“Why are you doing this?” she demanded. “What do you have to gain? Taking Eranahl and slaughtering innocents won’t change the fact that the bridge will never be yours. Even if you kill every last Ithicanian, Harendell and Valcotta will never let you have control. You’ve lost.”
Her father laughed. “Harendell is soon to be too occupied with their own troubles to wage war with us, and as for Valcotta . . . Let’s just say your brother has finally proven his worth.” He smiled, and it was all teeth. “Ithicana has lost, and so, Daughter, have you.”
He turned away, gesturing to his soldiers. “Kill her.”
“I challenge you. Here and now. You choose the weapon.”
Her father froze, then he looked her up and down. “You’re hardly fit for a duel, Lara. From where I stand, you’ve already almost bled to death. It would be no fight.”
“Then you have no reason to fear accepting.”
He snorted. “I’m not in the practice of fighting women.”
“Just murdering them.” A wave of dizziness passed over her, but Lara shoved it away. “Like you murdered my mother. Like you tried to murder my sisters. Like you’ll do to me.” She laughed. “Or, like you’ll have your soldiers do to me, because apparently you haven’t the balls to do it yourself.”
The soldiers all shifted, interest chasing away their fear of the coming storm. If her father didn’t accept, he’d be labeled a coward, and a mutiny would follow suit. And if he did and lost . . .
Her father saw the way they were looking at him. Knew that if he didn’t fight her, he was done.
“As you like.” He unsheathed his sword. “Have it your way. Maybe if you’re lucky, you’ll live long enough to watch your kingdom fall.”
Lara pulled her sword free from its scabbard, then gestured with her knife for him to step forward. “Enough chatter, old man. Let’s do this.”
The soldiers pulled back to make space, and Lara held her ground as she watched her father circle.
Her words were bluster, and both of them knew it. He was a skilled swordsman, with years of experience, and while Lara was likely a match for him in skill, her body was failing her. The stitches on her thigh had completely torn open, blood running down to pool in her boot, her leg barely holding her weight. Dizziness and exhaustion rolled over her in waves, and even keeping her balance on the rocking deck was pushing Lara to her limits.
But she had to keep going. For the sake of everyone in Eranahl, she had to keep fighting.
He lunged, lightning flashing off his blade, but Lara anticipated the attack. She parried, her arm shuddering from the impact as he attacked again and again, driving her backward across the deck, attempting to wear her down.
“There’s no sport in this,” her father snapped, then spun away as she counter-attacked, her motion slow and sluggish.
“Then finish it.”
His foot snaked out, hooking her ankle. Lara leaned back on her injured leg, crying out as it buckled beneath her.
Desperate, she rolled, pulling her sword up in time to block a downstroke that would have sliced her in two.
Their weapons locked, her father leaning his weight downward before recoiling as she swiped at him with a knife, her boot heel grazing his knee and causing him to stumble.
Crawling to her feet, Lara pressed the attack, slicing and stabbing and searching for an opening. The ship pitched sideways, both of them falling, sailors scrambling for handholds until the ship righted herself.
“It’s loose! It’s loose!”
It felt like a fist closed around Lara’s heart as her father’s face filled with triumph. “Attack!”
But his soldiers hesitated, weighing the chances of survival between trying to capture the cavern or staying aboard the ship.
“We need to set sail, Your Grace!” the captain shouted from where he clung to a rail. “The storm is going to tear us apart. We need to leave now!”
“No!” Her father dodged as Lara regained her feet and swung at his neck. “Any man who flees will be labeled a coward. A traitor! Any man who leaves will find his head spiked on Vencia’s gates!”
But from the corner of her eye, Lara could see ships were retreating. Raising their sails and flying ahead of the storm that was about to descend with wicked vengeance. Yet that didn’t mean Eranahl was safe. Not when the hundreds of men in longboats would now be fighting their way into the cavern, knowing that her father would never allow them to retreat to the ship.
She needed to give them another option, and she needed to give it to them now.
There had never been a chance of her surviving this anyway.
Catching her balance against the railing, Lara attacked, raining blow after blow upon her father.
She pretended to stumble. Saw the triumph in his eyes as his sword sliced along her ribs.
And the shock that blossomed on his face as she sank her knife into his chest.
The ship rocked, and they fell away from each other. Lara landed hard on her back while her father sank to his knees, fingers tugging futilely at the hilt of her knife.
“You are a traitor,” he hissed. “To your family. And to your people.”
“No, Father,” she whispered. “That’s what they’ll say about you.”
He glared at her with inhuman fury, then the light faded from his azure eyes, and he slumped to the deck.
Her father was dead.
Lara stared at the corpse of the man who’d made her what she was, barely noticing as the soldiers called for retreat, the longboats coming alongside only to be abandoned as men climbed up ladders and ropes, the deck around her filling with them.
“Full sail!” the captain ordered. “Anyone not aboard gets left behind!”
Sailors ran to obey, but as sails caught the wind, the ship shuddered and jerked. The masts groaned, and the sharp shriek of metal against rock filled Lara’s ears.
“Cut the ropes, you idiots!” the captain screamed. “Cut us loose.”
Whether anyone complied, Lara couldn’t have said, because members of her father’s cadre were approaching, murder in their eyes.
Fighting back pain, Lara climbed to her feet, blood gushing down her side to soak her shirt with each breath she took. Leaning against the rail, she stared them down, these men who’d supported and protected her father through all his villainy. If she’d had the strength, she’d have killed them all.
They lifted their weapons.
Lara leaned backward.
She somersaulted over the railing, plunging downward. Icy water closed over her head and she struggled upward, kicking hard.
Her head broke the surface only for a wave to wash over it. Choking and gasping for breath, Lara caught hold of some debris, clinging to it as she rose and fell on the violent swells.
The shipbreaker made a resounding crack, a rock crashing into a longboat. Then another into the wake of the ship. Then another into another longboat. Then it went silent.
Because the battle was over.
Everywhere Lara looked, ships were flying across the whitecaps, sails full with wind as they tried to outrun the storm that had fallen upon them with wicked fury. There were still sailors in the water, men screaming for the ships to turn back, for their comrades to save them, but one by one they were jerked down.
And around Lara, fins circled.