Chapter 35
Thirty-Five
Lory
“Stay where you are!” one of the men shouted, the sound bouncing off the side of the rock, carrying it to the premises of the place and the Ward high above the ground.
Lory was of half a mind to just make a mad dash for it, her street rat instinct kicking in.
Running had been her best shot at survival for years.
But she couldn’t outrun this—none of them could.
Not in their condition. She was still weak on her legs; so was Olive.
Hadrian was a mess of bruises and scratches, and Jarek’s foot wasn’t completely healed.
Tabi was drained from healing first her, then Olive, which left Anees perhaps the only one remotely in a condition to sprint across the sand.
If they disappeared back into the tunnel now and locked the men out, there was no guarantee the door would hold, and if they came after them inside the tunnels, fighting in close quarters would give them a disadvantage, let alone what would happen if the men ran to alert someone about the secret door in the side of the rock.
“Close the door,” she commanded in her mind, but Hadrian and Jarek had already finished the same thought process, casually sliding the door back into place. Anees had left Olive inside the tunnel and stepped to Lory’s side, dagger in her hand.
“Whatever you do,” Anees said to the others, “use your magic only as a last resort, or we’ll need to dispatch them all.
All five of them. Five grown men armed with broadswords were coming closer at a slow, deliberate pace, their boots more stable on the wet ground than the sliding dry sand the desert usually sported.
Lory shifted her weight, bracing her feet casually apart, her hand on the hilt of her knife—a joke of a weapon compared to the polished swords of the men.
“Identify yourselves,” the one in the middle, their leader, shouted, a brisk wind tearing at the words, but his deep voice carried easily across the distance.
The two men flanking him stopped along with him a good ten paces away, and the two behind him stepped to the sides of the others—a line of death, if the violence in their eyes was anything to go by.
Anees stepped in front of Lory, Tabi, and Jarek, Hadrian joining her from the other side, and the two phantoms took the lead. Lory held her breath.
“Not until you identify yourselves first.” Anees’s voice carried, clear and strong, her hair whipping in the wind.
Lory only noticed the shift because her night vision was still giving her an advantage, but Anees discreetly reached Hadrian’s sleeve, and his uniform turned brown under her touch.
At the same moment, her own clothes changed color.
When Anees held out her hand behind her, Lory knew Anees was relying on her to help with the others.
Without a moment’s hesitation, Lory guided Tabi’s sleeve toward Anees’s fingers, then Jarek’s, ignoring their expression of confusion, before she placed her own sleeve in Anees’s hand.
By the time the men took another, threatening step closer, they could have passed for regular soldiers from the king’s army, not a beaten-up elite unit from a secret military academy.
“Someone tipped us off about a body being dumped back here, and we came to inquire.” A Guardians-damned miracle that the man was giving that information. He could also have attacked first, asked questions later.
“A body,” Anees echoed. “Good we’re meeting you here, then.
” Two casual strides forward, dagger still in hand, but the tip of the blade was pointing down toward the wet sand now, unthreatening.
“We’ve heard the same thing, Captain—” she prompted for his name, and Lory noticed an insignia of his rank on his breast, just above the pocket of his gray and brown uniform. They were city guards.
“Seilda,” the man finished her sentence. “We were on our night round when we were called in to investigate.”
“To investigate behind the city, Captain?” Anees prompted with more bravado than Lory could have ever mustered.
That the woman was an incredible actor, she should have known the first day she’d met her in the brig, when Anees had played the part of a chatty prisoner awaiting her punishment to extract information about how much Lory truly knew. Holy Eroth, had she been naive—
“We go where we’re ordered,” Seilda said, his tone dragging slightly. Beside him, his men didn’t move their hands from their swords. “Who tipped you off?”
Anees simply jerked her chin to the side, pointing at the spot where they’d first seen the men. “If you can’t mention their name, it’s probably the same person.” She gave enough of a conspiratorial grin to make even Lory want to believe this would work.
It had to. If they could walk their separate ways without more questions, perhaps they could avoid more bloodshed.
The man attacked so fast, Lory didn’t see it coming, even with her heightened senses.
Like a desert lion, he leaped at Anees—the man at the far left—coming at her like an arrow.
