However, I may not have a choice, because if they took me, they’d also find out who I was. I had to fight my way out of this to survive… hopefully with my secrets intact.
Fingers tore at my hood, and I grasped the wrist to halt it as I jerked my head away in time to keep from being exposed. I seized the guard by the throat, lifted him, and crushed his windpipe before tossing him away. I didn’t have time to kill him.
The man clutched his throat as he rolled across the ground, but his cohorts didn’t stop to check on him before falling in to replace him. Nearly two hundred guards were stationed in Nottingshire, and I was fairly certain all of them had descended on us.
Hands clawed at me, tearing at my clothes and threatening to reveal the layers I wore as I battled back two guards who swung their swords with ruthless intent but little expertise. They sought to carve me into pieces while also trying to expose me.
When a hand clawed at my shirt, I grasped the fingers and yanked them back. I tore them away as bones broke beneath my hand.
Tucker’s men were well-trained but greatly outnumbered. The off-duty guards had arrived far faster than we’d anticipated.
A blade sliced through the crowd. I jumped back in time to avoid it cutting me in two, but it still cleaved the side of my neck. The blood spilling from the wound soaked my clothes.
The prisoners huddling by my side whimpered as they tried to avoid being stampeded by the guards. There was nowhere for them to hide, and one of the women nearly lost an eye when an arrow skimmed her temple.
I plunged my sword into the belly of the guard who had cut me and twisted it. As I did so, another grabbed me from behind.
Planting my feet apart, I fought to keep from being dragged down, but when another and then another crashed into mysides, I knew it was only a matter of time before they took me down.
If I didn’t expose myself, they would destroy me.
CHAPTER 99
Ellery
I gazedin horror at the battle unfolding before me. The last time I’d seen Ryker, blood was pouring from a gash in his neck, but he’d vanished soon after, and I had no idea where he was anymore.
When they first burst free of the homes to converge on the town green, a few guards tried climbing the roof to come after us. Ianto had torn off their heads and the rest didn’t see us as they rushed past to join the fray.
The guards were like ants swarming over something to tear it apart and devour it. There weresomany of them. We’d taken out dozens with our arrows, but my quiver had run empty, and I couldn’t help anymore.
I sat helplessly with my bow dangling from my hand as the aristocrat’s guards destroyed everything we’d labored to build. Sitting beside me, the giant’s mouth hung ajar as he gazed at the bloody massacre.
Tucker briefly swelled out of the crowd, but hands clawed at him as they pulled him back into the bloody mess. Ihadto dosomething to help, but with my arrows gone, I could only do one thing.
Ryker wouldn’t be happy about it, and I didn’t care. There wasnoway I would sit uselessly by while these monsters destroyed him.
I won’t lose him too.
“Stay down the best you can and help me break off the lightning rods!” I shouted at Ianto.
I threw my bow aside and scrambled to my feet. It scraped down the roof tiles before plunging over the side.
“What? Why?” he sputtered.
“Just do it!” I snapped.
I didn’t look back at the giant as, with my hands out at my sides for balance, I scampered down the roof’s peak, around the chimney, and toward the lightning rod at the end of the house. I kicked it five times before it flew off into the night.
“We should go,” Ianto said. “He’d want me to get you out of here.”
“Doit!”
I ran back toward the chimney and off to the other side of the home. It was a small building, so I didn’t have to run far to the next rod.
I only had to kick this one three times before it fell away. As I ran back to the chimney, I saw that Ianto had taken out the other two lightning rods and was standing at the front of the building.
Stopping beside him, I refused to look at the battle as I pulled the dagger at my side free.
