CHAPTER 23 #2
I took back everything I’d thought about swords and poetry. This was terrifying. There was no beauty in it. It was brutal and horrible. I didn’t want to watch it anymore. I just wanted it to end with Reynald still standing.
Something moved behind Gort. I was so focused on the two fighters, I didn’t even know how I saw the flicker on the edge of my vision. It was a man in a gray assassin’s outfit running down the street toward Gort.
Oh please no. Please, please, please no. Anybody but him.
Solentine sprinted.
I pulled the door open and jabbed my hand at Gort. Behind you!
He spun around, his axe swinging before he even saw anything.
Solentine’s footsteps ignited with silver.
He veered away from Gort to his right and ran up the building, two long daggers in his hands.
Gort hurled his axe. It slammed into the wall, missing Solentine by a couple of inches.
The head of the Shears twisted his body and dashed across the vertical wall, his body parallel to the ground.
The Butcher saw him. His blur flared with purple, and he slid away from Reynald and Solentine, to the west and toward me, covering twenty-five yards in an instant.
A crossbow bolt clattered on the cobblestones, a quarter of a second behind him. Shana had missed.
The purple light died. The Butcher stumbled, still running but no longer blurring.
He was out of juice and running straight for Lute’s street.
Of the two Magnar brothers, Lute was the weakest. The Butcher would kill him, hurt him, or use his morr beads, and we would never find him again.
He had a head start and Reynald was across the plaza.
Morr beads transported whoever broke them, but never more than one person or a heavy load. They must have a weight limit . . .
I shot out of the doorway toward the Butcher.
He didn’t see me.
For a terrifying second I was flying toward him. The plaza seemed to stretch into the distance. I just had to tackle him and wrap him up. No matter how strong he was, I could buy us at least two or three seconds.
The Butcher’s head whipped around, and I saw his face, an angry cold mask.
We collided. I grabbed onto him, clutching at whatever I could, and yanked him toward me.
Pain exploded across my stomach. Something cracked. Breath burst out of me. He must’ve hit me.
Another hit. It felt like a horse had kicked me. My grip slipped, and I landed on my butt on the ground, a chunk of dark hair in my hand.
The world slowed to a crawl.
The Butcher raised his sword, and I saw his face, furious and filled with rage. He stared straight through me as if I weren’t a person but some obstacle he had to destroy.
The sword thrust toward me.
Green fire streaked across the cobblestones, like a jet of arcane napalm, straight between us. The front end of the Butcher’s blade slid off and fell to the ground.
The Butcher’s eyes went wide. He stared at the half sword in his hand and pawed at his wrist. Something popped like popcorn in my head. The Butcher vanished.
Twenty yards away, Reynald was holding a sword dripping green magic. Black smoke coiled from him, streaming downward to hug the cobblestones.
Green fire.
The line of flames died, snuffed out like the flame of a candle. A scar gouged the plaza.
When he strikes, the Fatefire flies off the blade and burns everything in its path. Every strike leaves a line of flames in its wake. The air reeks of smoldering flesh. The black smoke that rises from the bodies stings your eyes . . .
He was looking at me. His eyes glowed. I could see them all the way from where I sat. They were a bright, paralyzing green.
Behind him, Gort swung into view, walking over. He didn’t seem surprised.
I scrambled to my feet and ran for the house.
I pounded on the door of the house. “It’s me. Open up!”
The door swung open, revealing Kaiden and Clover. I yanked my coif off my head.
Clover’s face blanched. “What happened?”
“Leave the door unlocked.” He would cut through it if he had to. “Go to Clover’s room and bar the door from the inside. Do not come out. Don’t make noise. If Reynald knocks, don’t open the door to him.”
“Why?” Kaiden demanded.
“Do as I tell you!”
Kaiden opened his mouth, but something in my face must’ve told him now was the wrong time to argue. I slammed the door closed behind me and we took off across the courtyard to the inner door.
Ramond vi Everard, the Sleepless Duke, the Lord of Selva, wielder of the Fatefire, twenty-nine years old, six foot one, dark hair, pale green eyes that turned an intense, true green when he used his magic.
True green, my ass. It was a bright electric green that burned into your brain.
Of course he didn’t look thirty-eight. He wasn’t thirty-eight.
I rode a horse.
He sure did. The one with a skull face on its head.
I will take care of it.
