was pale as he dropped down from the altar and stalked toward the circle. “You are an abomination before Ursal-Kai,” he snarled. “And I will gain ever-lasting glory for dispatching you from this life to the next.”
Nyek laughed and beckoned him on. “Come then, brother, if you think you can best me.”
He’d barely finished speaking before he moved. Nyek danced around his brother, his blades cutting glittering, lethal patterns in the air. Within seconds it was obvious his brother was nowhere near his equal as a warrior, and within a minute Tavik realized it as well, his face ashen as he staggered back, bleeding from wounds identical to the ones across Nyek’s torso.
“You are not a warrior,” he gasped as Nyek’s blade snaked out and his went flying across the floor of the hall. “You are no agent of Liaanas. You’re... a demon. A scourge sent to destroy. No mortal can best you.”
Nyek stood over his fallen brother, chest heaving. Indra couldn’t see his face, but she read the set of his shoulders and the determination in his spine.
“Demon or not, brother,” Nyek snarled as he raised his blade. “You messed with the wrong female. My female. And I claim restitution.”
With a single, brutal twist, he swung. Indra jumped, hand over her mouth as blood splattered the side of the altar in a fan of scarlet. There was a dull thud as Tavik’s head hit the floor.
“Oh shit, he killed him,” she heard herself murmuring. “He really killed him.”
Then Nyek turned and her ability to think high-tailed it out of the window.
“My son… blessed of Liaanas. You are returned to me in glory!”
Indra froze as the priest crawled out from behind the altar, his robes dripping with blood. Staggering to his feet, he stumbled toward Nyek, a wide smile on his face.
“I knew the god would not forsake us! You have been returned to me as his champion, ridding us of the false one,” he said, spitting toward the fallen corpse of Nyek’s twin. “Ursal-Kai be praised!”
Nyek paused, his face unreadable as his father reached him. The older man took Nyek’s face in his hands, tears streaming down his own.
“Forgive me, my son, but I did not see your true nature sooner. I allowed my grief over losing your mother to blind me.”
Nyek’s eyebrow winged up. “So you punished me, over and over, for anything because you missed my mother? You told me I was to blame for her death… that I had brought down the curse that killed her and every other female. That I was solely responsible for the death of our race…”
His voice had grown colder and colder, each word wielded like a whip that made the older man flinch.
“I-I… Ursal-Kai made me do it!” he gasped. “I was blinded by his glory. Everything I did was to mold you into the weapon you are now.”
Nyek leaned in. “To steal a phrase from humanity… fuck you!”
Indra flinched as the older man gasped and then gagged. Blood spilled out over his lips, cascading down his front, and then his eyes rolled into the back of his head. With a soft sigh, he collapsed, sliding off the blade Nyek had thrust into his heart to lie on the deck by his son.
Nyek looked up and around, obviously searching for her. Their gazes met, clashed and she ran across the hall toward him, almost slipping on a large pool of blood. But then she was in his arms, holding him tightly as his arms crushed her to him.
“I thought I’d lost you,” she murmured, and once she started talking, she couldn’t stop. “I was so mad with you for saying I couldn’t hold your attention, that you were bored with me and then... that asshole was here and I realized you’re not that bad at all and you could have been a lot worse and now you came and with these bots. And you really killed your brother and dad for me?”
He smiled softly as she was forced to stop to draw breath, reaching up with blood-stained hands to push the curls out of her eyes.
“Yes. They laid hands on you, hurt you. The moment they did that, their days of breathing air were numbered,” he replied, so matter-of-factly it was scary. “It would not have mattered how long it took, or whether in this life or the next, I was going to track them down and kill them for that.”
She nodded, not able to meet his eyes for a