Chapter 10
Malakor threw his head back and laughed—a loud, triumphant bark that echoed off the high battlements.
"Welcome back, Captain Vane!" Malakor proclaimed, sheathing his gilded rod and resting his hands casually on his hips. "The Empire forgives your... temporary lapse in judgment. The witch had you deep, didn't she? Pick up your steel, man. Take her head, collect your final seventy crowns, and let us get out of this miserable wind."
Garrick did not answer immediately.
Slowly, with terrifying, fluid grace, the mercenary rose to his feet.
There was no tremor in his knees. The fever that had plagued him for days seemed to have been burned away by the psychic purge, leaving behind only the lean, lethal machinery of his massive frame. He did not look at Malakor. He did not look at the inquisitors.
He reached down.
His right hand closed around the hilt of his primary broadsword. The grip was steady, relaxed, effortless—the way an artisan picks up a familiar chisel.
He straightened his spine, rolling his broad shoulders back.
Aveline looked at his face.
The milky film was gone. The glassy, obedient glaze was completely eradicated. His amber eyes were clear—sharper than broken flint, colder than the ice on the high peaks, burning with a terrible, unadulterated intelligence that saw every angle, every shadow, every vulnerability in the courtyard.
He was whole.
He was the butcher.
A triumphant cheer went up among the obsidian guards. Swords clattered against shields in salute to the legendary commander restored to his senses.
Garrick turned.
He did not walk toward Malakor.
With measured, unhurried strides, his heavy iron-shod boots clicked against the flagstones, heading straight toward the shattered sundial where Aveline lay bleeding in the dirt.
"Garrick..." she breathed, her voice a broken whisper, her hands clawing uselessly at the stones behind her as she tried to pull herself backward.
Garrick stopped two paces from her.
He looked down at her. There was no rage in his face. No sorrow. There was only a profound, chilling emptiness that was infinitely more terrifying than any snarl.
He lifted his right arm.
The steel of his broadsword hummed softly as it rose through the gray air. With smooth, mechanical precision, the mercenary turned the tip away from the Inquisitors, leveled the three-foot blade of cold iron, and pressed the razor-sharp point directly against the pale hollow of Aveline’s throat.
A single bead of bright crimson welled where the steel kissed her skin.
Garrick leaned down slightly, his hazel eyes locking onto hers with a clarity that froze the marrow in her bones.
"You," his voice dropped to a low, lethal whisper that made the hair on her arms stand on end. "What did you put inside my head?"
