My legs failed me and I fell. The poison sphere rolled out of my pocket beyond my reach. Nice going, Kate. Nice going.

I bent my neck and watched the battle upside down, unable to flinch when their blood splashed me.

They were tired. Both of them. There were no taunts, no showy roars. Just fighting, grisly, bloody, and painful.

Once again Bono danced away, light on his feet. Curran snarled low and saw me. His gaze locked on me for a moment and I knew that this was it.

Bono lunged. Curran knocked away the spear, ripping at the upir’s leg and missing, deliberately too slow. The spear came back in a shiny arch. Bono thrust. The razor-sharp point slid into Curran’s stomach and out his back, pinning him to the ground. But Bono had leaned forward, putting all his strength into the thrust. Curran’s massive hands gripped him by the shoulders. Enormous muscles strained. A horrible snarl ripped from Curran’s mouth. Bones broke, muscle snapped, and I saw light through Bono’s chest, as Curran tore his torso in two. For a moment the two halves of the chest were upright, the head and neck on the left half sticking out at a strange angle, and then the upir lost his balance and tumbled into the dirt.

Curran sagged against the spear. Blood poured from his mouth and his face went slack. “No,” I heard myself whisper. “Please, no.”

The upir’s body jerked. His mangled chest shuddered and slowly he rose to his knees. He remained upright for a moment, fell again and pushed himself forward across the soot-stained ground toward me.

I watched him crawl, his body straining to mend the damage. His head came level with mine. I could see the red sack of his heart pulsing through the gap in his chest half-hidden by ruined spongy lungs.

“Nice fight,” he said through the bloodstained lips. His right eye wouldn’t stop blinking. “Something to remember on our honeymoon.”

I jammed the bone blade into his heart.

Bono screamed. His unearthly howl shook the prison and the windows exploded. His hands flailed, trying to reach the dagger, but failed to find the small blade. He clawed at my neck, but I couldn’t feel it. It didn’t matter. That final thrust had taken everything I had.

There was nothing left to do but to lie here. I’d see him die before I did. That would be enough for me.

Bono lay on his back. “I don’t want to die,” he whispered between short, hoarse breaths. “I don’t want to die . . .”

His body began to smoke. First a thin sheen of indigo fog coated his skin and then it grew, curling into long tendrils and escaping into the night sky.