Chapter 3
N o matter the dagger at her throat, Aelrie could hardly believe what she’d heard and let loose her mouth. “Hold you tight? As if I was a prostitute from a Myrkheim brothel!”
The assassin huffed a laugh behind her. She squirmed in response to get free. “Stop it,” he warned, bringing the blade closer to her neck. The wicked serrated edge was precariously close to slicing her throat open. She couldn’t move or else it would draw blood.
Seeing her discomfort, he loosened the blade at her throat, but he was still so strong she couldn’t move much, let alone escape.
“You’ll see soon enough,” he whispered to her. She tried to wriggle free from the feeling of his breath, hot and heavy in her ear but he held her tighter against his chest. “And you’ll be clinging to me by then.”
“Let her go!”
It was a temple guard, the new recruit with light brown hair. She recognized him but didn’t know his name. The other guards she knew by name but not intimately. Her charge was the high priestess alone. Also, her failure.
The temple guards had backed away ever since the assassin took her hostage but made a circle around him to cut off his escape.
“You’ll all see!” The Dark Elf assassin forced her to move with him as he pivoted around to face the temple guards circling them.
“See what?” another guard said. She inched closer.
Her taut wooden staff pointed at him, her body in an attack position, with familiar anticipation written in her eyes.
“You’re the one cornered here. Just give up.
We will treat your surrender with fairness and justice, even if you are Dokkálfar.
” She sounded sure of herself and edged closer.
There was a slight rumbling beneath the ground. An earthquake? Perhaps from far away, and this was its aftershock.
“It’s already begun,” the assassin muttered, guiding Aelrie swiftly away from the center of the clearing and back toward the edge of the forest she’d just emerged from.
The temple guards moved to intercept.
“Stop!” the female guard barked the order, raising her wooden staff and lunging forward.
Before her strike could land, a deep rumble rolled up from the earth beneath them. The ground trembled violently, throwing her off balance mid-swing. Her staff sliced through empty air as she stumbled, then crashed onto the forest floor.
Aelrie staggered, the tremor threatening to send her tumbling as well, but the assassin caught her, pulling her firmly against him.
Pain flared in her side where his hand pressed. She sucked in a sharp breath. That damned dagger wound—it was shallow, but it had been poisoned and throbbed now under his grip, a burning reminder of her failure. She’d have to tend to it later, if there was indeed a later.
But the rumbling ground had loosened the assassin’s grip. Her fingers closed around the arm at her throat, ready to twist it and disarm him.
The earth then erupted.
A monstrous force exploded from beneath the clearing, sending dirt and debris flying. The temple guards were hurled backward from the force as the ground was split wide open in front of them.
Her body went limp as she stared before her, hardly believing what she saw. A tunneling wyrm from the Evergloom with a serpent-like body full of black and green scales, pointed, venomous fangs, and rows of horns covering its head that allowed it to plow through both dirt and rock.
“Careful of the venom!” the male temple guard shouted. He had landed far away, near the thicket, and seemed to be unharmed.
Venom spewed forth from the angered wyrm’s mouth as its head wobbled about in confusion as tunneling wyrms were blinded by sunlight.
Self-preservation kicked in, warranting an escape, but she couldn’t move her body.
It was then she noticed what she was doing.
Her arms were gripping onto something tightly to steady her.
She looked up to see the Dark Elf assassin looking down at her.
He wore a mask, but his sanguine eyes laughed at her.
“I told you.” His voice came out hot and mocking.
She was embracing him, and he had locked his arms around her.
She pushed against him, trying to wriggle herself free, but he didn’t fight her, and let her go, telling her, “It’s been fun. But I have to go.”
He took out both daggers and ran for the wyrm, dodging the venom spitting from it, his lithe body moving in perfect precision to avoid the deadly substance that would burn his skin through to the bone.
He then stabbed into the wyrm’s flesh, getting up underneath the scales.
The wyrm hissed and twisted in response and then turned its head around, making another hole in the ground to plunge itself into.
The assassin jumped back and waited as the wyrm’s long body passed from one hole into the next until its tail appeared—slender and much smaller than the rest of it.
