paces away. Could she reach it without Goranik noticing?
He seemed not to be looking at her at all, stepping nearer to Aerax and Caeb as he said, “Would that I had known how to make wraiths of stone then, and my task would have been completed two years past.”
With Aerax’s hand on his ruff, Caeb fell back a pace, his snarl deepening to a growl.
“You show your teeth, though they will do you no good?” The demon-king shook his head. “Join with me instead—for with silver blood flowing through your veins, you are more brother to me than that mewling boy is my son. Together we will serve the Destroyer and help him usher the world toward salvation.”
Ice speared through Lizzan’s heart. He was speaking to Caeb. As if he knew full well what the cat was.
As Caeb realized, too. His growl rumbled louder.
“Then you will bleed,” the demon told the cat. “For you will serve the Destroyer’s glorious purpose, one way or another. Your only choice is whether to be strong or weak . . . as the boy is weak. And did you truly believe you might stand against me?” His voice cracked like thunder, and Lizzan froze in place as he turned to spear Saxen with the fury of his stare. “From birth, you have been a sniveling waste, lacking true conviction—and now you are proved the fool I always knew you to be. You thought to attack me though you have been drained of what little strength you had? Clearly nothing of worth is left in you, and this time I will see you drained completely. After I have finished with these Kothans.”
Which must not refer to Lizzan. As if she were nothing, barely did the demon-king glance at her before returning his attention to Aerax and Caeb. Fear thickened her blood until every beat of her heart thudded heavily in her ears. Icy sweat trickled down her spine. The demon only had to reach Aerax and he would have the blood to finish his spell. He would have a way to open the crystal chamber. And then he would have an army of stone wraiths that the alliance could not possibly stand against.
To prevent that, she’d been tasked to protect Aerax . . . yet this would have always been her path. And it was a path she gladly traveled.
Her life she would always give for his.
“Take this,” Saxen rasped painfully. Beside her came the snap of bone, the wet tear of flesh, and agony scraping through every word. “Save them.”
Into her hand Saxen placed the bone he’d ripped from his arm, still warm and wet. And where she kneeled beside him, her white cloak was soaked in his blood. Once, Lizzan had said that this cloak would be dyed red with the blood of her enemies—with the blood of Aerax’s enemies—yet now here it was soaked in the blood of a friend. This cloak that was not a true questing cloak, and not a true red. But if it had been, she might not have seen the way forward now. For without this blood, weapons were useless against the demon . . . and so were claws.
She gripped the bone, took the splintered handle that dropped from Saxen’s mutilated hand and rolled it through the crimson puddle before surging to her feet.
“Caeb!” She charged the demon, throwing the hammer’s handle over his head to Aerax. “The blood on my cloak!”
She whipped the fabric around the demon’s side even as he turned toward her, and she was no match for his speed but the cat was, claws shredding through the bloodied cloak and into flesh. The demon screamed, striking at the cat as Lizzan leapt, stabbing the bone through the side of his neck. There she clung, stabbing and stabbing and stabbing as the demon flailed and turned, as if trying to swat a fly from his back. An enraged roar joined Caeb’s, and the demon staggered as a wet thunk sounded. Aerax. She gripped the demon’s hair and yanked herself higher, then rammed the sharp end of the bone into his ear.
Goranik fell to his knees. Lizzan braced her feet against the floor again, saw Aerax at the demon’s other side—the splintered handle jutting from Goranik’s eye.
Caeb sank his fangs through the demon’s neck, shaking the limp body viciously before tearing off his head. As it plopped to the floor, he dug his claws into the demon’s belly and with a flick of his