Page 41 of The Duchess Curse

Braxton held two of them off with ease, but the third was looking for other ways to dispossess Braxton of his weapons. He wasn’t paying attention to Guin. The fool.

He thought she’d cower.

She whipped her hand out of her pocket and charged, catching the man in the gut with her blade.

He yelped and clutched at his belly as she withdrew her knife. It came away red. His eyes—red too. And after the first shock of injury, he recovered quickly, recognized her as a threat, and refocused. He’d clearly taken a potion of some sort, something to keep the pain at bay.

“That wound I gave you will not heal,” she said, “without the antidote.”

Behind her, Braxton grappled with the other men, his movements fluid, smooth as shadows. He seemed to be a shadow, the bulk of his body shifting, almost disappearing.

“Focus on your man, Guin!” he shouted, his voice different, deeper…

She focused.

Her man took a swipe at her with something sharp, ripping a gash several inches long in her sleeve.

“Intolerable,” she muttered. “This was new.” She clicked her tongue against her teeth and flicked her sword up toward her attacker’s nose.

A heavy thud behind her.

“One down,” Braxton called out. “Keep at it.”

“Me next, please.” She snuck the tip of her sword tip beneath the man’s chin. He held a hook of some sort in his right hand, and the curved blade of it was dull in the dying day.

He wrapped his other hand—naked and soft—around her sword and forced it away from his neck. He didn’t even flinch as the blade bit into his skin, likely into his muscle. His bone?

She shivered and wrenched the sword from his grip. Tried to. She’d never met an opponent like this, so unworried about his own pain, so immune to it.

“They’ve taken something,” she called out.

“I’ve discerned that.” His voice gruff and thick with an almost musical accent.

She danced backward, toward him, and tripped on something, righted herself. Braxton’s hat was on the ground, ruined in a puddle.

Her attacker yanked the sword from her grip with unnatural strength.

“Too bad about the hat,” she said. “You looked dapper in it.”

“I’ll get a new one.” He grunted and hit the ground as his remaining attacker abandoned weapons for fists. “Pick it up.”

“What?”

Her attacker narrowed the gap between them, red eyes gleaming.

“The hat!” Braxton slammed a fist into his opponent’s face. “Pick it up!”

When her attacker dove for her, she dove for the ground, her chin scrapping against rock as she curled around the hat.

The man stumbled when his arms wrapped around nothing, she grinned, recognizing the feel of the hat in her hands. Rolling to her feet, she met the man, swinging toward her once more, with a clap of her hands.

A clap of the hat between her hands, flattening it. The steel brim was heavy, flat, and when she tossed it, it cut through the air with ease.

And when it hit her attacker right between the eyes, he fell to the ground like a dead man.

He very well could be.

“Another down!” she called, retrieving the hat and jumping away from the collapsed man before he could prove himself not unconscious at all. “Hurry up with yours.”