Chapter 38 #2
But it was the person who ran up the stairs behind Camilla that made Loren truly pause.
Madan Antaire rounded the corner, followed by a dhemon Loren recognized but could not place.
The last, stepping calmly onto the landing to glare at him, was the disgusting half-breed in his horned form, Azriel fucking Tenebra.
“Put your sword down, Loren,” Ariadne said coolly, echoing his words from the study two floors below. “And crawl to me.”
Baring his fangs, Loren snarled, “Never,” and swung at her again.
Four pairs of feet thundered towards him.
Ariadne blocked, twisting out of the way at the same moment a firm hand grabbed the length of his hair from behind and yanked his head back.
He snarled as the tip of a blade cut across the back of his neck at the same moment his head snapped forward once more, hair suddenly released.
No.
Not released.
Cut.
Loren drew his own dagger and pivoted to who cut his hair. Of course he knew who would do such a thing. There was only one who would stoop so low as to go for aesthetics first. He stabbed with the short blade, sinking it deep into Camilla Dodd’s chest, just between those perfect breasts of hers.
A scream of fury echoed through the corridor.
The sound did not come from the blonde Caersan who bared bloodied fangs as she lifted her chin to glare at him.
Camilla’s body shook, and the dagger in her hand dropped to the ground with a clatter just before she mustered her final act of defiance.
For the second time that night, and the last in her life, she spit in his face—only this time, it was all blood.
When next Loren moved, it was not because he saw the attack. No, he watched Camilla collapse to the floor. It was almost as though he could sense it coming. The fresh barrage of attacks from Ariadne were more than expected; they were predictable.
What he did not anticipate, however, was for the massive, unnamable dhemon to appear between Loren and Ariadne. He wielded a large ax yet somehow moved with the grace of a Caersan with a rapier.
That it was he, not Azriel, who stepped in only made Loren laugh. “Afraid, Tenebra? Sent your dog in to die for you instead?”
Understanding glimmered in the dhemon’s red eyes—something Loren did not think possible from such monsters. The ax swung. Loren ducked.
Madan appeared the next moment. He did not attack with a sword, but slashed at Loren’s exposed palm with yet another dagger.
Poetic, really, for the vampire whose arm had to be amputated due to his time with Loren to attack his hand.
A shame for him that such a minor wound would almost instantly heal.
“Is that all you have to offer, Antaire?” Loren spat, nodding to his short arm. “After all I gifted you?”
Oddly enough, Madan only grinned.
Before Loren could regain his bearings, Azriel stepped forward. “You’re already dead, Loren Gard. Now yield.”
“You truly believe you could kill me?” Loren hissed. “How about another duel? Just me…and you.”
Azriel chuckled and held out his arms, no weapons in sight. “I already beat you once. To do so a second time would be embarrassing for you.”
Loren lunged for him, not unlike the way Azriel had done to him the night of their duel all those months ago.
But he never made it. The great dhemon brute tackled him to the floor beside Camilla’s corpse, and for the first time since the start of the battle, Loren’s stomach dropped from true fear.
Dhemons had survived millennia of genocide for a reason: they were horribly difficult to kill. Particularly dhemons of that size.
But the dhemon did not kill Loren. After knocking the wind out of him, the monster eased off before grabbing the back of Loren’s neck, hauling him onto his knees, and growling in his ear, “Drop your fucking sword like my Queen demanded.”
Loren gripped it tighter.
“Look at her,” the dhemon snarled, forcing Loren’s head to tip back and look Ariadne in the eye. “Look at her and apologize for all you have done.”
“I did nothing wrong.”
The dhemon shook him hard. “You have imprisoned her. Tortured her. Murdered her friend. Now look her in the fucking eye and atone for all you have done.”
Something about the way the dhemon’s voice broke that told Loren the words were not entirely directed at him. Who was he to Ariadne?
“You are pathetic,” Loren sneered. “Why not look at her yourself and do what you beg of me?”
In the heartbeat of time that the dhemon’s fingers loosened in surprise, Loren jerked free.
He spun and dragged the length of his sword along the dhemon’s abdomen.
Like a waterfall breaking free of a dam, the monster’s blood poured out and mingled with that of Camilla’s, still puddling on the floor.
All around him, people moved. Azriel surged forward. Madan threw his dagger. But both came to a halt as Loren dragged Ariadne into his grip, holding her to his chest by the throat as he stared them down.
“At last, my pet,” he whispered in her ear. “We are back at the beginning. Just the four of us, now, and nowhere for you to run.”
Ariadne grunted as she writhed in his arms. She moved to lift the sword, but he gripped her wrist and twisted hard, forcing her to drop the blade. The tides had turned too many times tonight, and Loren was ready to put an end to it all.
“I do not need to run,” she whispered back. “All I have to do is wait.”
Despite himself, Loren frowned. “And for what are you waiting, my pet?”
“Is it not strange,” Ariadne said as she looked up at him, “that your cuts are not healing?”
Loren’s frown deepened, but he took the bait and, still holding her tight to him, turned his hand over. What Ariadne said was true: the cut on his hand had not healed. In fact, it still bled freely. But it was not the constant flow of crimson that had his mind going numb.
The edges of the cut were dark. Frayed. The skin peeled back, exposing the flesh beneath. To his absolute horror, he watched in real time as his hand began to rot.
He did not know when he let Ariadne go, but she stepped away from Loren as he gaped at his hand, then lifted his fingers to touch his cheek where she had struck him.
Pain lanced through his face as he felt the wound and found that it had progressed so rapidly that the decay had formed a hole straight into his mouth.
“What have you done?” Loren gasped, lifting his gaze to the fierce and beautiful Caersan woman he once believed had truly loved him.
Ariadne raised her chin. “I have won your game.”