Page 104 of Winter Gods & Serpents

Tilting her head to observe the premises she took careful steps to its entrance.

“No,” Mal assured. “There are people inside. Probably a few.”

“Ten,” she said pensively, still staring at the building.

I grabbed her hand, pulling her attention. “What are we doing here? You have been patrolling for a week, this is not your usual route.”

She shook herself free from me and Caiden gave me a warning look.

Unsheathing her daggers, she cautiously approached the door, cracking it slightly open before she suddenly rolled to the side of the wall avoiding the impact of the door kicking open furiously. A man came from the inside. As soon as he took note of her, unsheathed his weapon. Black steel, an Adriatian weapon. He swung for her. Quickly she ducked, leaning back and nailing a foot in his knee before swirling round under at an impeccable lightness of foot to dig her dagger right behind his neck, piercing right through the front.

The man gasped for air, blood leaked furiously from his mouth and wound. It was quicker for any of us to react.

She pulled the dagger out, wiping the leaking blood on her sleeve.

Life seeped out, death and its bitter taste of charcoal and acid leaking in.

How did she detected movement to react so quick?

“There should be ten of them, I want them all captured or dead,” she ordered her soldiers who rushed inside the building immediately.

She mouthed something to herself, something resembling a number.

A boom sounded inside the building as glass cracked viciously in the air, hard debris floating above us.

A wave blast of wind pushed the whole debris back missing us.

“You idiot,” the princess accused her friend.

“A zephyr?” I asked, absently studying him. I’d never seen one before. In Isjord and right next to her was the last place I’d ever thought I’d see one.

She gripped my jacket bringing me to her. Her fists tight as she demanded, “You will not tell.”

“Why would you think I’d do that?”

“You will not tell,” she pushed, inching closer and closer. “I need your promise.”

“And you have it.”

“Speak it aloud.”

“I promise, princess, I will tell no one. Now let go of me.”

She breathed furious before turning to my brother only to be interrupted by Caiden. “He knows.”

“What?” we asked in unison again.

“Since Kirkwall,” my brother revealed, raising his hands and taking a step back. “And before you wrinkle my ironed jacket, I also promised not to tell.”

He had not told me either.

Stomping sounded from the stairs. “They ran towards the forest, all Aura,” her soldiers shouted, and she took off almost immediately before I grabbed her.

“There is no point in running after them, they can fade.”

She’d come to claim her list of Adriatians that Van and Ester had given her, that was why she’d been that eager.

“No, all city walls are laced in craft, no one can fade in or out. They get out those walls and I lose them.”