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“Youmake him stupid,” she snaps. “You’ve turned his head and wrecked the goals he’s worked for his entire life. You are bad for him. For all of us.”

She’s half-dragging me along, not toward the village where the other men took Cronan—no, she’s pulling me off the road, into the trees. The ground slopes sharply downward here, and I can barely keep my feet under me.

“I’m going to do what he should have done,” she says. “We have the money and the town. I’ll tell him your own people wounded you as you were helping him escape, and you died from the injuries before the healer could tend to you. That will enrage him enough to call on the other warlords and begin the war that needs to be fought.”

“But—your people aren’t strong enough for a war,” I manage, through the pain of my ankle and her iron grip. “You’ll lose. He’ll die.”

“Maybe. Maybe he and I will die gloriously in battle, side by side, fighting for our ancestral land. Or maybe we’ll win, and he’ll forget you quickly when I remind him what we have together.” Olsa throws me against the trunk of a huge tree and pins me there with one hand to my chest. After the exertion of this night, I am too weak to resist her—too weak to do anything but hang there, helpless.

Olsa sets down her lantern and drags a wide knife from a sheath at her belt. She sets its tip beneath my chin, right against the soft tissue there.

Death is before me again, so crisp and clear I can taste its bitter tang, smell the sweet rot of its breath. The night forest is so still, just a whisper of chill wind riffling through the thickets of black lacy branches. The lantern spills orange light onto the rocky ground. Olsa is partly uplit with the glow, and her face looks strange, mad and distorted. In her eyes I recognize the ice of inevitability—the certainty of the end.

My fingers graze the rough bark of the tree behind me, but there are no branches to seize, no makeshift weapons with which to defend myself—not that I could survive against a warrior like Olsa.

Since I’m going to die anyway, I can’t resist one last tiny triumph. “Cronan hears my thought-voice through the ether,” I say softly. “And I hear his. He can hear me right now, I know it. He can hear me say that I love him. You can kill me, but you’ll never have a true soul-bond with him.”

“You’re lying,” Olsa says through her teeth. The knife pricks my skin, driving upward just enough to release a trickle of pain and blood.

“I’m not lying. We told Zeha about it, too. You can ask her.”

Olsa cries out, a half-scream of frustration. The knife-tip jerks away from me, and the pressure of her hand on my chest disappears. I slide down against the tree, cupping my injured ankle.

“If you truly have a bond with him, our law prevents me from killing you. Murder of a life-mate is the greatest of wrongs.” Olsa strikes the heel of her fist against a tree. “I could still do it, and blame your own people. No one has to know.”

She hasn’t quite decided either way—to kill me or not. I can sense her tension, her rage, her affection for Cronan, and the law of her clan, all dragging at her, tearing her apart.

I’ve been in this very spot with Cronan himself, as he teetered on the murderous edge of his passions. But with Olsa, no part of me appeals to her. I can’t use my body, my voice, my personality, my helplessness—none of that will sway her in my favor.

All I can do is wait—and maybe play for time.

“You’ve cared about him for years, haven’t you?” I ask quietly. “Have you known each other since you were children?”

“Yes,” she hisses. “I’ve been close with Cronan and Zeha since we were born. I was there when he lost his brother and his mother. I was there when his father sank into darkness. I’ve been there for both of them, for all our people, my whole life. And for a nasty little worm like you to squeeze into his heart and push me out—it’s unbearable.”

“I didn’t mean to,” I say. “It just happened.”

“You’re probably lying about the soul-bond to save your wretched Southern hide,” she snarls. “Admit it. You’re lying.”

“I’m not—I told you I love—”

“Don’t!” She whirls, pointing the knife at me. “I have to do this, do you understand? It’s not only for Cronan and me—I’m not such a fool as to kill with the sole aim of bedding a man. No, this is for all of us. Peace simply cannot exist between our people and yours. You must know that. War is the only way to purge all the hate and the hurt, to change the future. With your death, that change can begin. Cronan will incite it himself, as he was meant to do. You will be the spark that ignites the cleansing fire.”

“Why do people keep saying that I’m the key to all this?” My words tremble, nearly dissolving into sobs. “I’m no one. I’m nothing. You people should have left me out of it.”

Olsa steps toward me again, her fingers flexing on the knife hilt. “Too late,” she says.

65

The knife flashes in the lantern-light.

I throw myself to the side, and the blade grazes my neck. There’s a spurt of pain, a trickle of warm blood. I want to panic, to clamp my hand over the cut, but I can’t spare the time. I’m still alive, for now.

Not for long if I don’t move.

Olsa slashes again, but I’m already scrambling away on all fours, like a wounded beast, putting the tree trunk between us. She steps around it, her knife whistling through the air. I duck low and lurch in, seizing her ankle, jerking as hard as I can. She’s off-balance—I twist my body and kick her ankle with my good foot, and with a cry she crashes into the leaves.

She rolls on top of me the next second, gripping one of my arms. She clamps the knife between her teeth for a second while she fights to get both of my slim wrists into her large hand. I screech and writhe, but she’s big, and well-trained, and she gets both my hands pinned above my head.