strongest and cruelest, skipping out from the dark at his feet and burying her blade chu-wufffff into his chest. A bubble of blood, a spray of crimson, gravebone cleaving skin and muscle and bone and red, red, red dancing between the rain. She twisted the blade, felt his ribs snip-snap as she tore it free, spinning to watch him fall.
A shapeless cry rang above, pretty Hush crouched like a bird in his bloody bower, killer-blue eyes bright in the lightning dance. She stretched her fingers into the dark at her feet, lovely deep, tearing a handful loose as she’d seen Jonnen do and reaching out through the space between them to blind that pretty blue
“… behind…”
whispers in her ear as the shadow who wasn’t a cat became the eyes in back of her head. Moving swift, rolling forward as the knife sailed over her head, close enough to hear it cut the rain through the thunder. She spun in place as Violetta hurled another, then another, razor-sharp and poison-black, no Swoon needed now they had little Jonnen on his back and dreaming
dreaming
(of black skies and a million stars and a bright globe above)
pale fingers curled into claws and dark shadows curled up and about Violetta’s boots like hungry snakes and
Mia Stepped
into the
shadow of the
tree at Violetta’s
flank and plunged her longsword right into the woman’s belly, sideways and twisting, shearing through outer and inner and outer again, Violetta’s spine arching, mouth open as ropes of her insides, gleaming and steaming, spilled out in tangles of pink and red.
“Fucking—”
“… MIA…!”
Bending backward as Tenhands’s blade whistled past her chin, dropping and rolling toward the tower across the dirt, hair in her eyes, sand on her tongue, the roar of arena crowds echoing in her ears
CROWCROWCROW
but that was yesterturn
when things were simple and the Moon had no name and her father was still
My …
Tenhands drew back her fist, filled with dark and gleaming steel, not ten but one, but O, that would be enough. Eclipse rose up roaring on the broken wall behind the woman, fear like a chill on the wind, a shape cut from a shadow deeper than Mia had ever imagined, had ever dreamed, but a shadow
a shadow
a SHADOW
all the same.
And Mia realized that instead of Stepping to the black at the feet of a foe, or a tree, or a stone, instead, she could just use the wolf that was shadows, too, and she stretched out her hand and
Stepped
through
Eclipse
instead
dropping out of the stone at the good bishop’s back and feeling the damp crunch as she swung, teeth bared, spitting hate, gravebone scything between the falling rain and cleaving Tenhands’s head almost off her shoulders.
Red on her hands,
on her face,
on her tongue, water-thin and copper-sweet in the downpour, deep enough to drown her and still not enough
never enough
is it?
a line of razor-white pain in her thigh, a flash of a blade, dark with venom. Mia gasped and turned, Remillo hurling another, skimming through the air she’d stood in a moment before, now empty
Stepping
into the
shadow at her feet
and out from the shadow
shaped like a cat on the ground behind him, bringing up her longsword, both hands on the hilt, ruby-red crow’s eyes on the hilt watching as the blade sheared up between his legs and dropped him screaming, split clean through to the hips.
Hands slippery with blood now, smeared on her leathers, spilling from the wound he’d gifted her, poison in her racing heart, venom in her thundering veins.
Four of five fallen, but still not enough.
Too slow.
“… mia…!”
Turning as Hush dropped, pretty and silent
TOO SLOW.
“… MIA…!”
and drove his heel right into the back of her head.
White light.
Crunch.
Pain.
Thud.
Then black.
* * *
Thunder crashed again, rain beating on the stone like hammers to the anvil.
A lone figure, standing with clenched fists and narrowed eyes. Looming above the fallen girl, hair splayed like a dark and broken halo around her head. Eyelashes fluttering. Senseless and bleeding.
“… stay back…,” the not-cat hissed.
“… YOU WILL NOT TOUCH HER…,” the not-wolf growled, standing between them.
Hush ignored them both, stepping straight through them and seizing Mia by the hair. Face blank and pale, the boy dragged her over the rocks, back up into the shelter of the tower. He dumped her on the floor beside her unconscious comrades, taking care to crack her skull against the flagstones extra hard.
“… wretched cur…”
“… I WILL KILL YOU, BASTARD…!”
The boy glanced at the shadowwolf, his face perhaps growing a touch paler, a faint tremble in his step. He backed out from the