“Is he dead?”
“No, of course not!”
“Then it isn’t enough.”
“Surely you wouldn’t! Merridon said I shouldn’t be worried over him anymore. That no further harm would come to me while on Opulence’s grounds.” She clung to his arm, desperate, but felt him slipping through her fingers.
“And what about outside them?”
“Outside them?”
She could see again. A gradual change. Black to gray to the soft light of the moon. When she was reoriented at last, she found the night densest at the ledge and ran toward it. “Bash,” she hissed.
He didn’t respond. Instead, she heard something unexpected. The soft rattle of a latch. A scraping of metal against metal.
The angle was all wrong to see her front door, so she sprinted from the terrace and through the flat, nearly crashing into the door as the rug bunched beneath her feet. She opened the peephole—
To a leather fist meeting a clean-shaven jaw.
Chapter Thirty-One
Alora caught a glimpse of auburn hair before it jerked away from view, a visceral grunt of pain the only sound.
William is here?
There had been no knock. No calling of her name. Instead, she’d heard the doorknob rattle. She’d heard scraping.Like a lock being picked.
Alora’s body flushed white hot. Then she flung open the door.
Bash had given up his fracturing of light. His dark hood hung until it caressed William’s face, his glove around the other man’s throat, squeezing. She didn’t know if he’d replaced his mask or if he was simply that angry, but his voice scraped up his throat as he said, “I should have done this from the beginning.”
William choked, a gurgling sound escaping his mouth that made Alora’s stomach twist. He folded backward, his back touching the stoop’s edge, his head and shoulders open to the free air on the opposite side. Beneath the lamplight spilling from behind her, his sea-glass gaze caught hers and held. Once, she’d thought that if William grew bored enough, he’d set her afirealongside him. She’d brushed it off as an unwelcome thought, without meaning. But she looked into his eyes now, and she saw the truth of it.
If he were to go down, he would bring her right with him.
“Alora,” he gasped.
“Do notspeak to her.”
William’s eyes shuttered. A heartbeat later, his knee came up. He risked toppling over the side, but it was one he took, and when it connected with Bash’s middle, a rush of air burst from Alora at the same moment a grunt of pain escaped the Urchin captain. His grip faltered.
William slipped free like an eel, sinking to a crouch to avoid the swipe of Bash’s fist. When he surged upward again, it was with a blow of his own, the sound excruciating as it connected with the Urchin’s jaw. William bled from a new cut on his cheekbone and his lower lip. The rest of him was clear and without so much as a bruise; he’d been seen by a healer, and a good one at that. It angered her that she carried the marks of his fingers on her wrist, but he showed nothing from her.
As awful as William’s punch had sounded, Bash didn’t falter. In seconds, he swept his brother up about the middle, sending him crashing to the white stone in a lung-crushing fall. This time, William’s knees were useless, as the Urchin straddled his hips and pressed a black-clad forearm to his windpipe.
“Did he…tell you,” ground out William. “That he…used to douse…me…with oil…and set it…alight?”
However it was possible, Bash pressed harder. A gurgle left William, saliva running from the corner of his mouth. He tried turning to the side, but Bash followed him, relentless. Alora was sure she’d vomit over the horror of it.
“Bash…” she whispered.
For the second time, William’s eyes fluttered closed.
“Bash!”
A hiss of pain, of surprise, echoed from beneath Bash’s hood. A moment later, and he was rolling away, his hand pressed to his side. William coughed and spluttered, curling into a fetal position as his hands encircled his throat. When Bash staggered back, Alora caught a glimpse of a handle. Or a hilt. It protruded from his side, embedded fully.
White noise built inside her head.