Hadrian raised his sword, already jumping to block the attack, but Anees was faster.
With deadly precision, she stopped the man’s sword, not by hitting the metal but by spearing his wrist, blade sliding between the bones in his forearm and throwing him off balance.
His sword dropped from his fingers as he screamed, Anees withdrawing her blade and swiping up the sword as she ducked under the attack of the second guard.
Hadrian leaped to her side, his sword savagely swiping for the second man’s thigh as he dared to come within reach.
Lory’d seen them spar, but this was a different sort of dance. Skill and art form all in one. But Hadrian was drained, and the city guards seemed fresh on their feet, and the first blow landing on Hadrian’s shoulder sent him staggering back.
Lory drew her knife and stepped forward, prompting into Anees’s mind, “Sword.”
The weapon came flying toward her in a spin, high over Anees’s head, and landed in Lory’s hand, hilt down. Half of a mind to tell Anees she needed to teach her that move, Lory guarded Anees’s other flank, while Jarek drew his sword and took on the man coming for him from the side.
Lory’s arm screamed as Seilda attacked with the full force of his muscled body, the flat of his blade hitting her shoulder so hard she had to bite back a scream, and her knees threatened to buckle.
However, Lory had learned from the best, and Khayrivven’s techniques flowed through her like an instinct, making her twist to the side, duck under the next attack, and spin behind the guard.
She blocked with the sword Anees had thrown at her, but the damage she did with the knife, the short blade sliding into the man’s thigh like a button into a hole…
For a moment, she held fast, utilizing the knife to swing herself around the man until his back filled her vision.
His scream echoed off the rocks as she pulled out the knife and swiped through the tendons at the back of his knees with the sword.
He was on the ground before Lory could step away, her legs shaking and her shoulder screaming.
The guard at her feet was trying to crawl away, leaving a trail of blood in the sand, while Lory stared in horror at what she’d done.
A few feet away, Tabi and Jarek were fighting one man, and Hadrian and Anees took on the remaining two.
The man in front of her was almost far enough away to get a good stab at her should he turn and use his sword.
She couldn’t get herself to slit his throat or spear his heart.
She couldn’t even bring herself to stab him in the back.
Around her, the world was fading, quivering into a blend of gray and crimson.
Even though she fought the blackness pulling on her vision, she knew she couldn’t lose consciousness—not now, when none of them was fresh to fight at their full capacity.
With a grunt of pain, Hadrian went down, a vicious cut spilling blood from his bicep.
His blade hung loosely in his grasp as he cursed, getting back to his feet, and he switched it to the other hand, already swinging again.
But he wasn’t stable on his feet, neither was Jarek, his blade no longer in his hands as he threw a punch in the guard’s face while Tabi aimed with her knife.
A flash of silver shot through the air, reflecting moon and stars and the graying sky.
Lory didn’t have time to think who it was meant for because something sharp nicked her side, and she spun away with a shriek, her magic rushing to her aid before she could make a conscious choice.
Fire erupted from her hands, eating its way along the blood dripping from her wounds, feeding on it as it spiderwebbed along the sand.
From the corner of her eye, she noticed Tabi’s knife stuck in the eye of the man whose legs Lory had cut from under him, his dead face still contorted in a silent scream.
In his hand, his sword was painted in Lory’s blood.
She’d thank Tabi later, but for now, she needed to get that fire under control before it drew attention. Perhaps, dumping a body across the banister of the secret path was possible without alerting the entire palace above, but a wildfire spreading on soaked sand—that was a whole different story.
Her hands were shaking now, and her knees so weak she barely managed a step, but the guard who’d injured Jarek struck again, and Lory’s fire couldn’t allow it.
Like a snake, it surged forward, slinging itself around the man’s throat, uncaring if it singed his skin and burned him alive before his air supply was cut off.
No matter how Lory tried to call it back, the fire held fast. Until the man sank to his knees, and his scream ended in a vulgar gurgle.
“Magic wielder,” one of the remaining men hissed, kicking a discarded weapon up with the toes of his boot and catching it in his free hand. A sword, Lory realized. Anees’s sword.
A glance to the side confirmed the phantom lay unconscious on the ground, the cut in the shoulder of her tunic revealing a wound.
