Chapter 20 Blorjorn
TWENTY
BLORJORN
The soldiers drag her back into the cathedral, and I read the answer in the rigid line of her spine before she says a word.
She refused.
The strange blight has been eating at me for hours—cold tendrils of shadow burrowing into my flesh, spreading through my blood, patient and relentless. But I’ve held on. Watched the gap in the crumbling stone wall where they took her. Waited.
She’s walking on her own feet. Chin lifted, shoulders squared, fury burning in every line of her body. Whatever Hadrin threw at her, she didn’t break.
Pride swells in my chest. Followed immediately by terror.
The soldiers release her near the altar. She crosses to me immediately, drops to her knees at my side.
“He knows about Tam.” Her voice is low, urgent. “Threatened my brother if I didn’t cooperate.”
“And you still refused.” Not a question.
“Yes.” Her hand finds my face, her palm warm against skin gone cold from blight magic. “Execution’s moved to now.”
Before I can respond, the soldiers return.
More of them this time—pouring through the shimmer in the ward wall, a dozen, two dozen, enough to overwhelm any resistance. They grab the blight chains and pull.
Agony rips through me. The chains drag me forward, toward the altar, the stone floor scraping my knees raw. I hear Kielyne shouting, hear the scuffle of her fighting the soldiers holding her back, but I’m too weak to help her. Too weak to do anything but let them drag me toward my death.
They chain me to the altar. Spread my arms across the cold stone, lock the blight manacles to iron rings embedded in the granite. Behind me, the great stained glass window pulses with that eerie red glow—faster now, brighter, as if the cathedral itself senses what’s about to happen.
Hadrin appears from the shadows, the sigil brands glowing in his hands. His face is calm. Composed. The face of a man about to carve a roast, not execute a prisoner.
“Last chance, healer.” He doesn’t look at me—his gaze is fixed on Kielyne, held between two soldiers near the nave’s entrance. “Accept my offer, and I’ll make this quick.”
I strain against the chains, trying to see her. Catch a glimpse—jaw clenched, eyes blazing, her whole body coiled with defiance.
“Kielyne.” My voice is barely a rasp. “Don’t. I’m not worth—”
“Shut up.” Her voice carries across the cathedral, sharp and fierce. “We’ve had this conversation.”
Despite everything—the chains, the pain, the death waiting in Hadrin’s hands—I almost smile.
Hadrin sighs. “So be it.”
He raises the sigil brands.
Above us, the moon rises red through the shattered stained glass, painting the cathedral in shades of blood and shadow. The brands descend toward my chest.
From across the cathedral, I hear Kielyne’s breathing change. Sharp. Focused. The way it sounds when she’s working on a patient—gathering herself for something difficult.
Then her voice, low and fierce: “No.”
I can hear it in her tone, see it in the sudden tension of her shoulders. She’s going to try something. Something desperate. Something that might save us both or kill us trying.
I grip the stone beneath my hands. Whatever she’s planning, I have to hold on long enough to give her the chance.
The brands touch my skin.
And Kielyne screams.