed in apattern of strikes I can’t even keep track of from Skar, and wags his bleeding wrist with a hiss.
The blood is quickly forgotten. The revenge is not.
“I know, Lukain,” I say into the fray. “I’m sorry. But I love him.”
That only gets Lukain angrier. He slides in for a quick one-two, feints to the left, and makes Skar skitter back out of his range as he swings wildly.
“I love youtoo!” I amend for the dhampir. Maybe he needs to hear it.
Nope. It doesn’t stop his rampage.
Skar leaps onto a table effortlessly, kicking aside plates at Lukain, who absorbs the blows with his biceps and shoulder.
“Quit fucking running,brother!” Lukain warns.
Skar scoffs loudly. “I’m not using my shadows. You’d think a fair fighter would toss aside the silver.”
“Who said anything aboutfair? Life isn’t fair! You’ve just told me that!”
Rather than joining Skar on the table, Lukain barrels right through it, slicing through the bench and then kicking the remnants aside as it blows apart.
Skartovius leaps away, rolls over a high slash from Lukain, and comes up stabbing. He earns another shallow jab into Lukain’s side, who is now riddled with at least four bloody marks that I can see.
Silver sword or not, a dhampir is no match for a nobleblood. A pureblood vampire. Especially the best nobleblood fighter in Olhav.
Even if Lukain is second best . . .That’s all he thinks he’ll ever be: second best. Second in swordplay, second in loving me. The second son. The forgotten bastard, tossed aside. That’s why he’s so angry.
“That” being quite a few things rolled up into one grievance, but I see it now: his grief, his hurt, his agony. To top it off and learn he lost his father at the hands of thefirst best? The vampire he believes took everything from him, seemingly over nothing? Over his elder brother’s misguided rage?
Truehearts above,I’malmost ready to get into the fight with Lukain and stab at the bastard vampire lord.
But all I can do is wince and recoil every time they connect, their swords flash, and they push away. Every time Lukain redoubles his efforts, he’s countered. For all his rage, I can’t see a single strike he’s scored on Skartovius Ashfen. And thank the True for that, since he’s using silver.
“You think I need this silver to defeat you?” Lukain sputters.
“That and a lot more, brother,” Skar murmurs.
Lukain spins around and approaches a young man who’s watching and has his sword drawn. They’ve created quite the audience, a huge circle of Grimsons eager to see someone die. Many of the fighters have their weapons out, just in case, though I can see by the paleness on everyone’s cheeksno onewants to get in the middle of this familial spat.
Stabbing his saber into the ground point-first, Lukain bares his fangs and snarls at the shorter man. To his credit, the soldier grips his sword tighter—
And Lukain snatches it anyway, by the fuckingblade.The Grimson lets out a gasp and jolts upright, stepping back a few steps as Lukain turns and flips the sword in the air to grab it by the hilt.
He comes away with a slit palm, not giving a single shit, and charges anew at Skartovius.
Neither of these men will tire for hours. I know that. This could seemingly go on forever—especially now that Lukain has dropped the silver sword.
The deceitful, worried part of me wonders if Skar goaded Lukain to let go of the saber sohecould take it up and end this.
No, he wouldn’t do that. He knows I would never forgive him. After all we went through to find Lukain, the planning and my months-long imprisonment just to glimpse Overseer Verant.
Skartovius will not kill his half-brother.
I keep telling myself that, over and over again. The other part of me knows Skar is a wicked son of a bitch who would do almostanything.I’ve seen him peel a man’s skin from his flesh, daily, keeping the fucker a rotten zombie for weeks just so he would suffer anew every day for raping me when I was a youngling.