Chapter 29
My first day back to physical training goes by without incident. I’d be lying if I claimed I didn’t get shivers from Desmond’s hands guiding mine through the motions of knife throwing, or when his voice grows husky as he gives me feedback on our sparring.
The real challenge is still the bridge we’re bringing to King Olin’s tomb.
I trained with it for hours today, unfolding the planks with my magic and levitating them for Desmond to walk across.
We practice in the field south of the hideout, right off the path.
I thought it would be easier than during the windstorm we faced on the heist. Yet this bridge is three times as long, and my magic loses its grip on the far end too often for comfort.
The day is over now, and my body is sore everywhere as I retreat into my bedroom after supper. I change into the nightgown Nog made for me. When I tried to express how much I liked it, she shushed me and threatened to leave spiders under my mattress.
Facing the mirror, I undo my braid and run a comb through my crimped hair. Then I pause. For a moment, I don’t recognize the woman staring back at me. My cheeks are full. The hollows of my neck have vanished. Instead of a malnourished pallor, I glow with health.
It startles me how different I look. At home, we never ate until we were full.
Our memories of the famine made us cautious and conservative.
But here? The food is endless. Succulent venison, fresh berries, roasted vegetables with a crunch from herbs.
Before arriving at the guild, I had never eaten enough to feel sluggish from a warm meal, too full to lift a hand.
The Avedoran laws my family is bound by don’t apply here.
Rune and his thieves poach right under the queen’s nose.
No tithe. No fear. Not even the risk of execution keeps the guild from doing what they want—only their self-imposed rules command them.
Rune walks like a man with nothing to lose and everything to gain. It’s maddening. It’s. . . tempting.
Then there’s the tailored clothes. Warm baths. A bed of my own that hugs me every night. Each day brings a new challenge that excites me, unlike the endless farming that left me sweating, sore, and swarmed by flies.
Maybe it won’t matter if I have to turn the other way when the guild steals if it means I can stay here.
Deep down, I know that’s not who I am. I can’t stomach stealing from the living. That must be why I haven’t accepted Rune’s offer yet, even though this could be the life I’ve always wanted. Not just for me—for them. For Evie. For my parents. But a sharp thought pierces me.
If I barely recognize myself, how will they?
I abandoned them. I left the fieldwork, livestock, and diminishing cellar shelves to them while I play darts without a care and sink into a hot spring bath instead of a tepid basin. What would they say if they saw me now?
You’re selfish, Cynthia.
Or worse, they’d reject me altogether.
In the mirror, I search for the woman I was. Someone who would sacrifice her dream of seeing the world for her family, no matter how miserable it would make her. The woman who scrounged for treasure that would never be enough to set her free.
She’s in there somewhere. But the longer I stay, the harder she is to find.
I straighten as the door opens. Min walks in, dripping wet with a smudge of dark blood across her brow. “You missed a spot,” I tell her. I’m glad she’s arrived. I don’t want to be stuck in my thoughts any longer.
Min wipes it off with the hem of her black cloak and blinks. “My apologies. I thought I washed sufficiently before returning.” She unhooks her cloak, revealing a vest made of scales. As she takes the vest off, it glimmers with an iridescent sheen.
I pause, staring at it. “Is that dragon scale armor?”
She nods as she lays it on her bed. “The scales are from dragon hatchlings. It is very difficult to acquire and expensive. Finnian was disgruntled when he discovered that I fulfilled contracts unarmored.” Then she meticulously wipes her daggers clean with a cloth from her pocket.
“He bought the vest for you?” I gape, incredulous. I’ve noticed his lingering looks at her, but I had no idea that he—
A shout and a loud crash startle me. We both turn to face the door.
“I do not think all is well,” Min says, rearming herself with the daggers.
“No shit,” I mutter, then grab the throwing knives Desmond gifted me. Heavy footsteps pound down the hall. Min peeks out the door and flings a dagger. Someone swears.
She ducks into our room as a serrated blade soars where she’d been a mere second before. “The hideout has been infiltrated by assassins. That one appears to be fomorian.”
Dread curdles my stomach. “Gashil is back?”
Min doesn’t respond; she’s already shifting. Her morphing form grows until her paws are as large as dinner plates, scraping the floor. She snarls, her head now larger than mine. Elongated incisors protrude past her jaw, and her hackles rise. She’s no lynx.
