Chapter 48
They didn’t hear Kasik approach their circle. He didn’t know what he would find, but he hadn’t anticipated the utter stillness
on the top of that mountain, or the way Atik held Nina so close, his hand wrapped around her throat, a barbaric smile on his
face. Nina smiled as well, but hers was something different altogether. A wicked vow carved in blood.
He couldn’t hear their words, but it didn’t matter. He didn’t need to.
Kasik’s only plan was to kill his tayta. He didn’t intend to live, didn’t care that his tayta would still win, in the end,
because Kasik would be dead at his feet. He used the last of his strength to pull himself closer, gathered his final breath
and—
Coughed.
Blood spurted from his mouth, stained the pure-white snow in front of him a garish red as he fell to his knees. In his last
moment of lucidity, he looked up to find Sacha’s eyes wide open and staring straight at him. Through him.
“I have to do this,” she whispered. And Kasik understood the moment the last word left her mouth what this was. It was in the way she tilted her head ever so slightly to give the blade at her throat more space. It was in the way
she curled her small hands over the walla’s large arm as if bracing herself. It was in the way her nostrils flared, with one
final, deep inhale, as if she was gathering the courage she needed.
Kasik tried to scream his dissent. Nina would never forgive her for this.
It would be the thing that would break her.
But he could do nothing, say nothing, as Sacha pushed herself forward against the edge of the blade, as it sliced into her delicate skin, as it painted her hands and the earth a blinding, bloody red.