Chapter 23 Kielyne
TWENTY-THREE
KIELYNE
Isee Hadrin smile, and ice floods my veins.
He’s not looking at Blorjorn. He’s looking past him, toward the chaos of the battle, toward—
Toward me.
His hand moves to his belt. Draws something that catches the red light bleeding through the shattered stained glass. A blade—short, cruel, its edge shimmering with that sickening green-black glow I’ve learned to fear.
A red blight blade.
Time slows. I see Blorjorn’s axes rising for the killing blow, his attention fixed on Hadrin, his back to me. See Hadrin’s arm draw back, the blade glinting. See the path it will take—not at Blorjorn but past him, under his guard, straight toward me.
I try to move. Try to dodge, to block, to do something.
Too slow. Too drained from breaking the chains. My body won’t respond fast enough.
The blade takes me in the side.
Pain.
White-hot and blinding, spreading from the wound, radiating through my body in waves that steal my breath. The blight magic burns where it enters me—not just cutting but devouring, eating at my flesh from the inside.
My legs give out.
The burning herbs fall from my hand, scattering across the flagstones. My knees hit the floor. Blood—my blood—spills between my fingers where I press them against the wound, hot and slick and wrong.
I look down. See the blade still buried in my side, its edge pulsing with that terrible light.
See the darkness spreading from the wound, black veins crawling across my skin the way they crawled across Blorjorn’s when the chains held him.
It doesn’t just eat flesh. It hunts the mark beneath the skin.
I’ve seen enough normal blight wounds to know what happens next.
I’m dying.
The thought is strangely calm. Distant. A healer’s clinical assessment: wound to the side, blight contamination spreading, no supplies, no time, no way to stop what’s already started. The poison will reach my heart in minutes. My organs will fail. My body will shut down.
I should be afraid. Should be fighting, screaming, raging against the death crawling through my veins.
Instead, I think of Blorjorn.
Think of his hands on my face in the cellar, the way he whispered my name, the fierce tenderness in his touch. Think of everything we were just starting to become—the way he looked at me this morning, something raw and wondering in his expression.
I never told him. Never said the words I’ve been too afraid to say.
The battle rages around me. Somewhere, Grothak is still fighting—I can hear his war cry, growing more desperate. Somewhere, Vekra’s sword sings through corrupted flesh. Somewhere, Fenrik screams in orcish.
And somewhere behind me—
A roar. Anguished. Inhuman. The sound of something breaking that will never be whole again.
Blorjorn.
The world tilts. Darkens at the edges. The pain is fading now, replaced by a spreading numbness that feels almost peaceful. My fingers are cold where they press against the wound. My heartbeat slows.
Then he’s there.