“Come on!” He roared again, raised the Heavenstep Blade, and charged once more into the press of foes.
Sword light flared; blood scattered through the air. He drove the blade through a Wagner guard’s heart, then sent a Celestial Palace soldier hurtling away with a palm strike.
But the wounds carving his own body were too many to count. Blood poured away, breath shortened, every motion slower than the one before.
At last, the white-haired elder closed the distance. With eyes colder than iron, the elder slammed his palm into Garrick’s back, landing the blow dead-center.
Splurt!
Garrick spewed a thick gush of blood, pitched forward, and slammed onto the ground so hard the earth shook. He never managed to lift himself again.
“F-Father!” Vivian screamed and, like someone unhinged, tried to hurl herself back toward him.
Garrick summoned the last fleck of strength, forced his head to turn, and fixed his fading eyes on her. His voice was little more than breath: “Go… Run… Find Jared… Tell him… Dad wronged him… Dad caused this… Ask him… To keep you safe…”
He paused; a shadow quivered across his gaze, the corners of his eyes tightening as though something inside tore wider. “And… Tell the ancestors of our family… Garrick was powerless… Garrick ruined ten millennia of heritage… I… I regret it… Truly regret it…”
Each word thinned, lighter and lighter, the sound nearly stolen by the night wind. At last his eyelids drifted shut. His body slackened, every spark of life slipping away without a ripple.
Master Garrick, patriarch of the House of Chance, had fallen.
“Father!” Vivian’s scream ripped through the night, raw enough to scrape stone.
Dominic strolled up to Garrick’s corpse, nudged it with a contemptuous kick to be sure the man was dead, then slowly lifted his gaze toward Vivian standing not far away.
A greasy, covetous glimmer slid back into his eyes. “Miss Chance, your father is gone and the House of Chance is dust. From now on, you belong to me.”
He snapped his hand forward and barked, “After her! Alive if possible, dead or alive, I want her found! Don’t let her slip away!”
Vivian stared at her father’s cold form, at the carpets of family blood, at the manor twisted into a private hell. Something coiled tight inside her, like steel wire biting into flesh. She understood, her family was finished. A heritage of a thousand years had been wiped out in a single night.
She clamped her teeth together, swallowed the white-hot throb under her ribs, whirled, and dove into the boundless darkness, running like a hunted beast. Behind her, Dominic led a swarm of pursuers, their roar of weapons and footfalls rolled after her like thunder.
“Vivian Chance! You can’t escape! Do yourself a favor and give in! After her! She’s wounded-she won’t get far!”
Vivian ran as though the ground were fire, pouring every scrap of strength into each stride. Tears streamed across her cheeks, dried in the wind, and instantly returned to carve fresh tracks. But she didn’t dare slow. Not even for a single heartbeat!
Stopping meaning death…
Stopping would spit on Father’s sacrifice, the Elders’ stand, and everyone who had bled so she could move. She had to stay alive. She had to reach Jared.
The night deepened, black as spilled ink. Vivian tore through an uninhabited mountain forest, branches whipping past in a blur. Blood kept running from the gash on her back, turning her clothes into a soaked banner.
Stones sliced her calf, every step sent a blade of fire knifing up her leg. Even so, she didn’t slow. She knew Dominic’s hunters were right behind, refusing to give her a single breath.
She squeezed her eyes shut and reached for the faint pull of the Dragonbinder Collar Jared had taken with him. A thread-thin connection still linked the collar to her.
That way… Toward the Wastelands… Jared was in that direction!
She gritted her teeth, ignored the burning wounds and the hollow under her ribs, and forced her legs to pump faster as she sprinted toward the Wastelands.
Behind her, torchlight darted among the trees, closing in. Shouts and the clatter of pursuit sharpened, no longer muffled by distance.
She never looked back. Not once!
She only ran, and ran, toward Jared, toward the single sliver of hope still left to her.
The first pale ribbon of light bled across the horizon, hinting that dawn was close. The Wastelands now stretched directly ahead.
Vivian hurled herself into that boundless expanse, caring for nothing but forward motion.
Behind her, Dominic charged with his hunters still in tow. His voice, carried a cutting chill. “Vivian! You won’t escape! The Wastelands will be your grave!”
She still refused to look back. Her feet kept drumming against the cracked earth, always toward the tug of the Binding Collar, always toward the single glimmer she clung to.
