I ran until my lungs burned and the mark on my wrist felt like it was trying to carve itself out of my skin.
8.
The trees thinned. The riverbank came into view through gaps in the smoke, a nightmare landscape of mud and blood and broken bodies. What I saw stopped me cold.
Darius was on his knees.
An arrow still jutted from his shoulder, the shaft splintered, the fletching slick with blood. The spear wound in his thigh had reopened, a dark gash that poured crimson into the mud beneath him. Fresh cuts covered his arms and chest, a lattice of wounds that seemed to have no beginning and no end. His sword lay in the mud beside him, his grip too weak to hold it.
Three of Kane's wolves circled him. They were bleeding too, but they were still upright. Their eyes gleamed with the particular h
