Page 249 of A Warrior's Fate

“Give us a moment,” Kai said to the guard, and without question, they obeyed; their growing shadows showing their distance.

Isla focused on the darkness, wholly still and clinging to Kai’s arm. She didn’t want to look up. Didn’t want to acknowledge him or any of this. She wanted to wake up. Needed to wake up right now, wrapped in his arms, her head on his chest. All of this having been a nightmare.

“Isla.”

“No.”

Her voice cracked, and she felt wetness trail down her cheek.

Kai spun her around and took her face in his hands, forcing her to look up at him.

Her lip quivered as she mapped every feature, her breathing shallow. “I don’t want to say goodbye.”

Kai stroked her skin with his thumb, flicking away her tear. “When have we ever said goodbye?”

Isla lofted onto her toes, bringing her mouth to his with a force that sent him backwards. He held her so tightly, it was as if he thought she’d vanish.

Nothing much else was needed after the kiss. No emotional last-minute confessions. No last-chance declarations. Only three simple words muttered against her lips, and then again as Kai pressed his forehead to hers. “I love you.”

It took every bit of her to remain upright. “I love you.”

As Kai walked away, Isla felt a new kind of cold. She hurriedly wiped her tears and schooled her face before a guard approached from the other side of the wall, meant to get her safely to where her friends were sitting. Isla wasn’t sure if she even wanted to watch.

The separateness of the shadows morphed into a pool of darkness as they drew further away, closer to the light, and Isla could feel Kai’s emotions shifting. Raw and volatile.

“Shut me out,” he told her, but she didn’t know if she could.

Within the arena, they’d be close enough to communicate, which meant their perception of each other’s feelings, each other’s pain, would be amplified. He didn’t want her sensing anything he was going through, and she didn’t want to distract him with how she felt either.

So, as she turned her back and walked away with the guard, Renoir, at her side, as they meandered through the same passageways to get to the stone staircases up to the spectators’ wings, she tried to build a wall. To cut herself off from him, but not before uttering those three little words one last time.

They were almost at the room they’d been waiting in when she felt it. When she smelled it.

Isla reached for her knife, and with a swiftness she didn’t know she had, stopped short and spun, lunging at the person who’d been silently stalking them through the darkness.

She pressed her blade to the killer’s cloth-covered throat, seething, “What are you doing here?”

An ally or not, they were the last thing she wanted to deal with right now.

They didn’t flinch, but she felt them swallow. “We need to go,” was the only thing they said.

CHAPTER 52

Go?

Isla pressed the blade a touch firmer. “Go where?”

The killer didn’t answer, only glanced at Renoir who was stalking closer, his claws drawn at his side.

“Wait,” Isla commanded, but the slight movement was enough opportunity for the killer to push against her. She stumbled back, and they easily slipped away.

Then they ran.

Isla blinked, taking a moment of pause to gather if this were, in fact, a nightmare. “For the love of fuck.”

She broke out into a sprint, Renoir not far behind her.

The killer was fast—she’d always known that—but in chasing them, she learned just how swiftly and agilely they moved. Shifting would’ve given her a better chance at catching them, but Kai would know, would detect that kind of rise from her, even shut out from each other. He was in the arena now, the gates closed, leading ceremonies beginning. If he felt her feeling threatened, if he attempted to step out, it wouldn’t be law, it would be the Code he’d have enforced upon him.

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