Draka got to the door of the Baron’s study in a sprint, his sword in hand. The fire was already licking across the walls going down the hall. He knew what was happening in that room. The Baron was burning everything that would justify the attack, everything that would prevent Draka from looking like a criminal, like a tyrant consolidating power. Like Soloman. Draka kicked the door in. It budged only a few centimeters. He gritted his teeth and kicked again.

  Inside, Christophe fed papers by the fistful into the flames that were climbing up the walls and across the bookshelves from his cabinets. Clarissa and Lisbeth, still in their chemises as if there hadn’t been a battle going on right outside their rooms for half the night, were screaming and crying, cradling each other by the windowed door to the balcony he knew they thought was their only escape. He knew of another if they would just get up and help.

  He held out a fistful of ledgers at them as the flames behind him reached for him, “Help me! Throw them into the fire!” He tossed the ledgers into the flames over the desk that was slowly being knocked away from the burning door. The flames snaked up the curtains on one side of the balcony door. “They’re going to execute us! Get up! Help!”

  “We have to get out of here!” Clarissa shrieked at the fires and threw herself from the wall onto her feet.

  Lisbeth didn’t move, too terrified to do more than pull her knees to her chest and cry out.

  Clarissa sprinted to get past him, clawed for the desk when he caught her by the hip. Flames tickled the ends of her chemise and seared them to her wrists, blackening her fingers as she reached.

  “What are you doing? You want to get us all killed?” He said as he shoved her back. The ends of her reach caught the corner of the desk and it shifted sideways. “No,” escaped his lips in a whisper when he saw Draka’s gold eyes glare through the sliver between the door and the frame, marred only by the flames rapidly rising and spreading across the room around them.

  He whipped his head around to Clarissa with a growl, “This is all your fault!” He meant to shove her back. He meant to make her go back to Lisbeth when she tried to get to the door. He was trying to save her, to save them from him.

  His sword went through her.

  Christophe froze. His mouth fell open. He didn’t remember drawing it, it was so fast. Her beautiful face, those eyes he had looked at for nearly thirty years, were still as beautiful as they had ever been, still as breathtaking as the first day he had laid eyes on them, even with her hair undone and sticky with sweat, her face clouded by smoke and ash. She was still the most beautiful woman he had ever seen in his life. Instead of her looking up to him for a kiss, with a smile, or even that haughty expression she often had, it was full of terror, betrayal. And just enough hate that he knew she would die with no love for him left in her heart.

  Lisbeth screamed a pitch that was familiar to him, just not from her. Now she was on her feet, leaping through the flames around him to get to the desk as he let Clarissa fall lifeless to the floor. With her hips, Lisbeth shoved the desk. The door kicked open with a fanning of the flames that sent them rippling across the ceiling and walls, encircling Christophe.

  He turned, stiffening his jaw and raising his bloody sword so that he could wipe sweat from his chin with the back of his hand. Framed by the orange and red flames of the fire Christophe had started, Draka was standing in the doorway, paying no mind to Lisbeth as she ducked past him into the arms of a knight in the hallway. His helmet had been taken off, likely because the fire had spread beyond the study and it was too hot to have it on.

  Christophe’s eyes focused first on the slashes and talon holes through Draka’s chest plates, then to Draka’s scowling face and his fiery golden eyes.

  Draka felt the heat of the fire nearly as intensely as he felt his own rage. He felt Lisbeth pass him, but his eyes were fixed on Christophe, fixed on the moment that Clarissa fell from in front of him, fell to reveal the blood soaked blade that had pierced through her. Only, he didn’t see Clarissa. A name he hadn’t said or heard, which had been tucked away, hidden from himself because it hurt more than if a demon dug their talons through his ribs and pulled his heart out through them, was suddenly on the tip of his tongue, forcing itself to be released. Raking itself through his memories. Relentlessly shouting in his head, flooding his memories. The name of his wife. The moment he killed his wife. The moment he committed murder. The moment the nightmare began.

  Sophia.

  His mouth filled with the taste of smoke from Heblem, sand from Al Mosul, the taste of death that clogged his nostrils.

  It wasn’t Clarissa who fell to the floor behind Christophe to be consumed by flames that were beginning to claw the open space around him smaller and smaller one centimeter at a time, it was Sophia. When he looked up to the armored man taking a fighting stance with his sword held shoulder height and ready, it wasn’t Baron Christophe.

  It was himself.

  Draka charged through the flames.

  Christophe met his charge by parrying and shifting from Draka’s path. Draka circled, gripping his sword with both hands. Each swing, he saw blinks of Christophe’s face becoming his and back again as he defended. Sand. Smoke. Fire. Steel. His blade struck armor with a chime. His armor sang, he felt impact but no pain. His armor held.

