Steel sang against lightning.
Kael moved like the storm itself—impossible to track, impossible to predict. One moment he was here, the next there, each step leaving scorched earth, each strike trailing arcs of white-hot electricity that made the air scream.
His fist connected with the Princess's guard. The shockwave rippled outward, throwing nearby soldiers off their feet.
She slid back three paces but didn't fall.
Her rapier came up in a counter—a thrust so fast it seemed to simply appear at Kael's throat.
He twisted. The blade scored a line across his collarbone instead. Blood welled immediately, steaming in the cold air.
But he was already moving.
His palm struck toward her ribs. Lightning coalesced around his hand like gathered sunlight.
She pivoted. His blow passed so close it singed her armor. She riposted—the rapier's tip drew a red line down his forearm.
They separated.
Circled.
The battlefield had gone silent. Both armies—Beastkin and Imperial—had stopped fighting to watch.
This was no longer battle.
This was trial by combat. Ancient. Absolute.
The victor's side would claim the field. The loser's would scatter or die.
Princess Eleonora smiled. "You're faster than I expected. The Blood of Fenrir is more than legend, it seems."
"And you're stronger than your reputation suggests." Kael's voice was rough, breath coming hard. "The royal bloodline breeds true."
"Flattery?" She tilted her head. "How quaint."
She moved.
Faster this time—so fast that even Kael, with his lightning-blessed reflexes, barely registered the motion before her rapier's tip touched his shoulder.
Just touched.
Light as a kiss.
"Silver Spear."
Ice erupted.
Not from her blade—through it. The rapier became a conduit, channeling her magic directly into Kael's flesh.
The spear of ice materialized inside his shoulder and burst outward—easily six feet long, jagged as a lightning bolt, crystalline and gleaming.
It went through muscle. Through bone. Through the other side.
Kael's roar was thunder made flesh.
He staggered back, one hand instinctively reaching for the spear before his mind caught up to his body and stopped him. Pulling it out would cause more damage than leaving it in.
Blood poured down his arm, dripping from numb fingers.
All around them, warriors from both sides stared in horrified fascination.
Bara took a half-step forward. "Da'ar—"
Kaki's hand stopped him. Her eyes were fixed on Kael's face, reading something there that made her hesitate.
Kael stood straighter. The pain was evident—jaw clenched, eyes slightly unfocused—but his voice remained steady.
"Let's make a deal."
The Princess raised one elegant eyebrow. "A deal? Now?"
"I'll hand myself over as a slave to the Empire. Until my last breath, I'll serve." He paused. "In exchange, you let my people go."
"Your people. The Direwolves?"
"No." Kael's eyes swept the battlefield—taking in Bara's bloodied form, Kari's trembling legs, the hundred other warriors barely standing. "All of them. Every Beastkin here. Let them leave."
For a moment, silence held absolute dominion.
Then Eleonora laughed.
It started as a chuckle—light, almost musical. Then it grew, became something sharper, edged with genuine amusement that bordered on delight.
"Your life?" She gestured with her rapier at the assembled warriors. "For all of them? What an astounding overvaluation of your worth."
She stepped closer, circling him like a cat with wounded prey.
"Do you know how much gold I could make from their teeth alone? Beastkin fangs are worth five silver each in the southern markets. More, if they're from warriors." Her smile was a blade. "I'm looking at thousands of gold pieces standing on this field."
"The deal has two benefits for you," Kael said quietly.
"Oh?"
"A slave." He met her eyes directly. "And your life. Accept, and you get to keep both."
The laughter died.
The temperature seemed to drop ten degrees in an instant.
Eleonora's expression didn't change—remained that same pleasant smile—but something behind her eyes went very cold, very still, very dangerous.
"You think you can kill me?" Her voice was soft as falling snow and just as cold. "What remarkable nerve."
Her rapier moved—not a strike, just a gesture—but the air around it began to shimmer. Her aura manifested visibly now, sharp enough to see, like heat waves over summer stone but inverted—cold so intense it bent light.
Around them, soldiers backed away. Instinct told them the killing range had just expanded dramatically.
Gaius, still mounted, called out. "Your Highness, perhaps we should—"
"Silence."
The word cut like glass.
