The dagger cut clean through his chest—through his scar.
Samson gasped.
“No!” she screamed.
His eyes widened in shock as he looked down at the curved blade. At his blood, already dripping.
Samson sank to his knees.
Elena screamed again, trying to pull herself up, but her hands slipped in the slick dirt. With a violent shove, the soldier pushed Samson onto his side. The pulse fire stopped then, plummeting them into a horrible silence where the only sound was that of Samson’s rasping breath.
“No, no,Sam.” She reached with bloody fingers.“Ruru, please.”
But the Jantari dragged her away as his eyes—those terrible, wonderful, cursed eyes—shuttered, their light fading fast.
CHAPTER 66
JAYA
In the long history of Ravence, very few rulers have lived to old age, or seen the coronation of their grandchildren. Historians point out family ailments, while locals call it Alabore’s Curse.
The burden of death.
—from chapter 38 ofThe Great History of Sayon
Jaya hugged the orb close as she hurried through the palace, moonlight razoring the hall into strips of black and white. Even the fish in the glass stream below her nipped at her heels. She checked her pod. Twenty minutes. She had only twenty until—
Jaya halted abruptly as a lotus, the one she had placed in the courtyard, suddenly blinked off. It couldn’t be. She refired the commands, but the lotus remained eerily unlit.
Shit.
She could go back. It was possible the lotus had become unlinked from her pod, and she could reconnect them. But then she would have only ten minutes to escape. Barely enough time to jump into the awaiting canalboat.Better to leave it.Jaya began to walk when her pod chimed again. She watched in horror and disbelief as another lotus blinked off, then another. Three of the five were now offline. A startled cry escaped her lips, like a sparrow caught in the shadow of an eagle.
The realization cut into her quickly, drying her throat.
Someone was taking out her lotuses.
Someone knew of her plot.
Jaya swiveled sharply, but no one lurked in the passage. She could faintly hear laughter and song in the distance, the bright swell of a cheer, but there was a strange, stilted silence in the air, like a forest fallen quiet at the approach of a predator.
She started forward, her pace brisk and controlled, then long and hurried, then broken, until she was half running, half jogging. She looked over her shoulder. The shadows seemed to surge closer, pricking her with vicious delight. She ran faster. Down the hall, ducking around a corner. She just needed to get to her rooms. There was a garden outside her window, the canal flowing beyond its walls. She could almost hear the quiet lapping of the water against the boat’s hull, the low rumble of its engine vibrating beneath her fingers. Just a little farther—
A wet hand grasped her wrist, at once cold and piercing, and her imagination ran amok as she imagined long nails biting into her skin, a demon’s face appearing out of the darkness, but then she saw the familiar tilt of that sardonic smile, the amber of her eyes, and Jaya bit down a cry as Rhumia yanked her back.
“Always running in the shadows, aren’t you, little bird?” she said.
“H-how?” Jaya said as she took in Rhumia’s dark ripped clothing, her unrestrained hair curling like a thousand snakes. And then in Rhumia’s other hand, she saw her bent, crumpled lotuses. “It was you.”
Rhumia twisted her arm, and Jaya yelped as pain seared up her wrist. She kicked Rhumia’s shin, but the Yumi only yanked her around, slamming her into the wall. Jaya gasped. The orb slipped from her broken fingers, bouncing once, twice.
“What have we here?” Rhumia said as she picked up the orb with her hair.
Jaya twisted viciously, suddenly. Her teeth closed around the Yumi’s ear. Rhumia jerked away on instinct, Jaya pulling. There was a sickeningcrunch, then a tearing, then hot, metallic blood flooded her mouth, her tongue. Rhumia howled. She staggered back, clutching her torn ear as Jaya spit out her flesh, gagging. The orb came loose. She tried to grab it when shouts sounded down the hall.
Two guards sprinted toward them. With a sinking sensation, Jaya recognized them as the guards she had encountered before.
“Call for reinforcements! We have two assailants—”
