“He survived the last, he’ll do so again.” I schooled my face into something flat. Edvin would see it as a dishonor if he did not protect his family, but he’d only just won them back. Now it was all at risk again.

Should anything happen to him I would meld a dozen bones until I faced Skul Drek. I’d find a way to do to the assassin what I did to Tomas.

Hilda returned with thin, bloody bones in her palms.

It took little time for her craft to crush the bones, manipulating them into small bits of powder and narrow pieces. A wince contorted her features from the ache of using bone craft, but Hilda didn’t stop, shouting for a few herbs and oils to be gathered and added to the bone dust.

Gisli and Freydis did as she asked and held Mikkal down when the burn of the bone tonic hissed and crackled along the gash carved deep into his ribs.

“Never said it was comfortable.” Hilda wiped a drop of sweat off her brow, fingers battered and red from crafting too fiercely.

A tug on my hand drew me to a little face at my side. Edvin’s youngest hugged a linen rag doll and peered at me with crystalline eyes from behind a mess of red hair. “Kris left.”

“What?” I lowered to a crouch.

The girl pointed to the open back door. “Kris went to find Papa.”

Gods. No. Krisjan, the eldest of the three, wanted nothing more than to be like his father.

I took hold of Roark’s dagger, told the girl to stay put, and rushed outside to confused shouts from the others at my back.

“Krisjan!” I screamed his name, racing down the cobbled streets.

Cries of battle drew too near. My lungs burned, my body ached, and when I rounded a corner near the opened gates, I let out a sob of relief. There, crouched behind a wooden cask, a boy too small for the seax he carried was crouched, watching the destruction near the border walls.

I ducked behind his cask. “Krisjan. You cannot be here.” Big, wet eyes lifted, filled with fright. I wrapped an arm around his small shoulders. “Come. We must go back.”

The boy didn’t protest. He hardly uttered a sound when I pried his little fingers off the hilt and took hold of the seax. I clung to his small hand, pausing to look over my shoulder to the gates, searching, fearing.

Kael was out there. Edvin. I did not find them, but an unseen hook, an undeniable draw, pulled me to Roark at once.

He was impossible to avoid, a predator.

Blood clung to Roark’s cheeks, his lips, the blaze of his eyes spun with a bit of madness. One hand gripped a seax, the other his dark battle-ax. From hilt to point, both blades were soaked in blood.