Chapter Twenty-five
THEA
T hea’s mouth tasted like sawdust and an incessant ache throbbed in her temples. When she managed to peel her eyes open, still groggy and disoriented, she started.
For she found herself bound tightly to a metal chair, the cords of rope digging into her flesh and pulling at the stitches in her left arm.
What the fuck had happened? One moment she had been wrapped up in the taste of Wilder, the next she’d been falling… They’d been attacked near the palace’s fucking guardhouse, of all places. How was that possible?
Trying to swallow with a dry throat was difficult, so instead, Thea spat out the bitter taste on her tongue.
She recalled the sharp sting of the dart as it had pierced her arm, coated in some sort of drug, no doubt.
She assessed herself, the sawdust taste, the tingling sensation in her limbs, the headache, wracking her brain for the list of poisons she’d come to know as an alchemist. But without seeing the plant or the extract, without so much as an aroma to go by, it could very well have been anything.
Were she describing it to Wren, she knew her sister would have asked her if it was just a hangover.
Thea shook the thoughts of Wren from her mind.
She needed to bring herself out of the haze of whatever was in her system.
She needed to focus. Looking around, she gathered she was in some sort of storehouse.
Huge wooden crates were stacked all around the space, which was about as big as the Great Hall back at Thezmarr.
The windows were all boarded up, with only thin streams of light filtering through the cracks, enough to see the dust motes floating through the air and the loose chains hanging from the rafters.
A groan sounded beside her.
Thea craned her neck to see Wilder restrained by thick chains from ankle to chest, two darts still protruding from his neck.
He wasn’t fully conscious yet, and from what she could see of his face, it was bloodied.
She wondered how long he’d managed to stay upright, swinging his fists, after they’d got to him with the darts, or if they’d beaten him while he was unconscious.
The thought made her blood boil, power waking from its slumber in her veins.
But she couldn’t use it, not here. If someone saw her magic and reported it to anyone…
Things would get a lot worse for her. She’d have to get out of this predicament the old-fashioned way.
As she started to wriggle, testing her binds for any slack, a laugh sounded.
‘You’re not going anywhere, girl,’ a gravelly voice said. A middle-aged man dressed in a nondescript cloak and tunic came forward, folding his arms over his chest.
‘What do you want?’ Thea hissed, still pushing against the ropes. They’d taken her sword, her damn dagger too… Of course they had.
‘Ah, too many things to count these days,’ he replied.
Thea’s eyes narrowed as she spotted several other men lurking in the shadows behind him. ‘Friends of yours?’
The man waved his companions forward. ‘Acquaintances,’ he corrected. ‘All united by the same goal.’
‘Fascinating.’ Thea wiggled her toes in her boots. At least they hadn’t taken those… ‘And pray tell, what’s that?’
The leader came forward and kicked Wilder’s chair, causing his chains to rattle and Wilder to stir.
‘There’s a price on the Warsword’s head. Yours too.’ He offered her a feral grin.
‘I didn’t realise there’d be someone stupid enough to enact a kill order on a Warsword,’ Thea said thoughtfully. ‘Though I suppose if there are people stupid enough to give the order, someone will inevitably try.’
The man scoffed. ‘He wasn’t so hard to catch. Only had to wait until he was about to get his dick wet, then he was just like any other man.’
The bastard reminded her of Seb Barlowe, and what he might become in twenty or thirty years’ time. Still the same old bully, but given enough power and influence, he’d become a bigger problem, like the man before her.
Thea studied him and the men leering in the background.
There was nothing distinguishable about them – no sigils on their clothes, no distinct accent, no tattoos or fancy weaponry.
Who were they? Were they an organised unit?
Or simply mercenaries for hire? If so, who had hired them?
Thea counted seven in sight, but she suspected there were more in the wings of the storehouse.
It wouldn’t have been easy to move both her and Wilder unconscious and unseen from the palace grounds.
‘See something you like here, girl?’ the man sneered.
Thea wrinkled her nose in disgust. He definitely reminded her of Seb – as if she needed another reason to hate the spineless prick.
‘Can’t say that I do,’ she replied, rolling her ankle subtly, seeking the brush of metal against her skin.
‘You’re mouthy for a girl in your position.’