  Their blades sang against each other. Their plates drummed. The fires raged around them, licking at their arms, at their swords, at their cheeks, at their backs, at their boots. They circled. They dodged. They parried. They struck.

  A flame reached out and seared the back of Draka’s neck. He swatted at it with a sideways backstep to get out of Christophe’s reach long enough to put out the flames climbing his hair. But that was all Christophe needed.

  Christophe came at him in rapid succession. Swing after swing, blow after blow. Draka stumbled back. Flames reached for him. He tried to keep from falling back. He tried to sidestep. He tried to circle back to where the fires were thinner. He tried to parry. He tried to regain control. He tried to keep his sword up. He only had his sword in one hand, couldn’t get the other one to it. It was getting harder to hold on. Harder to hold up. Harder to stop his onslaught.

  Balor’s dying face leapt at him.

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  Draka stumbled. He was arching backwards over the burning desk. Flames climbed over him. Christophe hammered his sword down on his blocking blade. He slid sideways to bounce from a knee and parry.

  Alden reached for him.

  Christophe met Draka’s parry by letting go of his sword handle to press the blade with both hands. Then he used the cross-guard as a hammer into the side of Draka’s temple. Draka saw stars, but he kicked Christophe back. He was on the floor.

  “I love you,” Sophia touched his face.

  Draka barely rolled out of the way of Draka stabbing downward. He kicked Christophe on the side of his knee and twisted, drawing his hand axe. Draka—Christophe—Draka—Balor—Sophia—Alden—Alicia—Christophe—Draka—Draka—Christophe—he brought the axe down on a wrist, didn’t matter who it was anymore.

  Christophe pulled it away just in time and kicked Draka’s side. They both rolled to their feet, taking up their fighting stances again. Draka blinked. It was Christophe in front of him. No, it was himself again. No, Sophia. Balor. Christophe. Balian. Balor. A demon. Christophe. They were circling.

  Christophe moved first. Draka met it with a good parry of his sword in his left hand. He tried to get him with an off-handed swing of his hand-axe, but Christophe was faster.

  In a single, fluid motion, Christophe knocked the hand axe flying from Draka’s weaker right hand.

  Sophia.

  Then, following it, Christophe brought his sword back in an angled thrust that drove the point into one of the holes that the harpies had dug through.

  Balor.

  Sparks and a shrill squeal of steel filled the air as Christophe forced the blade in the hole…into Draka’s chest at an upward and sideways angle.

  Alden.

  The blade stopped when it reached the plates covering his back. His mouth opened to scream. There was no vow of silence anymore.

  But instead of screaming, instead of any sound escaping his throat, it was blood that erupted from it.

  Lasse.

  Christophe roared as he adjusted his grip on the handle of the sword and, with all his might, threw Draka sideways to dislodge his sword and bring it up and out. The way he had to pull sent Draka slamming into the engulfed desk. Draka, struggling to get air, fumbled to stop himself from falling into the fire. He was on the floor again, his back to fire, Christophe standing over him. Christophe followed through with a backswing that will take Draka’s head, hard and fast.

  Maud.

  Draka fell sideways, away from the flames. Christophe’s sword nicked the side of his ear, now off-balance.

  It was Christophe Draka rolled onto his back to find standing over him. It was Christophe who was staggering to keep on his feet. It was Christophe who Draka drew his knife for. Who Draka drove his knife through the boot of, while choking on and swallowing his own blood. And it was Christophe who Draka watched howl and raise the longsword to nearly touching the flames that crawled the ceiling above him.

  It was Christophe who was preparing to drive that longsword through him.

  It was Draka who knew, at that moment, that there was nothing he could do about it.

  Christophe had won.

  Draka twisted the knife even though the effort made more blood erupt from his lungs. We will meet judgment together!

  The ceiling gave. The beams toppled from above them. One of the older beams came down on Christophe, crushing him. Draka was only able to roll onto his side away from it, covering his face. Fire singed him. They surrounded him. He only looked long enough to see that Christophe wasn’t blinking from beneath the beam and flames and clawed.

  He couldn’t breathe. Blood was pumping into his lungs and filling his mouth and nose. Dark clouds were filling and framing his vision, enclosing all he could see. His muscles were becoming heavier by the second. He clawed. He only had one hand to use and it was his right. He’s left-handed. He pulled. With all his might, he pulled, and that wasn’t half as much as it should be. As fires made the steel of his armor begin to blacken with heat, as his vision became narrower and narrower, he pulled, dragging himself through debris.

  The balcony door. He reached for the threshold.

  There was no narrowing of his vision.

  Only darkness.

  Reach.

  No fingers.

  …Sophia.

  Pain.

  …Balor.

  Reach.

  …Alden.

  Reach.

  …Lasse.

  Darkness.

  …Alicia

  Nothing.

  Maud.

  He fell.