All at once, the darkness in the arena evaporates, replaced with an ethereal rainbow glow that fills the room. My eyes adjust and I gape in awe at the light shimmering in ribbons as it winds through the stone arena. It hangs like a boreal mist, gently illuminating everything—Yorl’s stunned face, the dented gate, a massive spearhead mechanism built into the ceiling poised to thrust down on us, the aghast celeon guards perched on the tallest reaches of the arena, bows and sedative-tipped arrows beginning to fall to their sides.

My breath stops when I realize the light is radiating from Evlorasin itself, concentrated in its grand white feathered mane now standing on end, like a glowing white halo around its face. I can see the length of the valkerax properly now, in its full glory—so long it could circle the Temple of Kavar, so strong and mighty it could break any human in two with a single swipe. It’s power incarnate—beauty incarnate.

Claws as thick as halberd blades scrape the ground as it stares at me. “Drink of my blood. I give you this gift of myself, so that the Wolf might never howl alone again.”

Shaken down to my core, I force myself to blink again, move again. The words are caring in a macabre, twisted way, and the valkerax nods its massive head toward the white mercury blade in my hand. I raise my finger tentatively to the sword, dabbing my fingers in the blood and then to my lips. It smells like acid and honey all at once. I try it on my tongue, and it smacks of brass and salt going down—much stronger than the serums Yorl’s given me. Evlorasin’s long whiskers whip the air in what I think might be happiness.

“I am you,” Evlorasin says. “We sing the same and Weep the same. My blood is your blood. This is never-goodbye.”

The sudden numbness of the serum’s death creeps into my legs and arms as I smile wider and whisper, “Never-goodbye.”

The numbness forces my grip to retract, and I fall off Ev’s thick hind leg and land flat on my back on the arena floor, dust floating up all around me. I can hear Yorl yelling faintly, my eyes beginning to fail and blurring uncontrollably. With a heavy whump of air in my ear, something above me—long and white and glowing like a crystal refracting rainbow sunlight—starts to rise into the arena’s ceiling.

Shouting. The sound of stone cracking thunderously and metal crashing. And then, darkness.