I glimpsed the shimmer of stars in a velvet sky, then Nicofroze, head snapping up as the faint scrape of a boot against stone slithered out of the darkness behind us. “Faster,” he urged. “We’re almost to the entrance. Once we’re out in the open, we can at least fight.”
Dante turned into dead weight, his body sagging. “I told you,” he rasped. “Gabriel… just…listen to me…”
“Keep moving,” I ordered. “I see the light up ahead.” After the consuming darkness of the tunnels, the sliver of moon in the night sky was bright as the sun, illuminating the sweep of red rock and sand. I tasted freedom on the desert air.
But it was already too late.
They stepped out of the darkness as though they’d been birthed from the shadows themselves—four guards, bigger even than the ones we’d fought earlier. The bottoms of their faces were covered by those masks—but on their cheeks were marks. Brands, a raised emblem of some sort.
Like the other guards, their eyes were pale. Almost… transparent. Unnatural.
A chill crawled up my spine.
Emberline inhaled sharply. “Not them again.” Her expression was grim and determined, a knife gripped in each hand.
They crushed us like a hammer.
Metal armor. Brute strength. No mercy.
“Try to stay out of this.” I pinned Dante between my body and the wall, bracing him upright. My blade was moving before my mind fully caught up, muscle memory taking over. Close quarters meant that the next two minutes were nothing but heavy bodies slamming into one another, weapons sweeping through the air with a deadly hiss of metal, elbows crushing larynxes.
I drove my blade into the closest guard’s neck, betweenthat mask and the burnished breastplate. He staggered backward and collapsed beside my brother, a heaving pile of bloodied metal.
Emberline…where the fuck was Emberline?
Nico took out another one, twin blades carving low, foot sweeping the brute’s legs, then brutally finishing him off with a strike—like me—to the throat, the only vulnerability on these assholes, given the armor protecting every inch of their bodies.
Only two guards stood between us and freedom, and I lunged…
Then the sound of approaching footsteps multiplied.
More thundered out of the corridors around us, some holding torches, illuminating the passageways, birthing five more guards. Ten. Twenty.
“Gabriel!” Nico shouted over the clash of metal. “We’re getting boxed?—”
A guard slammed into me, shoulder to chest, driving the air out of my lungs. I stumbled, catching myself against stone. His big, booted foot pulled back, then crushed into my stomach.
Pain flared in my ribs.
Another impact hit me from the side, and something in my tweaked leg tore. I was still not at a hundred percent, weakened from the poison on that blade. I raised my blade, but it was knocked out of my hand, then a fist like a hammer shattered my cheekbone.
Dante made a sound—half roar, half broken plea—tried to stand, and his leg collapsed beneath him. He went down hard.
Somewhere, outside of the chaos, Emberline screamed his name, and the corridor went still. All movement stopped, like someone had pulled a plug, the guards fallingback in unison, hands on their weapons, down on one knee, heads bowed, like they were making room for a king.
Torches were lit along the corridor, and from the darkness ahead, he emerged.
The Overseer.
The pale-eyed bastard walked like this entire place was his kingdom, like every rock and stone belonged to him, and pulled behind him…
Was Emberline.
“No,” Dante groaned, prostrate on the stone, trying to push himself up with shaking arms, her blood still staining his cracked lips. A boot slammed into the back of my knee, and I hit the ground.
Nico was shoved beside me.
Then the Overseer was right in front of us, the guards sweeping in to form an impenetrable circle of armor and muscle, cutting off the starry sky and our hope of escape.
