Mistborn #02 The Well of Ascension

weapon you needed to fight me?" Zane asked quietly. "Did you think I'd really give up atium?"
    "But—"
    "A lump of lead," Zane said, walking forward. "Plated with a thin layer of atium around it. Oh, Vin. You really need to be more careful whom you trust."
    Vin stumbled backward, feeling her confidence wilt. Make him talk! she thought. Try to get his atium to run out .
    "My brother said that I shouldn't trust anyone. . ." she mumbled. "He said. . .anyone would betray me."
    "He was a wise man," Zane said quietly, standing chest-deep in mists.
    "He was a paranoid fool," Vin said. "He kept me alive, but he left me broken."
    "Then he did you a favor."
    Vin glanced toward TenSoon's mangled, bleeding form. He was in pain; she could see it in his eyes. In the distance she could hear. . .thumping. She'd turned her bronze back on. She looked up slowly. Zane was walking toward her. Confident.
    "You've been playing with me," she said. "You drove a wedge between me and Elend. You made me think he feared me, made me think he was using me."
    "He was," Zane said.
    "Yes," Vin said. "But it doesn't matter—not the way you made it seem. Elend uses me. Kelsier used me. We use each other, for love, for support, for trust."
    "Trust will kill you," he said.
    "Then it is better to die."
    "I trusted you," he said, stopping before her. "And you betrayed me."
    "No," Vin said, raising her dagger. "I'm going to save you. Just like you want." She snapped forward and struck, but her hope—that he'd run out of atium—was in vain. He sidestepped indifferently; he let her dagger come within an inch of striking, but he was never really in danger.
    Vin spun to attack, but her blade cut only air, skimming along the top of the rising mists.
    Zane moved before her next attack came, dodging even before she knew what she was going to do. Her dagger stabbed the place where he had been standing.
    He's too fast , she thought, side burning, mind thumping. Or was that the Well of Ascension thumping. . ..
    Zane stopped just in front of her.
    I can't hit him , she thought with frustration. Not when he knows where I'll strike before I do!
    Vin paused.
    Before I do. . ..
    Zane stepped away to a place near the center of the room, then kicked her fallen dagger into the air and caught it. He turned back toward her, mist trailing from the weapon in his hand, jaw set and eyes dark.
    He knows where I'll strike before I do .
    Vin raised her dagger, blood trickling down face and side, thunderous drumbeats booming in her mind. The mist was nearly up to her chin.
    She cleared her mind. She didn't plan an attack. She didn't react to Zane as he ran toward her, dagger raised. She loosened her muscles and closed her eyes, listening to his footsteps. She felt the mist rise around her, churned by Zane's advent.
    She snapped her eyes open. He had the dagger raised; it glittered as it swung. Vin prepared to attack, but didn't think about the strike; she simply let her body react.
    And she watched Zane very, very carefully.
    He flinched just slightly to the left, open hand moving upward, as if to grab something.
    There! Vin thought, immediately wrenching herself to the side, forcing her instinctive attack out of its natural trajectory. She twisted her arm—and dagger—midswing. She had been about to attack left, as Zane's atium had anticipated.
    But, by reacting, Zane had shown her what she was going to do. Let her see the future. And if she could see it, she could change it.
    They met. Zane's weapon took her in the shoulder. But Vin's knife took him in the neck. His left hand closed on empty air, snatching at a shadow that should have told him where her arm would be.
    Zane tried to gasp, but her knife had pierced his windpipe. Air sucked through blood around the blade, and Zane stumbled back, eyes wide with shock. He met her eyes, then collapsed into the mists, his body thumping against the wooden floor.

    Zane looked up through the mists, looked up at her. I'm dying , he thought.
    Her atium shadow had split at the last moment. Two shadows, two possibilities. He'd counteracted the wrong one. She'd tricked him, defeated him somehow. And now he was dying.
    Finally.
    "You know why I thought you'd save me?" he tried to whisper to her, though he somehow knew that his lips weren't properly forming the words. "The voice. You were the first person I ever met that it didn't tell me to kill. The only person."
    "Of course I didn't tell you to kill her ," God said.
    Zane felt his life