Page 128 of Sharpest Court

“Why bother leaving you alive?” Goren asked Dashiel.

“Because Erik wanted us to know,” I answered instead. “To feel the failure.” Then I took a shaky breath and voiced the theory I knew deep down to be true. “The Unbreakable Blade was made to strip a Wielder of their power.”

Dashiel and Goren startled; even Perla, who’d known nothing about the blade, seemed taken aback as she tied off Dashiel’s bandage.

“That’s impossible,” Goren said roughly, still standing over us like a sentry.

“No, it’s not.” I was breathing hard, swallowing the taste of ash in the air. “It’s how the Hollow bloodlines were created.”

“Why would Erik want to create Hollows?” Dashiel asked, more alert in his horror.

“I don’t know. All I know for certain is that he shares Saxon’s end goal. He wants to forge his own empire. Which means we can’t let him take that sword to Daradon.”

Because he wouldn’t stop trying to get it to function, even if he didn’t have the compass. And while I couldn’t yet confirm my hunch that Marge was still alive, I suddenly couldn’t bear even the slightest possibility that he would be testing the sword on her.

“Where did Erik’s soldiers take the sword?” Goren asked, helping Dashiel to his feet.

“They were heading to the western shoreline,” Dashiel replied.

Goren nodded, then put his gloves back on. “All of you, get to the safety point and sail for our ship. I’m going for the sword.”

“I’m coming with you,” I said, standing.

“Dash might need backup.”

“Then it’s a good thing I’ll be with him.” Perla stood and faced Goren, looking once again as she had on the clifftop—powerful and determined. “I’ll get us to the ship,” she said, with so much conviction that I believed her.

Goren considered her for a moment longer. Then, scowling, he undid a sheath at his belt containing a little dagger and took Perla by the hip.

She jolted in surprise as he tugged her close and attached the sheath to her belt, his knuckles brushing against her camisole.

“Move under the cliffs’ shadows,” he said. “Let Dashiel take out anyone blocking your path. Don’t use this unless you have to.” He pulled the sheath, yanking her even closer. “And if you do have to—”

“Don’t worry.” She craned her neck high to meet his stare. “I know where to aim a knife, remember?”

Goren’s expression remained unreadable. But his grip lingered around the sheath a moment longer before he let go.

Perla turned to me. “Be careful.”

“You too.” I squeezed her hand, and then we split off—Perla and Dashiel toward safety, Goren and me toward the sword.

We were halfway to the western shoreline when a crash sounded. We halted, spinning, and Goren’s low swear echoed my own. From the mouth of the Crater, Keil had just decimated an onslaught of Erik’s soldiers with one great blast of his power. He’d had to.

Because they were now converging around him.

I’d seen Keil in combat at the Daradonian palace, but back then, he’d been fighting to injure. Now he was fighting to kill.

His body moved with powerful precision, his sword slashing fast and brutal. His eyes were lost to the fight, and I knew he must have cut through battlefields this way before. Efficient. Unyielding. Deadly.

From the cliff above him, Valeria had taken up a bow and now launched arrow after arrow into the guts of her brother’s attackers. Her expression was lethal, her powerful figure outlined by the moonlight.

But still, it was not enough. Because more of Erik’s soldiers were swarming him now, and although the Banarrati soldiers fought alongside him, they did not fight for him.

Another wave of power threw them back, but this blast seemed less potent than the first. Keil had been fighting for too long, and he was wearying.

So why hadn’t the soldiers gone for the killing strike? Why were their weapons aimed low—at his knees, his ribs—while Keil cut through them one by one?

As one soldier lumbered into the fray with a bolt of chains, I had my answer.