And he did. The Dargans did a lot of business in the north. When Reynald took off his mask, Drugh saw the Sleepless Duke and he got out of there like his ass was on fire. That should’ve been a clue. Reynald was respected but not feared and that had been fear.
Trust me.
I was so oblivious and stupid. Everard’s whole life revolved around Selva, and I had told him the civil war was coming and Rellas would go to shit.
He would do anything and everything to control me because I was the key to his survival.
A woman who knew his rivals’ secrets. A priceless gift.
He must’ve been overjoyed when I sat on that bench in the cemetery and stared at him like a lovesick fool.
We cleared the stairs and burst into the upper hallway. The kids ran to the right, past me. I lingered until I saw them disappear into Clover’s room, and then I ducked into my suite. I would lock the door and—
Solentine leaped onto my windowsill. I had left the fucking window open again. Damn it.
“Don’t move,” Solentine ordered.
A low growl came from my bedroom. The stelka emerged from under my bed, her little fangs bared.
“Guard vermin. Charming,” Solentine said.
Quiet steps came from the hallway.
He was coming. There was no escape.
Everard walked through the open door.
Nothing of Reynald remained. This was the demon from the basement. Before, even during the fights, he had dampened himself somehow. He wasn’t hiding anymore.
He walked in, and the room was his. He owned it. His presence filled it, unignorable, a sharp, immediate threat that demanded you focus on it to the exclusion of everything else. There was no predator to compare him to. He was in a class of his own.
He leaned against the wall and crossed his arms, and when I looked into his eyes, I saw a cold, calculating intelligence looking back.
If I’d had any emotional capacity left, it would have scared me more than Solentine and his daggers, more than the Fatefire or the Butcher, but I was too shocked and numb.
The enormity of the betrayal had knocked all the fear out of me.
The stelka dashed under the bed and stayed there.
“Are you hurt?” the Sleepless Duke asked me.
Somehow, I made my mouth work. “No.”
“A pity,” Solentine murmured.
Everard ignored him. His voice was slow and measured. “What happened to staying inside the building? Did you misunderstand? Were my instructions vague or confusing?”
How had he hidden this? How in the world did he manage to tone himself down to pretend to be Reynald?
He was waiting for me to answer.
“He was about to disappear or hurt Lute,” I said.
Everard fixed me with his stare. “Morr beads are calibrated to a specific weight. Do you know what happens when you add another human to that weight?”
“No.”
“Neither do I. The magic could’ve cut you to pieces and strewn them between that plaza and his destination.”
“Lute—”
“Is a trained killer. You’re not.”
“Can we get back to what’s important?” The head of the Shears slid his daggers back into their sheaths and sat on the windowsill.
“Nineteen days ago you left the safehouse in the morning ‘to think’ and disappeared. The two human-shaped statues you brought with you refused to tell me where you had gone.”
Solentine’s tone was even and deliberate.
“We have a partnership. I’ve committed resources and people to our shared cause. And for reasons that right now escape me, I’m personally invested in your survival and continued well-being.”
Oh he was pissed. Solentine didn’t run hot when he was mad. He got chillingly cold.
“Nineteen days. Not a word. No sign of life. Nothing. I was sure that you had been recognized and Sauven had you stashed in some dark hole. I considered what I would do if you turned up floating face down in the Dokkon. Instead, I find you here, in the company of a woman without an identity. A woman who showed up out of nowhere, who has access to information she shouldn’t have, and who likely has been planted here by one of the Eight Families to get close to me or you. ”
“The world doesn’t revolve around the two of you,” I told him.
“Be silent,” Solentine told me.
“Or what? You’re going to kill me? Ha.” I just didn’t care anymore.
Solentine turned to Everard. “What are you doing here?”
“Saving the kingdom.”
Solentine looked at him for a moment. “Divine, I think you might be serious.”
“I am,” Everard told him.
There was something in my hand. I looked down at it. I was still clutching a clump of the Butcher’s hair. Somehow, I had held on to it the whole time. I stepped to my desk and dropped the clump onto a piece of paper. Some hair had stuck to my sweaty hand, and I brushed it off on autopilot.
Solentine shook his head. “Fine. What’s done is done. Fatefire leaves recognizable scars. There is nothing I can do to erase the gash in the Vanquisher’s plaza. Tomorrow the capital will know that you are here.”
He was right. That green crap had carved right through the stone.
“Sauven will be told. He will panic and lean on the knight orders. They will scour the city looking for you. If you’re recognized, and Sauven can prove you broke the Accords, we’re done.”