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With a swing of my arm, I lifted the crossbow and loaded another poisoned bolt. It would stop the kelpie for a while. I promised myself that once Locke was dead and gone, I would come back for the poor souls stuck to the kelpie. Perhaps Cerri could help me put them back together again.
The Seelie Queen had performed miracles before. Would it be so wrong to ask her to perform a couple more to make up for the crimes I had to commit today?
Kelpie in sight, I pulled the trigger. The beast ducked its head at the last minute. My bolt shredded through the seaweed made and hit the wall behind it. Cursing under my breath, I quickly plucked another bolt from my thigh holster. I was running low. I’d already used too many.
The kelpie caught wind of my muttered curse and whipped its feral head in my direction. It wasted no time lowering its head or stamping the floor before it rushed me. I let out a yelp and leapt onto the nearest object.
My feet caught the shelves of a bookshelf but the entire piece swayed uncertainly. I shoved off and tried to launch myself onto something else. Silence and stealth were my greatest assets in the dark, but I was making a racket trying to escape this kelpie. I heard its hooves screech on the floor as it came to a halt.
I landed on the iron maiden and sent it falling to the floor. Riding it like a surfboard, I glided across the room with my arms outspread for balance. Above, I could hear the grunts and thumps of Arven fighting the ogre.
We were both running out of stamina. Arven couldn’t hold the ogre off forever, and I knew that he wouldn’t want to kill the ogre, either. Arven hadn’t come here to kill. He’d come to support me asIkilled.
There was a difference.
“This is bullshit,” I said to myself.
I plucked my last bolt from my holster and loaded it. This time, as the kelpie bore down on me, I aimed to kill. Its eerie eyes glowed a phantasmal green in the dark, making them easy targets. I pulled the trigger when its rancid breath washed over my face. Heart in my throat, I watched the bold glide through its soft eye and into its skull.
But the creature didn’t slow.
I shouted another curse and tried to jump out of its way, but the poison took effect and rendered the kelpie limp. With nothing to slow it down, the kelpie’s limp body slammed into me and sent me to the floor.
There was a moment, between the collision and the impact with the floor, that I used to step in-between. Only, the kelpie’s body had glued itself to mine, and I took the beast with me. We appeared together, across the room, right as a door opened and light spilled out.
A male body filled the brilliant rectangle before me. I couldn’t see his face, but I didn’t have to. That gloating stance told me everything I needed to know.
“You made a mess of this, just like I made a mess of your family home.” Locke crouched beside me and the kelpie. He put his elbows on his knees and let his hands dangle freely. “Your family was too easy to kill. Soft skins, the lot of them. Not a single one of them knew how to fight back, and it seems like you are no exception. A little surprising considering your reputation.”
Though rage tried to fill my head with a burning fire, I managed to hold it back long enough to consider all my options. Though I was stuck to the dead kelpie, I hadn’t yet touched it with my bare hands. In fact, no skin touched the beast at all. It’d attached to my kobold leather jacket.
While I would be sad to see it go, I knew that I could slither out of it and break free. I just needed Locke to look the other way for a moment.
As if Arven had read my mind, the door to the basement crashed open and a body flew down the stairs. The ogre landed in a heap, limbs akimbo, on the hard basement floor. Locke’s head flew up. I watched as his gaze slowly tracked up the stairs to the silhouette standing at the top.
Locke shook his head. “You can’t be here. This is a violation. It’s an invasion. Your entire court will suffer for this.”
Arven laughed. The sound echoed boldly and made all the blood drain from Locke’s face.
Meanwhile, I carefully extracted myself from my kobold leather jacket. A few strands of hair stuck to the beast, but braids were all kept back in a bun at the base of my skull so none could stick to the beast’s cursed body. Once free, I rolled away and pulled a dagger free from the sheath near my spine.
I cradled another darkness bomb in the palm of my hand, letting it roll around before I threw it.
“What court?” Arven asked as he descended step by step, taking his time to make Locke squirm.
Arven’s display also bought me enough time to slowly move behind Locke. By the time the man realized I’d disengaged from the dead kelpie, I was completely out of his view. He started to look for me, but Arven leapt down the steps and landed in front of Locke to capture his attention once more.
Not once did Arven look in my direction. I knew he could see me, but he didn’t give away my position with the direction of his gaze. I had to hand it to him, that was so smart.
I tightened my grip on the dagger’s hilt as I stepped close to Locke’s back.
16
DELPHINE
“This dagger has been in my possession for a short while,” Tal said, hefting an ornate weapon in his hands.
He stared at the thing like it’d done him dirty. I didn’t dare ask. Instead, I studied the design of the dagger and noted the symbol of Athena where the hilt met the blade. Spider webs fanned out over the hilt’s leather covering.
