“Tell you what,” Calenne told her. “Give me back my sword, and I’ll show him how it feels.”

Vorn struck her across the face. Her reply dissolved in a blur of crimson. She spat a sticky gobbet onto the ground.

Gregor laughed. The grip on her wrist slackened. Just enough. Through the pain and the thick, metallic tang of her own blood, Calenne realised it was the best chance she’d have. She brought the heel of her left boot down on Gregor’s instep, and flung herself backwards.

Calenne lost Gregor’s howl of pain in the crashing, jarring thud as they slammed into the undergrowth. She drove an elbow into his face and staggered upright. Still unsteady, she fled the dell, uncaring of the branches whipping at her face or the thorns raking her clothes.

She stumbled more than ran. Her pulse raced in her ears. The footsteps behind thundered with the urgency of drumbeats. She was going to die. And yet somehow, the prospect was a distant one, as if a fate destined for another. She wished she could speak to Josiri one last time. No. This was his fault, as much as hers. What more was there to say?

She didn’t see the tree in time, hidden in moon-shadow as it was. Her left shoulder struck a glancing blow, and she caromed away. She landed awkwardly on splayed hands and knees. The strike of a boot against her hip tipped her belly-up. Her head struck an exposed root. The world swam.

Calenne scrambled back on hands and haunches. Her back struck the rough, unmoving obstacle of a tree trunk. A heartbeat after, the point of Vorn’s sword was at her throat. Shivering yet somehow defiant, she glared up at him. She could at least die with dignity.

“Do it,” she spat. “I don’t care.”

“Oh no, my lady,” said Keera, her good hand still clasped to a bloody shoulder. “First, you owe me for an arm.”

Gregor limped into sight. “For starters.”

The shadows surged. Gregor simply . . . vanished. A lingering scream ended in a sickening thump. A new shape bore down through the trees, blacker than the night.

“Gregor!”

Keera fumbled for her sword. She reeled away in a spray of blood and crashed into the brambles, lifeless as a side of butcher’s meat.

With a garbled whimper, Vorn threw down his sword and fled.

Calenne barely saw him go. Her throat tightened as she laid eyes on the newcomer. Fear she’d thought vanquished dragged her once more into icy embrace. That butcher’s sword. The black surcoat, and its blazon of the silver swan. She knew that swarthy, scarred face almost as well as she knew her own, though she’d never seen it with adult eyes.

The Black Knight. The man who’d killed her mother. He’d come for her. As she’d dreamed he would.