Her throat rumbles just before she pounces into the hallway.
“Wait, you forgot your armor!” I shout, but she’s already gone. I white-knuckle a knife as I flatten my back against the door, then peer into the hall. Min pounces, knocking the assassin over. Her claws bat his chainmail coif off his head, then rake into his throat.
Bile rises into my mouth. I swallow it down. This isn’t the time to let a little gore paralyze me, not when our lives are at stake. I have to fight. I’m not the same woman who got her ass kicked by Desmond on the mat, the one who almost lost to a draugr wight. I won’t hide.
It strikes me with a surge of indignation that my parents would want exactly that. Their daughter safe behind a locked door because untethering is no Gift for a fight.
You’re a liability, Desmond had said after evaluating me.
When the tides turn, you will be afraid, Auri had hissed just before she held me at knifepoint.
I’ll prove them all wrong. Besides, Gashil must pay for threatening my family.
I put on Min’s armored vest, hoping she won’t mind. Then I lunge into the hall. The assassin Min attacked is unmoving, silver blood seeping from the lethal lacerations. The violence isn’t what stuns me this time.
It’s his body, as tall as a troll yet with the graceful proportions of a fae.
Where his skin isn’t tainted by blood, it’s milky white like the moon reflected on water.
His ears are pointed like a fae’s, but his broad shoulders and meaty hands remind me of Brandur.
Until Gashil, I had never seen someone like this.
Min paws at him and lets loose a deep, satisfied rumble.
The metallic clashing of blades sounds from the kitchen. Desmond’s door is wide open. He’s already joined the fray.
I startle as a hulking female fomorian charges into the hall. Chainmail covers her from neck to toe, a helmet shielding her face. Her battle axe swings for Min, but I halt its momentum with a surge of magic.
The fomorian scoffs as she readies for a second swing. “That magic is but a nuisance,” she calls out to me. “You’d better run while I face your shifter.”
Before she has a chance, I thrust the axe head backward over her shoulder. The shifted weight unbalances her, and Min barrels into her body.
“A nuisance,” I mock as Min pins the fomorian’s head down with a giant paw.
Min shifts back, her gray hand outstretched. “Axe.”
I float it to her. She cleaves through the assassin’s chest.
Dead within seconds.
Min wipes the blood off her face with her sleeve. She blinks innocuously, as though she’s just slain a stag.
“Remind me never to get on your bad side,” I tell her.
“I will remind you tomorrow, although the easiest way to accomplish that would be—” She freezes as a scream pierces the clamor of the distant fight. “Finnian.” Her black eyes widen just before she runs.
I sprint after Min as she tries every door.
Rune’s office is locked. So is Maeve’s alchemy room.
The training room door is open. We run in, but halt at the sight of Finnian pinned down.
A dagger spears his gloved hand to the mat, blood pooling in his palm as his fingers twitch.
A sword tip is leveled at his throat, held by a smirking female fomorian.
What makes my heart pound is Nikolai kneeling before Gashil in the center of the room. Blood soaks Nikolai’s gambeson around the blade that pierces his gut. His throat gurgles, and his dark eyes are glassy. Vacant.
Gashil withdraws his blade, and Nikolai falls prone.
Not Nikolai. My legs tremor with a surge of grief, his warm smile flashing through my mind like a taunt. In my gut, I know we can’t save him. We’re too late.
“Get out of here, Min!” Finnian yells.
She hefts the axe with grim determination in her eyes. “I will not. They will pay for killing our friend.” She throws it, and I give it the extra push it needs. But it’s still too heavy, too slow. Gashil easily sidesteps it, an amused smirk clear in his pale eyes.
Min shifts into the massive feline and lunges, but Gashil is quicker. He flings a dagger at her face.
I throw my hand out, halting it midair. I flip it. It soars on my command, straight at Gashil’s throat.
He catches it. “Is that all you’ve got?” His taunt rings through my skull.
“Of course not,” I spit back.
He throws two daggers at me and swerves, running at Min. Adrenaline snaps within me. The first dagger drops, then the second, an inch away from my ribs.
I jerk Gashil’s arcing sword. It misses Min’s throat, slashing into her shoulder. She roars, blood gushing down her fur, and her legs tremble.