‘And what position is that?’ She loosened her foot in her boot.
‘All tied up and nowhere to go, around a dozen men who haven’t seen a pair of decent tits in months.’
A dozen. Interesting. Thea’s boot gave a little more. ‘Thought I had a price on my head?’
‘I’m sure we can have some fun with you first.’
Chains rattled. ‘Lay a hand on her, and you’ll die a slow, painful death.’ Wilder’s deep voice rumbled through the space, full of violence.
‘You’re pretty confident for a man in chains, Warsword,’ their captor said. ‘But I don’t think we need to worry about the likes of you just now.’
To Thea’s surprise, Wilder laughed. ‘I didn’t say it was me you had to worry about.’
And that was all the diversion she needed.
She slipped her foot from her boot and kicked it upward, sending her throwing stars flying. They span, a blur of silver.
The men stared. Time seemed to slow while they rotated through the air.
Thea smiled. Catching two stars in her bound hands, she sliced through the ropes in one effortless motion.
In an instant she was on her feet, the stars already flying, spearing through her captor’s hand and pinning him to the crate behind him, a wail echoing through the space.
Thea kept moving, as quick as a shadow, more of her stars hurtling through the air and finding their marks, shouts of pain sounding all around.
They didn’t see her coming.
She was that good, that fast: a deadly whisper in the night.
From a moaning heap of a man nearby, she swiped a sword and a dagger, twirling them deftly. ‘Who wants the price on my head?’ she taunted. ‘Come and get it.’
Three men rushed her, and Thea grinned.
She brought the first opponent down with slices to the backs of his knees and a violent slash across the throat.
He choked on his own blood.
The second man baulked at the brutal death of his comrade, presenting Thea with an opening she couldn’t resist. Twirling on her toes, she parried, dodging his poorly placed strike and shoving her sword up in between his ribs, enjoying the shock in his eyes.
She wrenched the blade away, spraying red everywhere before she cleaved his head from his body.
The third man raised his hands in surrender. Thea considered him with a tilt of her head, before she looped her blade around in a powerful, two-handed cut to his neck.
There was no room for mercy here.
She moved with the grace of a dancer and the speed of a predator, her blade almost too fast to see as she lunged and feinted, slashing through each man as though they were sacks of grain.
Her magic hummed within, crackled at her fingertips, but she kept it leashed.
Instead, she used the dark corners and shadows of the warehouse to her advantage, taking her opponents unawares and basking in the skills she’d learnt as a dancing alchemist and as a shieldbearer of Thezmarr.
Men were screaming.
And it was a song whose notes she revelled in.
Thea left a trail of blood and bodies in her wake as she made her way around the warehouse, the mercenaries still coming for her. Whether it was pride or desperation that drove them, she didn’t care. She simply took them down, one by one, two by two, barely breaking a sweat, barely making a sound.
Not a single one was a match for her, and she relished that new kind of power at her fingertips: the power of violence, not magic.
‘Please!’ someone called from a dark corner. ‘Let us live!’
But she lost herself to the call of death, swinging her blade as an extension of herself. Long gone were the leering expressions and arrogant smirks. In their place was pure, unadulterated terror.
They feared her.
And so they should. She was a weapon of her own making, and she would see them crying out for their mothers before the end —
‘Stop!’ someone shouted.
Thea whirled around to see the leader of the mercenaries behind Wilder, pressing Malik’s dagger of Naarvian steel to his cheek.
Wilder was exactly where he’d been the entire time, bound in chains on his chair.
‘I said stop, girl. Or I’ll slice this bastard’s face off.’
Wilder didn’t move an inch. His face was calm, impassive. Until he winked at her.
The man didn’t even register the movement from her, a blur at her hand, before the dagger she held left her fingertips and carved through the air.
And embedded itself in the soft point between the man’s neck and shoulder.
He screamed. The Naarvian steel he’d been clutching clattered to the ground and he staggered back from Wilder, flailing his arms but not daring to pull the dagger from his flesh.
Thea strode towards Wilder. ‘You didn’t want to lend a hand?’ she asked.
‘You had it under control,’ the Warsword replied with a hint of a smile. Then he braced his body against the chains and they broke apart across his broad chest, no match for his Furies-given strength.
