The soldier’s eyes almost bulge free of their sockets, and I’m pleasantly surprised when red flesh explodes past his lips with a gush of blood that pours down his chin and throat, painting his garb in gore. He falls to his knees with a blankness in his eyes. Like snipped flames.
Clode releases me as Sereme’s gouging torture fades, and I crumple, pulling down my shroud just in time to hack and heave. Splats of red litter the azure tiles by the time I manage to drag a breath without coughing up a lung, my lips trembling, muscles cramping.
I groan, Clode’s sound-tight vacuum still snug against my skin as I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand and lift my head. Look at the guard sprawled across the ground in a puddle of his own butchery.
Icy rage snaps at me like a whip, the tips of my fingers tingling.
That serpent bitch almost got me killed.
I think of the recognition in the soldier’s eyes moments before he lashed his lung-mulching attack, struck with a barbed theory …
Did these folk know I was coming?
Is this some sort of trap?
“Serpent …Bitch,” I drudge out as I shove up, wobbling. Steady myself, then lift my shroud and rip twin blades from my sheath, a rabid amount of energy bursting beneath my ribs. Not wild and unleashed, but cold.
Predatory.
I crack my neck and charge for the open doorway, widening my mental sound snare. So open that Clode and Bulder’s clamor drowns out everything else, each blunt or slit word busting my eardrums with such force blood dribbles from my lobes.
Subtle assassinations are nice, but so is living. And evidence suggests that if I don’t take these soldiers out, they’ll take outme.
I’m not letting Sereme off the hook that easily.
The moment I charge through the entrance, chaos erupts.
Arrows spray, but words are already gusting from my lips, churning the air into a violent swirl that snatches every bolt. Like Clode just spawned fifty hands, giggling as she whips her deadly treasures about.
“Lui, Clode. Luísh eín shashtú-de wha! Plúin, plúin!”
Shedancesfor me—punching each arrow through the necks of those who fired them. Something I might feel bad about, except most of these fuckers have been felling Moltenmaws, filling the sky with grieving dams.
They canrot.
Eyes bulge and blood sprays, getting caught in the churn of wind, painting the room red.
Paintingmered.
I sprint a jagged line through the chaos, dodging spears of stone that shoot up from the ground. Messy orders drudged from the lips of others.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned from Kaan’s lessons to Elluin so far, it’s that Bulder favors care and precision. Numbers are nothing if nobody respects proper pronunciation.
With a single busting sentence, I rip Bulder’s attention from everyone else in the room. I swear I hear a chesty sound—like grunted approval—before the mezzanineexplodes.
Chunks of stone propel through the air, bodies flung like floppy dolls.
I pull Clode within, requesting she drape around me. A shield to buffer the storm of debris and soldiers. Though she gripes about her hate for my newfound trick, she lets nothing past. Not even when a hunk of rubble strikes so hard she squeals, then flings every curse word I’ve ever heard her use in one shrieked sentence.
More blood trickles from my ears, and I wonder if she’s wishing she’d mulchedmylungs instead.
Probably.
I charge free of her shell of protection amidst the last of the falling debris, tossing a blade toward the throat of one of the few still standing. It slots through a thin gap in his white armor.
Shock blasts in his eyes.
He drops.