She turned her full attention back to Kael. "You've already lost, wolf. That spear in your shoulder? It's channeling my magic directly into your bloodstream. Every heartbeat spreads the ice further. In ten minutes, you'll collapse. In twenty, you'll be dead."
Kael's lips pulled back from his teeth—not a smile, something more primal. "Then I have twenty minutes to kill you."
Lightning exploded around him.
***
Three leagues north, the mountain path narrowed to barely six feet across.
Violet stopped so suddenly that Eivor nearly crashed into her back.
"What—"
"Vael!" Her voice cracked like a whip. "Something's approaching!"
The young Direwolf's ears snapped forward. His nostrils flared. "I smell... steel. Old blood. Something chemical."
From the mist ahead, five figures materialized.
Black robes. Masked faces. Moving with the fluid grace of professional killers who'd stopped counting bodies long ago.
The lead figure's voice was muffled but amused. "Finally. All the noncombatants in one convenient location."
He gestured vaguely south. "All the other Dark Hornets were killed by that Direwolf Da'ar. We were fortunate enough to avoid encountering him."
Violet's entire body went rigid.
She knew that movement. That voice. Not specifically—but the type. The casual cruelty. The clinical approach to murder.
In another life, in another winter, men like these had come to a small cottage and painted the snow red.
Her hands clenched into fists so tight her nails drew blood.
Eivor moved to stand beside her. "Violet—"
An elderly she-bear pushed past them, leaning heavily on a walking stick. Two other elders—a wolf and a leopard—flanked her.
"We are not so feeble that children must shield us," the she-bear said, voice gravelly with age and pride. "Stand aside. We'll handle these curs."
"No—" Vael started.
The elders were already moving forward, forming a line between the assassins and the refugees.
The Dark Hornets didn't speak.
They simply vanished.
One moment they were standing twenty paces away. The next—gone, as if they'd never existed.
The elderly wolf's eyes widened. "Where—"
Steel whispered.
The sound was almost gentle—a soft exhalation of metal through flesh.
All three elders gasped simultaneously. Their hands went to their sides, their necks, their chests—wherever the blades had found them.
The assassins reappeared exactly where they'd started, as if they'd never moved at all.
One of them—the leader, by his position—snapped his fingers.
A sharp crack echoed through the pass.
The elders' bodies inflated.
It happened in the space of a breath—skin stretching, bones creaking, eyes bulging with sudden horrible pressure.
Then they burst.
Blood and viscera painted the snow in a ten-foot radius. The sound was wet and final. Chunks of flesh hit stone with meaty slaps.
Behind the ice barrier Violet had yet to create, a child screamed.
Then another.
Then dozens.
The leader of the Dark Hornets tilted his head, regarding the refugees like a butcher considering which cuts to make first.
"This is what will happen if you don't obey." His tone suggested he was explaining something simple to children.
"Cooperate, and you'll live but if you don't —" He gestured at the red snow. "Well. You've seen."
Violet's hands came together.
Clap.
The sound cut through the screaming, sharp and clear.
Her voice followed, words precise and cold as the magic she summoned.
"(Cold Walls.)"
Ice erupted from the ground in a perfect semicircle—six feet thick, eight feet high, curving to protect the refugees like a mother's arms. The barrier shimmered with internal light, traced through with patterns that looked almost like frost on a window.
The Dark Hornets stopped.
Stared.
"She's a—"
Violet's hands moved again.
"(Clouding Mist.)"
White fog exploded outward from her position—thick, opaque, cold enough to sting exposed skin. Within seconds, visibility dropped to less than two feet.
The assassins immediately shifted formation, backs together, weapons out.
"Mage," the leader hissed. "She's a gods-damned mage. How did intelligence miss—"
A shadow moved in the mist.
The leftmost assassin turned, blade rising—
Vael's claws took him across the throat before he could finish the motion. Blood sprayed. The man crumpled.
"Sucks for you," Vael's voice came from somewhere else in the fog, already moving, "having to rely on eyes alone."
The remaining four Dark Hornets pressed closer together.
"Oxen Formation," the leader snapped. "Mist won't stop—"
Another shadow. Another death.
This one was silent—just a soft gasp and the sound of a body hitting stone.
Three left.
The leader's hand went to his belt, pulling something small and metallic. "Screw the formation. Signal for—"
Ice wrapped around his wrist.
She was sweating and huffing...
"Tell me... Who are you?"