"We are," Erix agreed. "You made sure of that when you cleared your camp." His eyes swept the ring one final time, marking every one of them. "Family. They chose this. Every one of them chose it, standing in a circle at the only exit, waiting to kill exhausted people who had saved their lives. So we do not go easy, and we do not go slow, and we do not let a single one of them out this door to try it on someone else." His voice dropped, cold and final. "Take them down."
The leader roared and threw down his hand, and the twenty came from every side at once, and the bone-pale chamber erupted into war.
But it was not the war they had planned. They had counted on eleven tired fighters. They had not counted on eleven fighters who had just killed a Skyward king and knew, down in their bones now, exactly what they were capable of, and who fought this time not for a stranger's chest but for their own lives and each other's.
