There are moments when the only thing between you and screaming is the thought of a good whiskey. Not just any swill, either—none of that cheap barley piss watered down by tavern rats with shaky hands and loose morals. I mean the real stuff. Deep-burn whiskey. The kind that lingers on your tongue like a bad decision and burns all the way down like memory. I needed a bottle of that. Bad. But all I had was blood in my mouth, ghosts at my feet, and the echo of a fight that had taken everything I had left to give.

  I sat heavy on the ice-slick stone, one hand still wrapped tight around the haft of Tavor’s axe. It hummed low in my grip, like the last note of a dirge that didn’t know how to end. The potion’s fire still flickered in my veins, but it was fading fast. The final burst of strength that had carried me through the end had already bled into the cold, patching what it could and leaving the rest to time and willpower.

  I was tired. Bone-deep. Soul-weary. The kind of tired that doesn’t sleep off easy. Around me, the chamber groaned. The leyline magic was bleeding out, untethered from its source, and the walls were starting to sweat and crack like the glacier had finally remembered it was dying. But I didn’t look at the walls. I looked at the bodies. Seven of them.

  Seven soldiers who’d followed me down into this frozen tomb and never walked back out. I knew their names. I knew who hated onions, who carved little runes into the handles of their knives, who always sang under their breath on night watch. I knew whose boots had worn uneven, whose hands shook before battle and whose didn’t.

  Two of them had families. None of those lay here. Small mercies are still mercies. I was just shifting my weight to stand—getting ready to limp back toward where Maren had fallen, to see if that spark of defiance was still burning in her chest—when I heard it.

  Clap.

  Slow. Deliberate. Mocking. Another.

  Clap. Clap.

  I turned. And Erla stepped from the shadows, a silhouette framed by the cold breath of the exit tunnel. Her eyes weren’t wide with fear or sorrow. They were sharp. Calculated. A cruel little smile played across her mouth like she’d just told herself a joke too mean to share. Behind her, the beastkin moved—Pip, still cloaked in that false air of loyalty, slipping around behind her like a shadow with a knife.

  “Should’ve known something was off,” I said, my voice rough. “You always walked too quiet for someone with clean hands.”

  Erla crossed her arms, boots crunching softly against the frost-slick floor.

  “You’ve got good instincts, Blackthorn,” she said. “Shame they won’t save you this time.”

  I stood, slow but deliberate. The axe came with me.

  “You’re both still breathing,” I said. “That’s a kindness. Don’t mistake it for mercy.”

  Pip shifted behind her, still quiet. Still watching me. Eyes unreadable.

  “What do you want?” I asked. “Redmore send you? Or one of the other noble bastards too soft to bleed but eager to get someone else to do the cutting?”

  Erla’s smile didn’t waver. “It doesn’t matter who signed the ledger. You’re not walking out of these tunnels, Lena. That’s what matters.”

  “See, that’s where you’re wrong,” I said. “Because you forgot one thing.”

  Erla raised an eyebrow.

  “I’m still holding the axe.”

  She chuckled. “You think that’s enough?”

  “No,” I said. “But it’s a start.”

  For a moment, none of us moved. The chamber creaked, ice groaning like it didn’t want to hold us anymore. Then I shifted my grip, brought the axe up to shoulder height.

  “Last chance,” I said. “Drop your blades. Walk away. I’ll give you a head start before this whole place comes down.”

  Erla took a step forward. Pip mirrored her.

  “No,” she said. “I don’t think you will.”

  And I saw it then.The flicker in her hand. A rune stone—primed and ready. She wasn’t here to finish a fight. She was here to end it. And I was ready.

  Erla flicked the rune like she’d done it a hundred times—wrist tight, fingers quick, all sharp, clean economy of motion. That wasn’t a soldier’s move. That was the mark of a trained killer. One of those cold types bred for silence and speed, the kind of person who never left a trace unless they wanted to.

  And now that I knew what to look for, I could see it all. The stance. The breathing. The way her eyes never drifted. She wasn’t here to sabotage a ritual. She was here to erase me. Should’ve seen it sooner. But I’d had my hands full—command sending me on a suicide run, half my unit turned to corpses, Tavor’s blood still wet on the wall. Rage has a way of narrowing your focus. And grief? That’ll blind you outright.

  But clarity comes fast when someone throws death at your face. The rune flared midair, pulsing with unstable heat. And I moved. Potion or not, I was running on fumes—soul-weary and dead inside in all the ways that count—but my body had juice left, and muscle memory doesn’t ask questions. I lunged forward, closing the gap in a single breath, and swatted the rune out of the air like it was a street ball in some back-alley stick match back in Graywatch.

  It spun backward—sparking, unstable—and hit the tunnel wall behind them, where it flared once and fizzled out in a hiss of angry light.

  Pip—if that was even his real name—let fly with three knives in quick succession. I juked left, felt the wind of one blade part the strands of my braid. Another glanced off my shoulder pauldron, the third embedded in the ice beside me with a thunk that said it would’ve hurt if I’d been a step slower.

