Chapter 48 #2
Kit simply nodded, looping her arm around Tenny’s shoulders and giving her a squeeze. Because what could she say to that?
Something was wrong.
Kit bolted upright in her bed, a gasp caught in her throat.
She blinked, her eyes going to the gently wafting curtains, moonlight streaming in from the mullioned windows. The air was silent, the room still. Nothing ostensibly was the matter.
So, why did it feel as though time had slowed? Like the entire world was waiting with bated breath?
Kit slid out of bed slowly. Padded over to the balcony door, cracking it open. The grounds were just as silent as her room. But the air . . . the air smelled off. Expectant. The slightest tang—faint, weak, barely there—of copper.
Slipping on a pair of leather pants, she grabbed twin daggers from her nightstand, strapping one around each thigh. She made quick work of lacing her vest over her blouse, buckling a leather pauldron over one shoulder and squeezing a vambrace over each wrist. Finally, she pulled on her boots.
Armed and armored, Kit waited in the middle of her bedroom. Back and forth, back and forth, she padded across the plush rug, trying to convince herself she was just being silly. Paranoid.
She strode over to her bedroom door, pressing her ear against it.
Nothing.
But the tide was roaring in her veins, her magic reacting to something that wasn’t there.
What wasn’t she seeing? Hearing? Sensing?
Kit sucked in a breath. Squared her shoulders. Touched a finger to the handle of the door.
It slammed open before she had the chance to turn it, a dark figure standing in her doorway.
“What the f—”
The figure lunged.
Kit spun, barely twisting out of the way as her attacker—a black-eyed man who looked vaguely familiar—surged forward, fast and brutal.
She slammed her shoulder into his side, managing to throw him off-balance for a heartbeat.
Long enough to grab the dagger at her thigh and bring it up in a sweeping arc—
And connect with something harder than flesh.
Her blade scraped down the length of the man’s gleaming red sword, the sound of splintering glass filling the room. The man grunted, twisting the sanguinagi weapon before jerking back, sending a shock up Kit’s arm and her dagger hurtling across the room, skittering under her bed.
Shit.
Her attacker snarled, holding his weapon aloft, a moonbeam catching on its crystal surface, casting a red spotlight on the wolven medallion sitting in the center of his chest.
Well, if there’d been any doubt as to who she was fighting.
The cultist lunged again, and Kit backed up quickly, summoning the tide in her veins to the surface, feeling the comforting bite of ice against her skin as a six-pointed throwing star formed in her palm.
Kit grinned before she sent the star hurtling toward her attacker with the flick of her wrist.
The sanguinagi screamed as one of the needle-sharp points pierced his shoulder, red leaking onto the crisp white doublet of his uniform.
His royal uniform.
This bastard was dressed like a member of the royal guard.
And—wait—that familiar look of him.
He was a member of the royal fucking guard.
She’d seen him plenty of times. On duty outside the council chamber. Making the rotations through the halls. Even in the barracks once or twice when she’d gone looking for Jocelyn and Shep.
The realization had Kit so distracted that it took her several additional moments to realize that the room had filled with sound. More than the cultist’s pained yells. As if a silencing ward had been broken when he came charging in.
There was shouting, screaming, coming from the hallway. Boots pounding on marble. The clangorous ring of steel striking steel.
Chaos, rising in a crescendo.
With a roar, the sanguinagi yanked Kit’s ice star out of his shoulder, a feral smile on his face as he dragged the edge of his crystal sword through the blood there.
Then, he laughed as he slashed wide, a crimson arc of power following the path of his blade.
It shot toward Kit, and she leapt out of the way just in time.
The bolt of power hit the wall just behind where she had been standing, cracking the stone, the resulting shockwave shattering the glass of her balcony doors.
That same eerie scent she’d caught earlier hit stronger now—iron and smoke and the tang of something sweet, cloying, wrong.
“The hospitality of Kingshelm has come to an end, pixie.” The cultist’s upper lip was curled, his hatred palpable—pulsing off him in waves.
He came at her again, faster this time. As though he’d been holding back before.
Toying with her. Kit ducked, sliding beneath his swing, and shooting forward with a flap of her gold-and-silver wings.
Her magic thrummed in her veins, frost blooming across her palms, ice spilling upward and hardening into a long, sleek spear.
Just as the cultist reached her once more, his crystal blade meeting her spear—white and red, ice and blood.
Kit bared her teeth, pushing against him, their weapons crossed in the air. He shouldn’t have been this strong. She should have been easily able to push him back.
“Come on then, asshole.” She reared her head and brought her forehead to his face with a vicious crunch.
The man stumbled back, blood dripping from his nose, his lip split.
Licking his lower lip, he revealed crimson-stained teeth when he grinned.