The Dark Elf assassin readied himself to catch the tail of the wyrm. He was going to use it to escape back into the Evergloom!
She couldn’t let him do that.
Without thinking it through first, she ran for him, and, as he jumped and caught the tail with his daggers, she jumped on him, bringing her arms out to wrap around his waist.
She caught hold of him and with a great jerk, they plunged through the hole together with the wyrm. Her eyes instinctively closed shut but then she remembered who she held on to and forced herself to glance up.
Dread settled deep inside her like a rock tossed down a well. The assassin was looking down at her, his eyes a mixture of amusement and surprise.
But, to her genuine surprise, he didn’t shrug her off or fight her.
They were hurtling through the tunnel at breakneck speed. Surely, this wasn’t how the wyrm travelled normally? It must have gotten spooked when the assassin attacked it.
The air whooshed past her as the wyrm rammed its way, pushing farther and farther, making its own tunnel through the ground. She had to hold on to the Dark Elf for dear life.
Letting go meant certain death. If she let go at this speed, her only hope would be a quick death, snapping her neck from a collision with the tunnel walls.
If she didn’t break her neck in the fall, she would undoubtedly break bones, and being trapped underground unable to move and slowly, painfully dying must be avoided at all costs.
She had no choice but to accept the hand the assassin offered her in pulling her body up closer to his.
Why do something so impulsive and reckless? This was not like her. If she died here, it would be of no fault but her own.
The Dark Elf assassin held onto one dagger lodged deeply into the wyrm’s tail, but his other hand wrapped around her back, pulling her up to hold her secure as she buried her head in the crook between his neck and shoulder.
She tried to make her body smaller, tighter, less likely to catch the wind howling at her side and get thrown off .
The air was still whooshing beside them leaving her breathless. She closed her eyes, waiting for it to end. Then came a strange feeling, one of weightlessness, as if they were flying through the air and not a tunnel, and with this, she opened her eyes.
Because of its reckless charge through the ground, the wyrm had burst into an open space, and they were flying, or rather, falling.
“Hold tight!” the Dark Elf growled in her ear. He then let go of his hand that was holding the dagger to wrap both arms around to cover her. They hit the ground soon after, but he bore most of their fall and they rolled together until they lost momentum and stopped.
The wyrm fell deeper into a chasm. It hissed and flailed until all sounds from it were gone.
Her body was shaking as she caught her breath.
Everything had happened so quickly, but it seemed she was safe now on a cliff overhanging the chasm below.
She wasn’t injured because she didn’t land on the rock.
Something broke her fall. Taking a big gulp of breath and looking down, she saw who she was lying on, the Dark Elf assassin.
She jumped off him as if he was a snake. Her hand fumbled for her sword, but she’d lost it in all the confusion.
There was a small dagger she kept concealed in her boot, though.
Taking the dagger out, its blade a little less than the size of her hand, and kneeling beside him, careful not to make sudden movements, she put a finger underneath his nose and felt puffs of air through the mask that were widely spaced out.
He was alive but seemed to be asleep. He didn’t appear to have any head injury, though, so whatever knocked him out would not threaten his life.
His shoulder took the brunt of their fall.
This was her chance—slit his throat here and be done with her revenge. She brought the dagger to his neck as her blade ached to spill his life blood, the same blood he took from Lindana.
Take a deep breath.
This was it. Ready. Do it.
Her hand grew unsteady, forcing her to withdraw her blade.
She was … nervous.
Why?
She had the advantage. He was unconscious, but wouldn’t stay that way forever, so she brought her dagger once more to his neck, concentrating on his gray skin glistening in the purple lights from the cavern which gave him an almost blue tint.
Earlier in the forest, she’d been willing to sneak up on him and kill him quickly. But now, faced with the task, something within her hesitated.
He killed Lindana in cold blood. His life was meaningless to her.
But…
This was wrong. She couldn’t kill him, not without removing his mask first. That was a coward’s way of getting revenge. She had to look him in the face.
Dark Elf ears were longer than Light Elf ears with sharper points at the tip, so she removed his mask carefully, unhooking the clasp behind each of his elven ears, looking down at him, making sure he didn’t wake .
She frowned and a wave of dismay washed over her.