‘You couldn’t have done that sooner?’
The chains dropped from Wilder’s powerful body and he grinned openly at her. ‘Told you, you had it under control.’
Thea warred between pride and annoyance for a moment, but Wilder was already stalking towards the whimpering mercenary leader. The Warsword grabbed him by the front of his shirt with one hand and lifted him up into the air, his legs kicking beneath him.
‘If I pull this out,’ he growled, nudging the dagger still embedded in the man’s neck, ‘you’ll bleed to death in seconds. You understand?’
The man made a pitiful noise.
Wilder looked revolted. ‘Good. Tell us who you’re working for.’
‘I —’
‘Let’s not pretend that you’ll withstand any sort of pain out of loyalty. Who are you working for?’
Thea approached, watching the leader with cold disinterest. This man had attacked her and Wilder, had threatened them with death and worse… She would gladly watch him suffer, she decided. What she couldn’t make up her mind about was if she wanted to be the one inflicting the damage.
‘Please, don’t kill me.’ The man’s legs were still flailing beneath him as Wilder held him up effortlessly. To think that they had imagined the Warsword to be contained by mere chains… Thea almost laughed.
‘Tell us what we want to know, then,’ she said, taking a step closer, watching as his face turned red.
‘Don’t know who hired us,’ he rasped. ‘Someone put out an anonymous bounty. Said the Hand of Death had been sticking his nose in where it don’t belong.’
‘What was your method of contact?’ Wilder demanded.
‘Saw a clipping in a tavern window. Went for a meet there. Please —’
‘Who did you meet?’
‘Man kept his face covered. Big man.’
Thea folded her arms over her chest. ‘And what of the rest of your gang? Did they gather at your orders or someone else’s?’
‘Mine. I saw the flyer. I arranged it all. They were just in it for their cut. Liked the idea of taking a Warsword down.’
Wilder gave a dark laugh. ‘Is that so?’
The man made a desperate gurgling sound. ‘I don’t know no more, I swear it.’
‘Are you sure?’ Wilder asked it in an unsettling way, like he was asking a child if they’d had enough dinner.
Relief flooded the man’s bulging eyes. ‘I swear. That’s all I know.’
Wilder nodded with understanding as he slowly lowered the mercenary to the ground. ‘You remember how I said you’d bleed to death if I removed this?’ he said, almost kindly.
The man nodded, confused.
Wilder’s hand went to the grip of the blade, and in one clean motion, he pulled it free.
Blood spurted like a fountain, hitting Wilder square in the chest, but from the look on his face, he hardly noticed as he dropped the mercenary carelessly.
The man was dead in seconds.
Thea scanned Wilder critically. ‘Are you hurt?’
‘Nothing more than a few scratches,’ he said, surveying the damage around them. ‘You?’
Thea shook her head as he scanned her body in turn, searching for any sign of harm. ‘Tore my stitches. But that’s it.’
Wilder handed her Malik’s dagger. ‘I believe this is yours.’
Blood shone in the engraved words. Glory in death, immortality in legend.
She took it and crouched to wipe it on the dead mercenary’s tunic before sheathing it at her belt. For a moment, she stared at the corpse, regretting that she hadn’t left others alive to interrogate. Someone wanted her and Wilder dead.
‘Does it bother you?’ Wilder asked, his voice low as he watched her. ‘How I killed him?’
Thea frowned. ‘I killed eleven more than you.’
‘I killed in cold blood and I enjoyed it,’ Wilder said, his gaze fiery.
Thea just stared at him, seeing the darkness unfurl behind his eyes as he wrestled with whatever toiled inside him.
‘Should I tell you that I didn’t enjoy ending him?’ he asked her. ‘Because I won’t do that. He deserved to die, and I will always relish the swing or pull of a blade when it delivers what a man is owed.’
Thea went to the corner of the storehouse and retrieved Wilder’s Naarvian blades. She waited for him at the doors. When he reached her, she held them out to him. ‘As will I,’ she told him.
Wilder stared at her for a moment, accepting his weapons in a daze, as though he’d never seen her before.
Maybe they’d knocked him on the head a few too many times. Thea elbowed him. ‘Come on. Let’s find the king and find out what the fuck his summons was about.’