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 thesanguinagiweapon 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.
Thesanguinagiscreamed 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.
Hewasa 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.
