Marlowe
The fight dragged on past the point either of us had strength left for, pure stubbornness keeping both of us upright, and I felt my own reserves finally, dangerously starting to run dry when Vance's hand moved toward his belt in a motion neither King nor I had accounted for.
Steel caught the moonlight, sudden and cold, and every plan either of us had evaporated at once.
"King!" I don't know if I screamed his name as warning or as something closer to instinct, but he was already moving, already closing the distance between us with a speed his exhausted, bleeding body shouldn't have still possessed.
The blade that was meant for me found him instead.
I watched it happen almost in slow motion — King's body angling deliberately into the strike's path, the blade catching him deep al
