ARIN
The door exploded inward.
Not opened. Not kicked. Exploded—wood and iron shrapnel blasting across the tower room like shards of bone, and Arin threw her arms over her face and felt splinters bury themselves in her forearms, her knuckles, the backs of her hands.
Through the dust, through the ringing in her ears, she heard boots.
Heavy. Synchronized. That horrible puppet rhythm—left, right, left, right—like a heartbeat that belonged to someone else.
Ryven.
She twisted toward the stairwell. The dust was still settling, thick as fog, and through it she saw him. Crumpled against the wall at the top of the stairs. His sword was still in his hand—because of course it was, because Ryven would hold a blade through his own funeral—but the rest of him was wrong. Slumped. Broken. A spear shaft jutted from his right side, just below the ribs, and the blood pooling beneath him was dark. Arterial dark. The kind that didn't stop.
His pale grey eyes found hers through the dust.
