Hargrave howled in pain, dropping Thibault’s wrist and stumbling back, his eyes wide.
“I’m sorry,” Thibault said again. “This is never what I wanted. But it is whatheneeds.” And with that, he lunged forward and drove thesanguinagiweapon into Hargrave’s chest.
Kit blinked, her split-vision clearing. She wasn’t in the Sanctum. She was here. Now. And this was not over.
The throne room was chaos again.
Sephone released a feral yell as more cultists suddenly charged in from the hallway.
Tristan was back on his feet, blade aloft as he launched himself at Thibault. Dentarius was still trying his best to save the king, the remaining members of the royal guard setting up a perimeter around the two of them again.
And where thefuckwas Nox?
A blood-red crystal dagger flew at Kit’s head, and she stepped aside just in time to avoid it. In one smooth motion, she grabbed a dagger from the sheath at her thigh and flung it at thesanguinagiwho had attacked her. It lodged in the woman’s throat, and she fell with a strangled gasp.
But she was only one. And now there were many.
Hand still extended, Kit conjured a stream of water that blasted back four cultists who had just charged into the room. “Sephone!” she cried, and the stormbender’s head jerked up.
Grinning, Sephone snapped her finger, drawing a spark of lightning to her fingertips that she flicked over the dripping wet cultists. They shouted and spasmed, the scent of charred flesh filling the air as Sephone’s lightning danced along all four of their bodies, spread and amplified by Kit’s water.
Kit had no time to appreciate the effect though. Not when a sudden, savage blow to the back of her head had spots searing across her vision. She stumbled, dizzy, off-balance, unable to tell what direction her new attacker was coming from, let alone where they stood. Still, Kit tried to keep moving, tried not to make herself too easy of a target, even as her head spun.
“There are too many!” Sephone’s voice cut through the haze in Kit’s mind. “Dentarius, we need you!”
“Do you want the king to die?” Dentarius yelled.
“Do you want usallto die?” Sephone screamed back.
Blessed Lunara. Were theylosing?
Pain lanced down Kit’s arm. With bleary eyes, she looked to see a long red gash suddenly cut into her bicep. “What the f?—”
Another gash appeared, just below the first, and the sting helped Kit’s head clear just enough to see the blur of the female cultist who was dancing around her, striking out with a small darksteel dagger. A small cut here, a larger one there. Over and over and over again, she nicked and scraped and sliced at Kit, narrowly missing her wings, laughing as though enjoying the torment.
And then, finally, it stopped. And it took Kit another few seconds to realize why. To realize that the cultist had finally stopped moving. That darkness had swelled under her feet. And suddenly the cultist was yanked into the shadows with a primal roar, and there was no more pain, only thepopof a neck snapping and thethudof a body hitting the ground.
“Are you all right?” said Nox, exiting the shadows and kicking the cultist’s body to the side.
Kit nodded, summoning the wherewithal to cast a sliver of healing magic over her head wound, then to seal the cuts on her arms. Her mind cleared enough to be able to ask, “Where were you?”
Nox grimaced. “They are everywhere. The halls on this floor are overrun. I ran into some other survivors and was guiding them back to the saferoom when they surged.”
“The saferoom, is it still?—”
“Safe? Yes. But only because I ran into someone else while I was out there too.”
“Who?”
A dozen more cultists burst into the throne room. But they weren’t the only ones who appeared.
Like the night itself was on fire, shadows rippled in the middle of the room, lit at the center with a glow that got brighter, brighter, brighter.
And in a blaze of golden glory, Cedric Thorne and Elyria Lightbreaker stepped out of the dark.
52
CAVALRY