Lory’s heart seized. No. Not Anees. They needed to get her out of here and heal her.
She was losing too much blood too fast, and Tabi was almost drained—and without a weapon.
They’d need to get her to Hand Nahrit and hope he wouldn’t ask questions.
But Lory barely cared. From the side, one of the guards was battling his way past Hadrian, and the Gilded expert wasn’t winning.
Not again. Lory wasn’t ready to lose anyone else. Aiden’s fair features flashed in her mind, and Evven’s, a reminder of what she’d already lost. She wasn’t ready—
As Lory surveyed the scene, calculating her options, the other guard whirled both swords in his palms as he took up a defensive stance out of Lory’s fire’s reach. Jarek and Hadrian might take on the man, but they were drained, and her fire was already raging.
If she failed to act now, and they didn’t make it, she’d never forgive herself.
With a scream, she threw the flames at the stunned guard.
She didn’t dare look as they consumed him, her attention on the last man standing.
And as she hauled her magic at him, the fire guttered, wiping out the orange light illuminating the remainders of the night.
She had no more magic left to give, and the man was now fighting Hadrian and Jarek at once, Jarek’s wind whipping through the air hard enough to make Lory’s eyes water.
He’d summoned his magic as a last resort to form a hard wall of air around Tabi and Anees, the thornling working on the phantom’s shoulder, fighting to close the wound, but Jarek’s strength was fading fast, the injury on his bicep no longer the only one.
Lory needed to do something—anything.
With a scream, she summoned the last of her strength and charged.
Though the guard didn’t see her coming, he blocked her on instinct, his blade shoving hers aside like a battering ram. Hadrian twisted out of reach, panting, his eyes wild with horror as he noticed Tabi’s desperate expression.
Not Anees. Not Anees.
Lory’s prayers were drowned out by a roaring in her head as the guard came for her, steel flashing in the gray of breathing dawn.
Dawn.
Somewhere in the distance, a bell rang once.
Nimble on his feet, the guard rained blows down on both Hadrian and her, the force strong enough to make Lory’s legs quake as she fought to remain upright. They needed to end this before they ran out of strength for good.
Lory swung her sword, kicking out at the man’s side, while in her head, she shouted at Hadrian, “Use your powers.”
Hadrian’s eyes met hers over their clashing blades, and the horror of the revelation of her secret ability was only outmatched by the exhaustion in his gaze.
“Make him fear us.”
A subtle nod as Hadrian swung his sword once more, feinted, then ducked under the man’s arm.
Lory stood her ground while Hadrian closed his eyes for a heartbeat, and when he opened them again, a wicked grin spread on his lips.
The guard’s next strike was unstable, too light, and imprecise, and Lory knew it had worked.
She kicked out with her leg one last time, kicking the feet out from the man’s, and as he hit the ground, pinned him with a knife in his shoulder.
She was on her knees, straddling the man as she leaned over him, ready to twist the knife, but his eyes rolled, and he whimpered.
“Please—”
Lory was of half a mind to draw it out and make the man suffer for the ambush, but as she hovered over him, she saw Aiden’s face before her, Evven’s, her mother’s. The people she’d loved and lost. She wasn’t a tormenter. If she killed him, it would be fast.
The only thing she wanted to know before she ended it… “Who tipped you off?”
The man shook his head, and Lory tried not to hesitate as she twisted the knife an inch.
A scream echoed through the breaking dawn.
“Who?” She didn’t even fully repeat her question when the man spat in her face, the momentary fear evaporating as his black irises solidified.
“You have no idea what you’ve gotten yourself into, fire spitter,” he hissed, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth.
She must have accidentally nicked his lungs—at least she thought so, but when she glanced down at his chest, she noticed a stab wound that Jarek or Hadrian must have landed.
The man utilized the moment of inattention to throw her off balance and grab her wrist, but not to disarm her, no.
With stunning precision, he guided her hand across his throat, knife cutting through skin, veins, and cartilage.
Blood sprayed from the open wound, showering Lory’s tunic crimson, and beneath her, the life left this body.
When Lory scrambled off him, dropping the knife in the process, she found Hadrian passed out on the ground.