Hate is a fire.
It will burn your enemies. It will light your way through the darkness.
But if it is the only fuel you have, it will burn the engine as well as the road.
It will burn you from the inside out.
Adrian limped away from the ruined monastery under a cold, indifferent moon.
Every step was a fresh agony. The gash on his forearm, deep and angry, wept blood that he could not staunch. The fire in his ribs had become a constant, grinding torment, making every breath a battle.
But the physical pain was nothing. It was a dull background noise.
The true wound was to his pride. His purpose.
He had met the Silver Huntress. And he had failed.
He had not killed her. He had not broken her.
He had, at best, fought her to a standstill.
He, the ghost, the avenger, the son of the Ashen Wolf, had been forced into a tactical retreat just as she had. He had seen the truth in their final, deadlocked stare. To continue the fight would have meant death for them both.
And death was a luxury he could not afford. Not until the list was finished.
He found shelter in a damp, moss-covered cave miles from the monastery.
He slumped against the wall, his body finally admitting the extent of its injuries. The adrenaline that had sustained him through the fight was gone, leaving only a bone-deep exhaustion and a gnawing, bitter frustration.
He had been so sure.
His rage was a weapon. His grief was a shield. His skill was undeniable.
It was not enough.
Lysandra was different.
Tiberius had been a brute, a bull who fought with predictable strength. Valerius was a pig for the slaughter.
Lysandra… she was a mirror.
She did not fight with rage. She fought with a cold, terrifying discipline. Her every move was precise, calculated, and efficient. She had no wasted motion. She had no anger to cloud her judgment.
She was a perfect weapon.
How do you break a weapon that has no flaws?
He tore a strip from his cloak and tightly wrapped his bleeding arm, hissing as the rough fabric bit into the raw wound.
He knew, with a certainty that chilled him to the core, that if he faced her again in a direct fight, the outcome would be the same. A stalemate. Or worse.
His chaotic, aggressive style, born from the gutters and honed by hate, was a powerful tool. But against her perfect, classical form, it had found its limit.
He needed more than just rage and daggers.
He needed something else. Something more.
The thought was a bitter pill to swallow.
He was Adrian Volkov. Son of the Ashen Wolf. He was the hunter. He did not need help. He did not ask for help.
To ask for help was weakness.
But to die at Lysandra's hands, his vengeance incomplete, was a greater weakness. A failure he could not accept.
There was only one person in the world who could teach him what he needed to know.
A man who had known his father. A man who understood the hunt.
A man who hated him almost as much as he hated the Order.
The decision settled in his gut, cold and hard as a stone.
He would go to Gregor.
The journey took him four days.
Four days of moving through the harshest, most unforgiving parts of the mountains. He traveled by night, sticking to the shadows, his senses on high alert. He knew Lysandra would be hunting him, and this time, she would not be fooled by simple tricks.
He ate what he could find—roots, grubs, a single, stringy squirrel he managed to kill with a well-aimed rock.
The hunger and the pain sharpened his senses, but they also weakened his body. He felt the fire in his ribs spreading, a fever taking hold.
By the time he reached the high peaks of the Dragon's Tooth range, he was stumbling, his vision blurring at the edges.
Gregor's home was not a home. It was a hole in the side of a mountain, perfectly hidden by a curtain of ancient, gnarled pines.
There was no path leading to it. No smoke from its chimney.
To anyone else, it was just another part of the unforgiving landscape.
Adrian knew better.
He collapsed at the edge of the clearing, his strength finally giving out.
"Gregor!" he rasped, his voice a dry, broken whisper.
Silence.
He tried again, forcing the air from his burning lungs.
"Gregor! It's… it's Adrian."
The silence stretched on. He was about to give up, to let the fever take him, when a voice, like rocks grinding together, came from the trees above.
"You look like shit, pup."
Gregor dropped from a high branch, landing as silently as Adrian had in the monastery.
He was a man carved from the mountain itself. Old, grizzled, his face a roadmap of scars and harsh weather. His eyes, the color of ice chips, held no warmth.
He looked down at Adrian, his expression one of pure, unadulterated annoyance.
"I told you to run east," Gregor grumbled. "To the sea. To lose yourself in the cities of the coast. But you didn't listen. You went south. You went hunting."
He nudged Adrian with the toe of his worn leather boot.
"And now the hunt has come back to bite you."
"I need… help," Adrian forced the words out. They tasted like poison in his mouth.
Gregor let out a short, harsh laugh. It was a sound with no joy in it.
"Help? The son of the Ashen Wolf needs help? Your father never needed help. He just needed people to get out of his way."
He knelt, his movements stiff but sure. He grabbed Adrian's chin, forcing his head up. He looked at the fever-bright eyes, the pale, sweating skin.
"You're burning up. The wound is infected."
He looked at the gash on Adrian's arm. He looked at the makeshift splint on his ribs.
"You got your ass kicked." It was not a question. It was a statement of fact.
"Her name is Lysandra," Adrian said through gritted teeth.
Gregor's face, for the first time, showed a flicker of something other than annoyance. It was not fear. It was a grim, weary recognition.
"The Silver Huntress," he breathed. "So, they sent her. The bitch with the silver hair. I thought she was a myth."
He stood up, looking down at Adrian with a new, calculating expression.
"And you want me to teach you how to fight her."
"I want you to teach me how to kill her," Adrian corrected him, his voice low and intense.
Gregor stared at him for a long, silent moment.
"Hate is a good fire, pup," the old man said, his voice quiet and dangerous. "It'll keep you warm for a while. It'll help you see in the dark."
He leaned in close, his icy eyes boring into Adrian's.
"But it's a stupid fire. It burns everything. The good wood, the bad. It burns the house down just to kill the rats inside. It burns the man who lit it."
He stood up straight again.
"I will not teach you how to kill her. Killing is easy. You already know how to do that."
Adrian felt a surge of despair. "Then I'm dead."
"Maybe," Gregor shrugged. "Maybe not."
He kicked Adrian's side, eliciting a sharp cry of pain.
"I will not teach you how to fight," the old trapper snarled. "I will teach you how to hunt. I will teach you how to think. I will teach you how to break her mind before you ever have to touch her body."
He looked down at the feverish, broken boy at his feet.
"But my lessons are hard. Harder than any blade. They may kill you before she ever gets the chance."
Gregor turned and walked toward his hidden home.
"Get up," he called over his shoulder, not looking back. "The first lesson has already begun. If you can't get yourself to my door, you're already dead."