"A Blackwood fights with whatever tools are available until there are no tools left at all. Then he fights with his hands."
***
But he wouldn't die on his knees.
That single, stubborn thought burned in his chest like an ember refusing to be extinguished.
The world had taken everything from him. His status. His dignity. His place among people who would never see him as anything more than a border peasant with pretensions above his station.
But this one thing, this final choice about how he met his end, belonged to him and him alone.
Rhys lunged for his spear.
His fingers closed around the familiar ashwood shaft just as the shaman brought its staff down.
The creature was aiming not for his body, but for the weapon itself.
It understood, in whatever twisted way its kind could understand anything, that destroying the spear would break something in him far more thoroughly than any wound to flesh.
The last symbol of his resistance.
The last piece of his father he still carried.