Before Gashil can drive it in, I thrust it backward. It rebounds like a bucking horse and slices his forehead.
A low laugh trembles through my body as blood leaks down Gashil’s mask.
Min rises with a pained snarl, but I should’ve done more. I should’ve made him miss.
Something in the room cracks—a rib as the other fomorian kicks Finnian’s chest over and over again. “You bastard!” he shouts, curling his body in a desperate attempt to shield himself.
How do I protect them both? I can’t be in two places at once.
But my magic can.
An awareness of every object in the room shivers along my skin. I slam with all my might at the fomorian’s chestpiece, knocking her over. She gasps when her back hits the ground.
Finnian struggles to his feet, his eyes bloodshot and wild with pain. He runs for the weapon’s rack as I fling my knives at Gashil.
Gashil abandons Min to deflect the first with his bracer.
The second glances off his chainmail chest piece, so I curve it around him and bury it into a gap in his bracers—the back of his knee.
“How irritating,” he sneers, the leg buckling only briefly.
His sword sparks as it fails to pierce Min’s dragonscale armor, the only thing that protects me from a devastating wound.
“Luck might have shone upon you, but nothing will save you,” Gashil taunts into my mind. “You’ll suffer just the same as that weak mortal I’ve slain. This is child’s play.”
“Shut up!” I yell. Not enough. I haven’t done enough.
Min sinks her jaws into the other fomorian’s leg and throws her across the room.
My focus yanks back to Gashil as he lunges at me. I dodge, just as Desmond taught me, and thrust his sword backward.
The butt rams into his chest. He falters for a vital second, but my dagger skitters off his mail again.
“Could you stop doing that?” Gashil snaps. He unsheathes a second sword from his back, a replacement for the one I had taken.
“Not until you’re six feet under.”
Gashil hisses. He shifts to attack, but I retreat. I levitate an archery target, then launch it. It smacks Gashil’s shoulder, disrupting his swing.
When I smack him again, Gashil kicks the target with his uninjured leg, splitting the wood. “When will you learn?” his voice echoes through my mind. “Nothing will deter me from relishing your hot blood as it runs across my blades.”
I throw my next two knives, and I’m running dangerously low.
He parries them as they strike again and again, then lunges. A flash of steel slices into my upper arm. I halt his sword from cutting any further, force it back, and stumble away. Gasps wrack my body, and my heart thunders as pain bursts along my skin. Blood saturates my nightgown.
Desperation seizes me, and I summon a shield from the weapon’s rack. It reaches my hands just in time to block Gashil’s next slash.
“Foolish mortal. My blade now sings.” I can hear the smirk in his voice as he advances. Oh gods, he’s even taller up close. Every step forces me to tilt my head up.
Finnian cries out, but I don’t dare look. Breaking Gashil’s gaze would spell my death.
Yet no matter how hard I try, I can’t stop the panic squeezing my chest. Finnian can’t die too.
Not when I’ve just gotten to know him, learned to groan at his puns, and laugh at his drunken stories.
He promised to teach me to pick tumbler locks.
He even made up a stupid bet I couldn’t lose, just so he could give back the topaz I owed him.
I won’t let anyone else die today.
I lift all my knives from the floor and attack Gashil with an onslaught. One knife strikes through his brigandine into the soft flesh of his armpit. The second streaks for his face.
My vision darkens as if someone has blown out the oil lamps. I stumble back, throwing my arms out for balance.
Then a scream rips through my mind, echoing through my skull until I lose all sense of my surroundings. I slam my palms over my ears, but the scream is inside me, consuming me. I can’t see. I can’t think. I can’t focus on my Gift.
Pain shoots up my knees as I collapse onto all fours, unable to bear it. What’s even worse is that I know this voice. Why is it so familiar?
“Please!” Evie begs between sobs. “Please stop hurting me!”
It’s as if my heart implodes inside my chest, the way it furiously beats, the way rage overwhelms me until I’m screaming, too. My mother screams, and then my father, their voices shaking with terror. Evie wails again, guttural and raw with pain that makes me shake.
“It’s not real,” I plead to them, to myself, whoever will listen. “It’s not real.” My voice drowns underneath their fear. I don’t know if I even made a sound.
Not like this. I have to survive.
I told Evie I’d come back home.