Page 74 of Blood Beneath the Snow

I considered his words as I followed several steps behind him. “Did you know they say this forest is haunted now?” I ventured. “By all of your victims?”

He didn’t turn to face me, simply kept walking. “And what doyouthink?”

“Well, my people wonder if you’re Aloisa-touched. It wouldn’t surprise me they also think the forest might be.”

“I’m not goddess-touched,” he said. “Or so I hope. If your gods are real, then they’re foolish.”

I chuckled. “Yes, they are. You don’t believe in any gods?”

He shook his head. “No god would be foolish enough to entrust a power like this to me. A god turning a human into a weapon? It’s more than nonsensical. It’s cruel.”

He took two more steps forward before a Bhorglid sentry, clothed in forest colors to keep himself hidden, moved out from behind the trees and fired an arrow straight into the Hellbringer’s arm.

The scarlet on the snow made me gasp. My hand flew to my mouth and I reached out—though I wasn’t sure if it was to comfort his pain or stop his retaliation—but the world had slowed and I was frozen in place.

A scream stuck in my throat, my eyes locked on the scene as the Hellbringer gave no reaction to the pain except to face the sentry and raise his hand, palm out, then close it into a fist.

And the Bhorglid soldier fell dead in the snow.

18

The next minutes blurred together.

The Hellbringer moved quickly, shoving the arrow through his arm with a growl of pain. He broke the shaft and pulled both halves out, leaving the projectile to stain the snow a slick red. Then he grabbed my arm and pulled me forward.

“You…you…youkilledhim,” I gasped.

He said nothing, only moved faster, blood dripping behind him. With acrack, Mira appeared in front of us. She took one look at the Hellbringer’s arm and said, “Healer?”

“Not until you take her back.”

I moved to pull my arm from his grasp, but Mira took my other wrist and left me stumbling to the floor in the flickering light of the prison. Then she disappeared, presumably to take the Hellbringer to be healed.

When the Hellbringer returned tenminutes later, I was in the same place Mira had left me: on my hands and knees, shivering.

I didn’t look at him. He didn’t speak.

It had been instinct, nothing more, when he clenched his fist, ripping the life from the young sentry. The boy had shot him; what did I expect? It was self-defense.

But was it really? With the odds so far in his favor?

He had to kill the boy. No one could know the Hellbringer was there.

He promised you he wouldn’t. He said your people would be safe.

I couldn’t get the image out of my head: the young boy, no older than sixteen, dark hair speckled with snow, trying to hide the fear on his face as he fired an arrow. He must have known what would happen to him. And yet he took his shot anyway, like his superiors would have instructed him.

His eyes going glassy. The way he crumpled to the ground like a rag doll.

I’d never witnessed the Hellbringer’s destructive power with my own eyes. Until now, he’d behaved like a Nilurae—like me. It made the soldier’s death all the more startling, because at some point over the last three weeks I’d stopped believing he was capable of murdering innocents. Of annihilating my people.

Despite my harsh return to reality, no fear slithered through me. Only anger, hot as Björn’s fire, curling in my stomach and my shoulders and my hands. I forced myself to my feet, trembling, and shoved the Hellbringer with all my might, half hoping to push him into the flames. He didn’t stumble but took a step back.

“Revna, I—”

“Shut up!” I screamed. My fingers tangled in my damp hair, pulling at it frantically. “How could you? Youpromisedme you wouldn’t!” I took my fighting stance and threw blow after blow, hitting him as hard as I possibly could.

He stood still and took each one.

---