Chapter 60
In the moments just before Theren Forint catches a sword in his outstretched hand, Hela considers her situation.
She’s kneeling on the dirt under the watchful eye of two guards: one is the soldier from the hallway with the shaved head and a bleeding ear, and the other is a ragged--looking woman with dirt under her fingernails.
Hela is pretty sure that one is Satka—-she matches Elegy’s description of the woman who once dislocated her arm.
Hela knows she’s no match for either of them.
Scouts aren’t fighters, and she only has enough sopora in her ring to take out one of them .
. . and that’s only if she can get her hands free.
Someone told her, once, that if your hands are bound behind you, the trick is to get your feet over them so you can shimmy your arms to the front of your body—-but with two guards watching her, there’s no way she can do that.
At least, not until they’re distracted.
Then the sword is in the air, and Theren is catching it with his right hand, and both of Hela’s guards are looking the other direction.
She leans back to put her bound hands on the ground, then pulls them under her feet.
At the same time Arias—-either because he sees what she’s doing, or because he’s a real goddamn idiot—-gets to his feet and rams his body into Satka, even though his hands are still tied.
Hela scrapes her fingers against the stone as she drags her wrists under her ankles, her shins, and finally, her knees.
“Stop them!” Arias screams, and Hela looks up to see Kesia dragging Fenn out of the room with a knife at his throat.
Hela is pretty sure that manhandling an epocha is a good way to get yourself executed by Talusar authorities, but Kesia must have decided that Rava’s wrath is worse than that potentiality.
Behind her, Arias is still trying to fight Satka with his hands tied, and she wants to help him. But this is her window. If Hela loses sight of Kesia and Fenn, they’ll be gone for good.
So she sprints after them.
The hallway beyond the sanctuary is lined with blue stained--glass windows, so the light feels gloomy and unreal.
Kesia is moving fast, and the blade is too close to Fenn’s neck for him to do much to fight back.
So Hela grabs one of the lanterns hanging from a hook on the wall and hurls it in Kesia’s direction.
The lantern hits Kesia in the back, but instead of basking in her triumph, Hela feels a hand on her shoulder, shoving her hard against the stone wall.
The guard with the nicked ear has caught up with her.
He grabs her by the hair and slams her head into the wall.
Hela’s vision goes black for a second, and a warm trickle of blood runs down the side of her face as she tries to elbow the guard in the—-well, wherever.
She hits him, but there’s not much force behind the blow. His hand is on her arm, gripping so tightly she wants to scream. Instead, she turns toward him, leaning into him instead of away—-and punches both hands into his chest at the same time.
It feels stupid, and she’s pretty sure it looks stupid, too, but she doesn’t care about finesse. All she cares about is cracking the shield of her ring, the one that contains the puff of sopora that can knock this idiot off his feet.
The shield breaks, and she thrusts her hands into the guard’s face. He staggers back, and topples to the stone right in front of the door to the sanctuary. Behind Hela, Fenn has slipped Kesia’s grasp and he’s holding the lantern like a weapon.
Hela pursues the fallen guard, thinking only of the sword he was holding when she drugged him. She gets both of her hands—-still bound—-around the sword’s grip, and looks up to see, inside the sanctuary:
Nyx, bleeding from the eyebrow and parrying with another guard.
Arias on the ground, his hands somehow free, about to take a kick to the chest from Satka.
And aglow with moonlight and febra, Theren Forint sparring with Rava Vidar.
People talk about Rava Vidar’s brutality all the time, but they never mention how beautifully she moves, with all the controlled strength of a dancer.
For just a moment, Hela is spellbound. She realizes that Theren isn’t just Rava’s captive, or her truthsayer, but her student.
Even now, as they’re fighting, he’s imitating her, his movements becoming more fluid, his footfalls more graceful.
The sound of a lantern hitting the floor, its glass shattering, brings Hela back to herself. Kesia has Fenn crowded up against the wall, and she obviously sliced at his arm to get him to release the lantern, because he’s bleeding now. Hela charges at her, sword held high, and swings.
She remembers, too late, that Kesia may be a coward and a traitor, but she’s also a Talusar soldier. Kesia’s hand clamps around Hela’s wrist, so strong Hela has no hope whatsoever of breaking her grip. Kesia wrenches Hela’s arm to the side, straining her shoulder, and punches her hard in the gut.
It knocks the wind out of Hela, and she stumbles back. Kesia pursues, her hand still tight on Hela’s wrist, and pries the sword out of Hela’s grasp.
Fenn swings the broken remnants of the lantern at Kesia from behind, but she’s too quick for him; she turns to hit the lantern with her sword, sending it spinning toward the wall. Then she bashes the side of Fenn’s head with the pommel of the sword.
All Hela can think to do, while she’s unarmed and gasping and desperate, is to hurl her body at Kesia’s as hard as she can.
The two women fall hard.
Out of the corner of Hela’s eye, she sees a blur of blue as Fenn rushes back toward the sanctuary, back toward danger. But then Kesia is hooking a leg over Hela’s to destabilize her, and shoving her to the side so Kesia is on top of her, pinning her to the stone.
Her hands close around Hela’s throat, and she tries to scream, but a strangled sound is all that escapes her.
Fenn is gone; she’s alone in the hallway, and this is where she’s going to die.
Panic floods her system like electricity.
She flails and thrashes beneath Kesia, but Kesia keeps her hold, pressing harder against Hela’s windpipe.
Everything starts to go black at the edges, and all she can think is that it’s not right, it’s not right that Kesia gets to take so much and there are never any consequences—-
And then Kesia screams—-not a scream of rage, but a scream from deep inside her body, almost unearthly. Her hands slacken around Hela’s throat, and Hela gasps. She feels warm blood gushing over her from a wound in Kesia’s gut, and she sees the blue glint of a blade.
Kesia slumps to the side, and standing over her, face battered and body hunched and bloody sword in hand, is Arias.