He raised his sword again, readying another blast of that terrifying power.
Kit braced herself, preparing to parry, to dodge, to—
A hand shot from the shadows.
Indigo fingers wrapped around the cultist’s jaw from behind.
And with a deafening crack, Tenebris Nox snapped the sanguinagi’s neck.
The man’s body crumpled to the floor. Kit looked down at it with disgust.
“I had that under control,” she muttered, panting. Her icy spear melted into mist.
“I have no doubt,” said Nox, stepping fully out of the shadows and surveying the corpse with distaste.
“Where is it?” Kit asked suddenly, looking the nocterrian over as though expecting them to be wearing the crown half between their horns.
“It is safe.” They didn’t look up; their eyes were still fixed on the cultist on the floor. “Hidden in the shadows. No man will find it.”
Kit followed their gaze, taking in the red blade still clutched in the dead man’s fingers. “Did you see anybody else? Where are the others?”
“I crossed paths with Sephone on my way to you. Noctis spare anyone who dare get in her way. I think she has a particular bone to pick after the last cultist attack she lived through.”
“Stars above, it hasn’t even been a week for her. For Tristan either. You’d think the sanguinagi were following them at this point.” A thought occurred. “You didn’t see him though? And what about those other guards—Thibault? Hargrave? And what about Dentarius?”
Nox shrugged. “I do not know. I came for you first.”
Kit blinked, some emotion she did not know how to name pressing in on her from all sides. Her gaze dropped to the floor, and she nudged the cultist’s body with the toe of her boot. “They’ve infiltrated the guard.”
“They’ve infiltrated the entire palace, Kit.”
Her eyes snapped to theirs, a meeting of red-black, blue, and green.
“It’s just as Tristan described in Dawnspire. A coordinated attack. Strategic. They came for each of us first. Warded our rooms against sound. Locked us in.”
Kit’s jaw clenched. “Why us? Why now?”
Nox pressed their lips into a line. “Do you really have to ask? He knows.”
“He—”
“He must know we tampered with his safe. Despite my best efforts, perhaps he even knows we have the crown. Or, if not that, he at least knows we’re onto his secrets. So, he struck first.”
“But that was only this evening. How—It’s not possible for him to have reacted so swiftly, is it? To have cultists in place, inside the palace, inside the guard? This took planning and coordination. Access.”
Nox was silent, letting Kit work through her frenzied thoughts aloud as she backed away from the corpse and began pacing in a tight circle.
“For what you’re saying to make sense, it would mean—” Her voice caught. “It was a trap. It was always a trap.”
“You understand, don’t you?”
Kit’s stomach dropped. “No, I don’t.”
She did.
“Katerina,” Nox said gently. “It is the only possible reality.”
Kit’s heart thudded like a war drum in her chest. “Lord Church works for Varyth Malchior.”
Nox waited.
Kit thought about the notes she’d seen in his study, the one still burning a hole in her pocket even now. Thought about his strange, single-minded focus on Cedric and the Crucible. The fact that he possessed half of the crown.
She swallowed. “Lord Church is Varyth Malchior.”
The words froze in the air. But she didn’t have time to digest them before a crash sounded from the hall, followed by more furious shouts.
“Shit.” Kit dashed to the side of her bed, crouching low to retrieve her lost dagger from the shadows beneath it. “We need to go. Need to get the others. We’ll regroup and fight our way out of here.”
“What about the king? What about the ones who cannot fight?”
“Fuck their king,” Kit spat. “Who’s to say Callum isn’t really the one behind this?”
Nox shook their head. “I do not believe he is involved. I overheard the ones who came for me—”
“Ones? Plural?” She sheathed her dagger, sneering once more at the cultist corpse on her floor. “Should I be offended that I only got him?”
The nocterrian rolled their eyes. “The cultists said they were to go to the throne room after eliminating me.” They grinned, as though the very idea was a particularly funny joke. “Said it was finally time to shove the accords down the king’s throat, where they belonged.”
“Lovely.”
“I may be paraphrasing, but you get my meaning.”
“Then Lord Church—Varyth Malchior is acting alone? What is he trying to do? Get rid of us and, what? Is he trying to take the throne?”
Nox’s lip curled. “As one of Malakar’s descendants, I suppose I wouldn’t be surprised if that was his goal. Treason must run in the family.”
Family.
A tremor passed through Kit’s body. “Tenny.” Her voice cracked. “If her father knows the safe was opened, he’ll know she helped us.”
Nox’s expression darkened. “We’ll find her. We’ll find all of them.”
Kit’s fingers tightened on the hilt of her dagger. “Then, it really is about to start, isn’t it?”
“I fear it has already begun.”