Page 140 of Storm of Fury
Each wound sizzled as if they’d poured hot acid into his gaping flesh. He could feel it eating away at his muscle, diverting the innatedrekimagic that sought to heal him.Fuck. What was on their spears?
Zorja sprinted toward them, launching off a rock with her spear raised high. Shadows rippled over her black-clad form and her scream of rage was almost shattering. Where the hell had she come from? She must have been shifting as they spoke.
She landed beside him, slapping Vadim’s next blow aside as Sirius staggered, still trying to recover from the wound to his thigh.
“Zorja,” Vadim rasped. “Get out of the way.”
“No. This is myson.”
The shock of that word ricocheted through Sirius.
Here,” she said, tossing Sirius a short sword.
He almost threw it away. But whatever poison coated their spears was still working to hobble him. And though he was getting better at fighting with only the sight of one eye, he still wasn’t at his full strength.
Still…. “I don’t need your help. I was handling this.”
“You know not what you face,” she ground back, looking so much like himself that he almost blinked in surprise. “And I wasn’t asking.”
“Get out of the way,” Vadim repeated. “I won’t offer again.”
“No.” Zorja lifted her chin high. “I won’t repeat myself again.”
“You swore you would contain the girl. You swore that you would stop her from escaping,” Vadim growled. “You broke your oath, and now it is time for us to do what we should have done in the first place.”
Illarion shot his brother a sharp look. “Ishtar doesn’t need to die, brother.”
“We stand at World’s End, Larya. She’s about to open the portal to Álfheimr,” Vadim snarled. “This is not a mere portal on our plane. This is interdimensional. It’s a fucking rainbow bridge between worlds. She’ll never be able to control so much power. And if she can’t control it, then it will tear this world apart.”
There were nine realms that Sirius had heard of. Asgard; Álfheimr; Jotunheim; Midgard; Muspellheim; Nidavellir; Helheim; Niflheim; and Vanaheim. Some might have been merely creations spawned by the fertile imaginations of the peoples in this world. The only ones he knew existed in truth were Álfheimr and Nidavellir, because his people had once battled the ljósálfar and the dwarvish svartálfar.
He glanced toward the rune stones.
Could Marduk do it?
Could he convince his sister not to open the portal?
Illarion’s lips pressed thinly together and he lowered his head for a moment as if thinking. “She will not open the portal,” he finally said.
So be it.
“I’ll take Vadim,” Zorja said.
There was no time to argue with her.
Illarion attacked with a sharp lunge that ended with his spear slicing across Sirius’s knuckles. He riposted, but the bastard was deadly swift, and focused now. Intent burned in his dark eyes, and Sirius’s hand was starting to go numb from poison.
Damn it.
He countered one attack. Two. The third raked inside his guard.
Sirius lost the sword, and barely managed to avoid the bastard’s next slash. His hand burned, and the muscle in his thigh was twinging now.
The next blow scored along his ribs.
His knee buckled beneath him as he dodged, and he grabbed the shaft of the spear as he fell, wrenching it from Illarion’s hand.
Landing on his ass in the dirt, he bared his teeth as Illarion merely unsheathed a dagger from his belt.
