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Zita was right—I couldn’t do much else, and if I was well-rested, at least I could be sharp enough to notice if anything was out of place.
Like poison in my food, for instance—or an attack.
I crawled into bed and closed my eyes, trying to let the tension ease out of my body. I took deep breaths and focused on the air, leaving my lungs flowing through my nose and mouth.
The door slowly opened, and I frowned, sitting up.
“Who is it?” I asked. “Zita?”
“My lady,” I heard a soft, familiar voice.
I blinked. Bessie, alive and well, walked into the room. Her cheeks were rosy, and her light, mousy hair was almost silver in the moonlight.
“Bessie?” I asked, incredulous. “But how…?”
My stomach lurched. A sense of doom curled at the pit of my stomach.
“I wanted to make sure you were all right, my lady,” she said, the way she had every night before going to bed herself, but this was all wrong.
It was the early hours of the morning, not late at night. Besides, Bessie was dead.
I was seeing things. Ghosts. Her death had terrified me.
The magic was faint at first, but it grew, uncoiling like a snake. When Bessie threw power at me, I sank into my focus right away and blocked the magic.
“No!” I shouted. “Imposter!”
“They won’t hear you,” the attacker hissed. Even though the assailant wore Bessie’s appearance, it wasn’t her. I could tell now. I couldn’t believe I’d thought she’d come back from the dead a moment earlier. This had to be another spell like what had been done to me. “Your room has been hexed. You’re stuck with me,human.”
Another wave of power came toward me, and I blocked it as best as I could. The wave was strong, but I was used to being attacked by now—I’d trained for this—and my body responded on instinct. I warded off the magical attack and jumped out of bed. I spun around and planted a well-aimed kick to the imposter’s gut, sending her flying backward. When she hit the door, her head knocked against it so hard, the image of Bessie blurred, jolted, and then disappeared. In its place sat a short, stocky male with a snarl on his face and eyes the color of oil.
He pulled himself up and attacked again, using magic while he reached for me with clawed hands. I’d never seen hands so ugly, with claws that looked like that of a monster, and teeth that seemed to drip menace.
We fought when he reached me, and it was a combination of well-aimed punches and kicks with waves of magic.
It was tough. An attack by a stranger differed from getting to know the patterns of Dex and Nylah as they trained me. I had to think fast and rely on my strength and my reflexes.
He was on me again and again, fighting me physically, draining my strength with his magic at the same time, so I felt like I was fading, become transparent. I had to act now if I wanted to survive.
“Zita!” I shouted, but she didn’t come to my aid.
I fought through the waves of magic that rolled over me, getting closer and closer to the attacker. When I was right in front of him, I hit him as hard as I could, elbowing him in the nose the way I’d done to countless assholes at the tavern who’d groped me.
He staggered, eyes widened in surprise that I’d gotten through the magic.
I hit him once more, and this time, it knocked him out. He fell against my door, unconscious. Blood spilled from his nose, and a bruise formed around his eye, darkening in the silver light of the moon falling into my room—the only light we’d had to fight by.
I shoved him away and opened my door.
“Guards!” I shouted. “Imposter!”
Now that the door was open, and the spell had only been cast on my room, they could hear me, and they came running. Zita was there first. Four guards piled into my room after her.
“What in the seven realms of hell?” she cried out. She looked at me with owlish eyes. “How did he get in?”
We watched as the four males dragged out the unconscious attacker.
My hands trembled, and my body was heavy.
