He cuts down a wraith without taking his eyes off me and starts in my direction. He sheathes his weapon, raises his hands, fires burning in each palm, and throws them with lethal precision. The abominations fall at his feet. Ashes mixing with sand.
Yaretta leaps away from the metal bars she’s been holding onto and runs behind me. She grabs my hair in a painful grip and thrusts a knife under my chin.
Finnley takes measured steps in my direction, his arms held out, not even looking at the death and destruction happening around him. His focus is entirely on me.
Fear and hesitation are pooled in his eyes.
“Yaretta, don’t do this. You’re better than this,” he pleads, slowly walking toward us.
She digs the tip of the knife into my lower jaw, as blood trickles onto my lap. “Stop right there or I swear to the gods I’ll skewer her head on this blade,” she screams over the sound of battle taking place all around us.
Finnley ducks as a wraith grabs for him, quickly standing and driving his elbow into its face. A shadow slithers around its neck before it even hits the ground, squeezing until the head falls forward and rolls across the sand, landing at my feet.
Ambrose drives his knee into the face of another, as he spins and throws his sword, landing deep in the chest of one coming at me from the side. He’s resorted to hand-to-hand combat now.He won’t use his fire this close to me. Not with it being so unpredictable.
My gaze swings between Kingston and Ambrose. Darkness spills from Kingston as he dispatches two at the same time.
We’re outnumbered, and they just keep coming.
Finnley is mere steps away. I turn my broken gaze on him.
“Hi again,” he mouths, but I can read his lips perfectly. He turns his worried eyes to the person behind me. “Yaretta, please.”
She laughs cruelly. “See, Norissa, that’s how you beg. It’s not so hard, is it?” she taunts, digging the tip in even farther.
I wince and hold as still as possible.
“Hello, brother,” a deep voice says from the inside of a cell.
Finnley’s head whips in the direction it came from. “Rhett?” he asks, confusion coating his words.
“The one and only,” Rhett answers, stepping out from his hiding place, his arms spread wide.
Finnley’s eyes move from his brother to my broken face, and back again. “What are you doing here? What the fuck is going on?” he demands, his brows pulled down with a solid mixture of turmoil and fear etched across his face.
“What you should have done from the beginning, but apparently I can’t count on you,” he answers in a deranged voice. He points at me while looking at Finnley, a satisfied glint appearing in his eyes. “We got her, Finnley.”
I slice my eyes to Finnley’s face.
I have no idea what’s going on. I can barely see out of the swelling in my eyes. Yaretta has my head pulled back at an unnatural angle, and every breath vibrates against what I’m convinced are multiple broken ribs. One wrong move and I’m going to end up with a punctured lung or a dagger through my jaw. I’m doing my best to put the pieces of the puzzletogether, but it’s almost impossible to concentrate with my body deteriorating by the second.
He doesn’t look at me, just keeps his narrowed eyes on Rhett. “This wasn’t a part of the plan,” he replies, his tone turning icy.
“I came up with a better one, Finnley. Look,” he says before disappearing into the cell directly in front of me. He opens an adjacent door and shuffles through. A few seconds later, he walks back out, pushing two people who are bound and gagged.
Finnley’s eyes widen. “What aretheydoing here?” he demands, his voice rising above the fighting.
I shoot my eyes toward Finnley. Confusion and denial are painted across my features.
Rhett pushes the two prisoners into the chaos. A man and woman in tattered professor robes, faces hollow and emaciated. Their eyes dart around the pit filled with dozens of wraiths. They glaze over the Noctryn surrounded by shadows cutting wraiths down one by one, and the Veil dispatching them where they stand.
The woman screams behind her gag, and the man shakes his head in denial. I wasn’t in her class, but I vaguely recognize the woman as Professor Hunstal. A starved version of her.
I can only assume that the man is the missing alchemy professor from last year.
His cheeks are sunken in, and bruises cover his temple area.
“We no longer need them, do we? I mean, now that we have the Liminal and the book,” Rhett remarks, walking back into the cell and coming out with my bag. “See,” he says, smiling as he opens my bag and shows Finnley Silver resting at the bottom of it.
