Black Moon Draw

My senses catch up with me. The troll is screaming. My arm and chest are wet with warm blood. I don't have time to figure out where I'm hit. My whole system is trying to right itself after the speed of the past few moments. I look down, unable to identify any injury in the grainy dawn light.

I'm a good hundred feet off the ground, though, far enough that a fall is probably going to kill me good.

"Climb, witch," he says with some sign of strain.

My focus shifts to the boar head peering over the roof at me. Four feet divide us. At this rate, he's going to be chopped to bits before he manages to pull me up. There's a rock sinking into my stomach, and I catch the glimmer of a torch against the raised sword of the troll above him, ready to chop off his head the same way the Desert Knight did his ancestor a thousand of years ago.

"He's right there!" I cry. "Turn and fight!"

"Come on, witch!"

If he saves me, he dies.

But if I fall, we both have a chance to live. Looking down, there's no part of me that wants to test the theory I'm invincible.

The image of his ancestor being beheaded stirs a deeper emotion, the memory of the woman who lost her love that day a thousand years ago. I can barely sort my thoughts out about the sexy man trying to haul me onto the roof instead of protecting his head, but I don't want him to suffer the same fate. It seems . . . unfair for his story to end here. He's the underdog trying to save the world, the last in a line of mighty warriors, the man most likely to need a second shot at some sort of redemption after all the death and destruction he's caused.

I don't want him to die. The singular thought overrides my fear. Not for any of those reasons - but because I like him. More than I should.

If I truly am invincible in this world, the fall will either kill me here or send me home, and it'll save his life so he can go on and save the world.

My chest constricts so fast, I can't breathe. The next handful of seconds happens as if in slow motion. The medallion grows super hot and sends a charge of electricity through me, similar to the one I experienced on the battlefield. Purple electricity arcs and shoots through the Shadow Knight as well.

He jerks without letting go. Whether or not I should, I brace one foot against the wall and yank free.