  I didn’t slow down. One of them had to go. Fast. I feinted toward Erla, boot grinding ice, shoulder dropping low like I was about to tackle her to the floor. She bit. Shifted to block me. And that was when I pivoted, turned on my heel, and threw Tavor’s axe.

  Agrin would’ve been proud. Bastard drilled me for months on thrown weapons—said I had all the power but no finesse, that I swung like a wrecking ball and aimed like a drunk. He made me practice until my arm was numb, cursing me the whole time. Said if I was going to lead, I needed to kill at a distance too.

  The axe spun through the air, a blur of metal and fire runes. It caught Pip mid-motion, just as he was reaching for another knife. Split him from shoulder to hip. Clean and final. He didn’t even scream. Just folded in half and dropped like a broken puppet.

  Erla saw it. Watched the whole arc, the entire fall. Her face twisted—tight and ugly. Not shock. Not sadness. Rage. That cold mask she’d worn cracked wide open. She stepped forward, face red and contorted.

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  “You stupid, muscle-brained bitch,” she hissed.

  Her voice was shaking now, like she couldn’t decide whether to cry or tear my throat out with her teeth.

  “That was my partner.”

  I straightened slowly, blood dripping from my knuckles, eyes locked on hers.

  “No,” I said. “That was dead weight.”

  Erla stood over Pip’s body like it was a sacrament, rage boiling up through her teeth. She didn’t scream. Didn’t cry. Just reached into her belt pouch with tight, practiced fingers and slapped a pair of rune-stamped stones to her chest—one on each shoulder. A shimmer of light crawled across her skin, sinking in like oil on parchment. Then she pulled the cork on a vial and slammed it back like rotgut.

  Her veins bulged. Muscles pulsed. I heard the joints in her fingers pop as her fists clenched tight. Great. Potions and glyphs.

  “Thought we’d keep it clean,” I said, cracking my neck.

  Erla smirked. “Clean’s for cowards and queens.”

  Then she came at me. She hit like a forge hammer—short, brutal punches made to break ribs and crush bone. First one caught me in the gut, the kind of blow that could’ve caved a smaller woman in half. I grunted, stepped into it instead of away, and took the second one high on the shoulder.

  Pain flared white-hot. I let it burn. My turn.

  I drove a knee into her stomach and followed it with a left hook that caught her across the jaw. Her head snapped sideways. I felt something give under my knuckles—maybe her molar. Maybe a rune. Didn’t care. She spat blood and kept swinging. This wasn’t elegant. It wasn’t strategic. It was a bar brawl in a collapsing glacier. She punched, I blocked. I elbowed, she ducked. We traded blows like gamblers trade curses, neither of us letting up.

  Her potions made her fast. Her runes made her strong. But I had me. Nearly seven feet of rage and grit wrapped in leather and old regrets. She came low, trying to sweep my legs. I jumped the move and brought my elbow down hard into her back. She grunted and surged up, catching me under the chin with an uppercut that rattled my skull.

  Stars danced behind my eyes. I shook them off. She pressed the advantage, fists like iron pistons. I took a step back, blocked one—ate another to the ribs—and then caught her next punch mid-swing. My fingers closed around her wrist and squeezed.

  Her eyes widened.

  “You’re strong,” I growled. “But you’re not me.”

  I wrenched her sideways and drove her into the ground, ice cracking beneath us. She twisted, throwing an elbow into my temple. I staggered. She scrambled up and launched at me again, both fists swinging like she was trying to kill a memory. One caught me across the cheek. I tasted blood. I smiled through it.

  I’d been through worse. Hells, I was worse. I came in low and plowed into her midsection, lifting her clean off her feet and slamming her into the wall. She gasped, the breath leaving her lungs in one ragged rush. I didn’t let her recover. I pulled back and drove my fist into her gut, again and again, until she buckled.

  She clawed at me, caught my cheek with her nails, left a red trail down my face. I caught her wrist, twisted, and threw her to the ground again. She rolled to her knees, wheezing. She surged up—shoulder first—and caught me under the ribs. We tumbled, crashing across the ice like two animals that didn’t know how to stop. She got on top for a second, rained down blows, but I headbutted her square in the nose. The crunch echoed. She howled. I rolled her over, got my knee on her chest.

  “Who paid you?” I growled.

  She laughed, blood bubbling from her split lip.

  “You think it matters?”

  “It does to me.”

  I cocked back a fist, but she slammed her forehead into mine. I reeled. She shoved me off with surprising force, scrambling to her feet, unsteady but upright. We were both breathing hard now. Limbs shaking. Faces wrecked. I wiped the blood from my mouth and squared my stance. She cracked her knuckles and narrowed her eyes.

  “Still standing,” she muttered.

  “Not for long.”

  She ran at me. And I didn’t dodge. I met her charge with a punch straight to the face, full weight behind it. Her nose broke again. She staggered. I followed up with a right hook to the temple. Her knees buckled. One more. I brought my fist down like judgment, and she dropped—hard and final. Flat on her back, blinking up at the ceiling like maybe it would explain how this all went wrong. I stood over her, chest heaving.

