28. Seraphina
28
SERAPHINA
S omething is wrong.
I wake to the feeling of breath on my skin.
Too close.
The room is pitch black, suffocatingly silent. The only sound is my own breathing, shallow and uneven.
Then—a shift in the air.
Instinct kicks in.
I roll—fast—just as a hand slams down where my throat had been.
The mattress dips violently beneath me, and I hit the cold stone floor in a blur of motion, scrambling backward.
My pulse shrieks in my ears.
There’s a figure in the dark.
Tall. Cloaked. Moving like a shadow that has finally come to devour me.
And then—I see it.
The gleam of cold steel.
A knife.
The world narrows to survival.
I lunge for the nearest weapon, fingers closing around the edge of a candleholder on the nightstand.
The attacker moves first. Fast. Precise.
I duck, twisting, but the blade slices into my arm.
A hot, wet bloom of pain.
I bite back a cry.
No time. No hesitation.
I swing the candleholder.
Crack.
It collides with bone, and the attacker stumbles back, snarling.
A voice—low, sharp, male. Not Lartina.
But hers. Lartina is the one that sent this assassin. I’m sure of it.
This is her hand. Her reach. Her plan.
I bolt for the door.
Another figure emerges from the shadows.
Two of them.
One grabs me by the waist, yanking me back.
I slam my head backward, hitting something solid.
A grunt. A stagger.
I twist, kicking wildly, viciously.
I don’t fight to win.
I fight to survive.
One of them grabs my wrist, twisting it behind my back.
A sharp flare of pain.
His breath is hot against my ear.
“You’re coming with us. Alive.”
Alive.
Lartina knows.
She knows I’m the key.
That’s why she didn’t kill me.
That’s why I’m still breathing.
Lartina must have suspected me all along.
From that very first moment I stole the parchment.
Damn it all to hell.
I throw my weight forward, breaking free for a single, desperate second?—
A fist slams into my ribs.
The world lurches.
Pain explodes through my side.
I hit the ground hard, gasping.
I taste blood.
My vision blurs.
The room tilts—shadows flickering in my periphery, boots shifting closer.
Hands grab me again.
Rough. Unyielding.
I thrash against them.
But it’s no use.
They’re too strong.
The night folds in around me, suffocating and final.
A blade sings through the air.
A gurgling sound.
A body hits the floor.
The hands on me loosen.
I collapse, coughing.
The stench of blood fills the air, thick and metallic.
I blink through the haze.
And there—standing over the fallen body, his dagger dripping with death—is Rylan.
For a second, neither of us move.
I’m still on the ground, chest heaving, arm bleeding, body trembling.
He stands above me, tall and dark and furious, his emerald eyes burning like cold fire.
The second attacker tries to flee.
Tries.
Rylan moves like a shadow, too fast, too precise.
One strike.
A muffled choke.
The second man collapses.
Dead.
The room is silent.
Breathless.
I push myself up on shaking arms.
The pain lances through me, sharp and unbearable. I hiss, gripping my injured arm.
Rylan wipes his blade clean, his movements slow, deliberate.
“Who were they?” he asks, voice eerily calm.
I force myself to lie. To breathe.
“I don’t know.”
Rylan crouches in front of me. His gloved fingers tilt my chin up and our gazes meet. His touch is deceptively light.
His eyes are not.
“That’s a shame,” he murmurs. “Because they knew exactly who you were.”