We Walk As Wolves

Chapter 33

Dells

Dells had lunged first.

It didn't matter who held the larger weapon. Didn't matter who had dealt the first cut. Dells had lunged first. That was what mattered. That was everything. He'd taken the first steps. He'd taken the first swipe with his knife.

He wanted to feel victorious, courageous. Rectified.

Rage was too powerful a beast.

It jackhammered through his veins, moving his feet, pumping his arms. He fought dirty, chaotic, a desperate kind of incentive pushing him on. This was a fight for something he'd already lost. The Grave Thief was like a mirror, something had shattered in his head. He wasn't fighting to keep his crown like he'd been with Cass, he was fighting to break everything that went under his sword.

Try, Dells wanted to scream at him. Try, and see. See there's nothing left for you to break.

The Island sensed the change, too. With every grunt, every slash of their skin from the other's blade, the world fought beside them. Dells couldn't tell whose side it had chosen any longer.

"Oh, you've gotten good," Wilder said, his voice a derisive taunt, the same affronting tone that had spun around in Dells's head for the last two centuries. "Last time I saw you, you were just the little boy who ran away. The kid who left his brothers behind."

He had no name. He had no past, no present, no future. He was just the boy with the long silver blades lined in rows down his back. The boy with the gun holstered to his thigh. The thing from the Lost Forest.

A weapon. A weapon. A weapon.

"What can I say, Thief?" Dells jumped back as Wilder's sword arced down. "I've grown up."

Rage settled deep in Wilder, flooding through the lines on his face like a stain. The world around them roared. Then the ground reared, sending them spiraling up toward the sky, a mountain of spiked ice following behind just under their feet.

Get it together, pal, Dells sent the Island a desperate warning, struggling for balance on the forming peak. C'mon, you know me!

Wilder collided into him, a force strong enough it sent Dells's knife flying from his hand. The blade tumbled down the side of the mountain, shattering on the ice's jagged teeth, but he already had another sliding into his palm before Wilder could do any damage with Cass's sword.

Slash after slash, bite after bite from the two blades. He didn't remember knocking Wilder back, didn't remember going down the first time. Just knew blood drenched his side, just heard the winded staccato of Wilder's breathing. It was instinctive, animalistic, all of it. Just rage and grief and pain and getting up and going down and begging and praying to get himself closer, close enough to ram his fucking blade up through Wilder's bones.

The sword knocked loose another knife from Dells's hand. He scrambled for it. Wilder kicked out, sending it skidding off the mountain's edge with a dull pang. Wilder raised his sword. Dells whirled and drew his gun from the holster.

The world went silent.

Wilder's grin never faltered, and suddenly Dells was back in the woods, pools of blood at his feet, watching that same smile rise on the wolf's face just before he slit his brother's throat.

"You won't do it," the Thief lulled.

He was just a weapon. Just a boy with a gun and a head full of teeth. "Give me one good reason why."

"Because you're the hero," Wilder snarled, pushing his bare chest up against the barrel of the gun, just below the wound that had pierced his heart. "Isn't that what you tell yourself every night? To help you sleep?"