  “Name,” I demanded.

  Her lips moved. A whisper. Maybe a curse. Maybe a name. Then her eyes rolled back and she went still. I didn’t wait to see if she was dead. I turned back toward the path where Maren had fallen. There was still work to do. And I needed that drink more than ever.

  The silence after Erla dropped was loud enough to hurt. Every sound echoed too sharp—my boots crunching across frost, the whistle of my breath through busted ribs, the wet shuffle of blood-soaked leather. I staggered toward the far wall where Maren had gone down. My legs were trembling, one hand still curled in a half-fist, like it hadn't gotten the message that the fight was over.

  The truth was, it wasn’t. I dropped to my knees beside her. She was pale, her breathing shallow and uneven, but it was there—threaded through her lips like a promise not yet broken. Her skin was cold, sweat beading along her brow despite the frozen air.

  “Come on, soldier,” I rasped, brushing the hair back from her face. “Don’t go out on me now.”

  Her pulse fluttered under my fingers like a moth caught in a bottle. Weak, but alive. I bound her wounds with strips torn from what was left of my inner sleeve, muttering every foul curse I’d learned in fifteen years of military life. Some of them were dwarven. Some elvish. A few might’ve been made-up blasphemies I’d invented myself.

  “By the frostbitten balls of Crom Cruach, you’re too stubborn to die here,” I muttered, tightening the makeshift bandage and hoisting her into my arms.

  She groaned but didn’t wake. I stood. And the mountain woke with me. A pulse. A click. A tremor in the ice like something massive had just exhaled from deep below. Erla, that rat-bastard harpy, had left us a parting gift. I turned—and saw the glyphs along the walls begin to glow. Runes stitched into the stone like veins pulsed to life, one by one, each flaring bright before blinking out.

  Fail-safes. Trap runes. All of them. Triggered. I felt the heat rise before I saw the first one go. A boom ripped through the left flank of the chamber, the wall bursting inward with fire and rock, shards of enchanted obsidian flying like razors through the air.

  “By Galeen’s crooked laugh,” I swore, already running.

  I didn’t get far before another detonation went off behind me, the heat licking at my back like a drunk trying to pick a fight. Maren groaned in my arms, but I didn’t stop. Couldn’t. The tunnels ahead were collapsing, one after another, like dominoes made of fire and bad decisions. Flames burst from narrow cracks, chased by gouts of frost-magic—old ward spells colliding with raw explosive runes in a chaos of cold and ash. Ice cracked beneath my boots, whole slabs of it dropping into black pits I didn’t have time to gauge.

  I ran faster. The ceiling above me groaned like it hated me personally. Another explosion to my right—this one closer. Too close. A jagged stone clipped my shoulder, spun me into the wall, but I held on to Maren and pushed forward, teeth clenched against the pain.

  “Hold on, dammit,” I growled. “You don’t get to die until I say so.”

  More flame. More ice. Smoke and ruin swallowing the light. I leapt a fissure that had split open beneath the leyline path—barely cleared it. My boot caught the edge. I stumbled. Slid. Caught myself on a chunk of stone glowing red-hot.

  I hissed through my teeth.

  “Saints below, if I ever make it out of this ice-blasted hells pit, I’m going to find the bastard who trained Erla and shove this entire mountain down their throat.”

  The tunnel narrowed—barely wide enough for my frame, but I shouldered through. Sparks rained from above. Rock fell like divine judgment. The walls pulsed with firelight and shadow. I charged. Stone gave way behind me. The passage collapsed, the roar deafening. I didn’t look back. There was nothing back there but death and dust.

  My lungs were burning now. Each breath a knife. My muscles screamed. The heat and frost were warring across my skin, leaving welts and bruises like battlefield tattoos. Maren was dead weight in my arms, her head lolling, blood soaking into my jacket. But I kept moving. I had to.

  The tunnel bent—once, then again—and then I saw it: the breach. A shattered wall of ice where one of the earlier teams must’ve blown a way out. A ragged wound in the side of the mountain, light spilling through in jagged beams of dying sun. Almost there. Then the final rune went. The world detonated.

  I felt the shockwave before I heard it—a wall of heat and noise and pressure that caught me mid-stride and threw me through the exit like a doll. I hit the frozen slope outside and rolled hard, Maren cradled tight against me. I didn’t stop until my back slammed into a stone outcropping.

  Everything was white. Deafening. My ears rang. My body ached. But I was outside. Alive. I pushed myself up to one knee, coughing smoke and blood. And I rose.

  Slowly. Reluctantly. Covered in soot and ash and the stench of burned magic. My armor was scorched black, my coat torn open down the side, frost caked in my hair, blood on my face, one eye swollen shut. Behind me, the glacier howled and bled steam into the dying light.

  And I stood in front of it, breathing hard, Maren limp in my arms. I didn’t feel like a hero. I felt like death given a name. Somewhere, in the back of my head, I thought of whiskey.