Alexander swept his injured leg. The pain was beyond comprehension now, a white-hot brand. The kick took Tedric down. They hit the stone hard. The rapier skittered away, lost in shadow.
The axe. Where was the axe?
His hand found the leather-wrapped handle. He dragged it toward him, pulled himself up. His leg screamed. He didn’t care.
Tedric lay at his feet, gasping, trying to crawl backward, one hand reaching blindly for a weapon that was too far away.
Alexander raised the axe again?—
“WULFBANE!”
He whirled. A cloaked figure stood, half-hidden in the shadows, bow drawn taut, two arrows nocked side by side.
The man released. Both shafts flew together, then split. One hissed toward Alexander. He twisted, the arrow nicking his shoulder. That cost him his balance—and his view of the women.
In that fraction of a second while he’d dodged, the second arrow found its mark. A sickening thunk echoed, followed by Darion’s choked cry. Only then did Alexander understand. He looked at the archer and the three people at the halfway point between them. Darion was on his knees, an arrow buried in his side as he shielded JingYi and Adelise with his own body.
“No—”
Alexander broke into a run. His pulse thundered. His leg screamed with each step. The archer was also moving, closing the distance to his wife faster.
“JingYi!” Alexander shouted, charging forward.
She was just rising unsteadily, face pale, arms bracing herself against the stone wall when the mysterious figure seized her by the waist. Adelise cried out. JingYi struggled, kicked. The figuredragged her toward the edge of the gallery and flung her over the railing.
Alexander didn’t think. He abandoned his axe, Tedric,everything. Pain flared as he pushed off his injured leg and dove, leaping after her, the air ripping past him. His stomach dropped. He caught her mid-fall, arms slamming around her, twisting their bodies to shield hers.
They hit the ground—hard. Air wheezed from his lungs. His fur cloak and his back absorbed the blow, sharp and jarring, stone punishing every bone. For a second, nothing.
Then, her weight shifted. She was breathing. He felt it, ragged and fast against his chest.
He tried to look up. His vision swam—edges soft, the gallery’s columns doubling before snapping back into place. He blinked, craned his neck, squinted through the haze.
The mysterious archer had vanished.
So had Tedric.
CHAPTER 56
JINGYI
JingYi awoke to the gentle sway of a moving carriage. A dull, insistent pain pulsed behind her eyes, radiating through her head whenever the wheels bumped uneven ground. Curtains filtered the sunlight into pale gold, but even that faint glow lanced through her skull.
She tried to move. A hiss slipped from her lips as her temple flared. Her hand twitched and encountered warmth. A broad palm, calloused and steady, wrapped around hers.
“Don’t move yet,” came a low voice beside her. Rough. Familiar.
Alexander.
She turned her head—slowly, cautiously—and found him seated beside her, arm curled protectively around her shoulders. The scent of sweat, dust, and blood clung to him. His coat was torn near the sleeve, streaked with dried red, and the line of his jaw was taut with something far deeper than pain.
The memory of the fall was a blur of terror and rushing air, but the impact—the brutal, shuddering crash of her body against stone—never arrived. He had taken the full force of it. That he could move at all was a testament to his strength, or stubbornness.
“Sir Darion . . .?” she managed, the words tearing from her throat like shards of glass. A fresh wave of pain bloomed with each syllable—a deep, bruising ache where Tedric’s hands had been.
Alexander’s gaze snapped to her neck, his expression hardening at the dark, mottled bruise that must already be visible.
“Don’t speak,” he murmured, his thumb stroking her hand. “Save your voice.”
