the jagged sword met the Heart’s dented surface, the glowing blade snapped. It broke with a squeal of metal that made Josef’s ears ache, and Sted stumbled back. He held up his sword, now just a foot of toothy metal above the absurdly large hilt, and stared at it like a bewildered child. Then, with a cry of despair, hatred, and utter, devouring rage, he threw himself at Josef.
It was a wild charge. Sted thundered toward him, flailing with the broken sword as though it were still whole, running with his whole body to crush Josef beneath his weight.
It was then, in the madness, that Josef struck. He turned the Heart deftly in his hand, sliding the enormous blade around to meet Sted’s flailing arm. He didn’t look at the man’s bared teeth or his twitching muscles. He didn’t look at his own footwork, or how Sted was poised to crush him without the Heart as a barrier. Instead, he focused on the image the Heart had shown him, of the mountain’s peak cutting the clouds. He held it in his mind until the picture was burned into his vision, until the need to cut, the way of cutting, not as a sword cuts, but as a mountain cuts, was all he could feel. Only then did he swing his sword, his sword truly, for the first time, catching Sted in the left arm, just above his elbow.
The black, blunt blade of the Heart met Sted’s impenetrable skin, met and sliced it clean. The Heart cut straight through the flesh, through the bone, with no more resistance than a razor through spider webs. Then it met the air again, and Sted was falling, his arm cut clean off.
The enormous man collapsed on the floor, clutching the space where his arm had been. Josef spun around, taking up his guard again, but he didn’t need to. Sted was curled in a fetal position, clutching his broken sword with the only arm he had left while blood poured out of his wound onto the floor. Josef lowered his guard, resting the Heart’s tip on the floor, and Sted’s head whipped around to face him, his eyes burning with pure, horrible hatred.
“No,” he panted. “We’re not finished.” He forced himself up with his one remaining arm and grabbed the top of his broken sword, clutching the pieces together against his chest. “It’s not over.”
“No,” Josef answered. “It is. You are defeated, Berek Sted.”
Sted laughed, a horrible, wheezing sound. “You, you couldn’t defeat me in a hundred years,” he muttered. “You were lucky, that’s all. My sword broke. There’s no way you could have defeated me otherwise.”
“Luck had nothing to do with it,” Josef said. “Get out or bleed to death on the floor, your choice.” He swung the Heart over his shoulder and started toward Nico. “I’m finished with you.”
“I decide when we’re finished!” Sted roared. “Your name, swordsman of the Heart of War. Tell me your name!”
Josef stopped, looking back over his shoulder with a cold, dull glare. “Josef Liechten.”
Sted pushed himself to his knees. “See you soon, then, Josef Liechten.”
He gave Josef a final, bloody grin, and then said something Josef heard but could not understand. Suddenly, the light twisted around Sted, and a cut opened in the air. It was as though someone had taken a knife to the fabric of the world and cut a hole to another place, somewhere dark and lined with black stones. Sted fell backward, letting the tear in the world devour him, and then he was gone. No sound, no smoke—he simply was not there anymore.
Josef stared for a full minute at the bloody place where the swordsman had been. Even his cut-off arm was still on the ground, but the man was gone. He would have stared longer, but the Heart was heavy in his hand, pulling him toward Nico. Taking the hint, Josef decided to just ask Eli about it later, and he walked over to where Nico had fallen.
He had expected her to be sitting up by now. Nico’s ability to heal herself was something he took as a truth of the world. Yet Nico had not moved from where he’d left her, and even in the dark, he could see a darker stain on the floor around her. Fear began to grow inside him, and his walk turned into a run.
The first thing he checked was her breath again, which, though faint, was still there. His relief at that vanished