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Six flights to the top. Six stories of winding around and around until I was disoriented.
Footsteps chased us upstairs. Breathing hard, I stopped and whirled around. Assassins. Two of them, armed with scimitars and shields. I had no room to draw my sword, so I kicked one of them square in the chest.
The assassin staggered backward. I pressed my advantage and kicked him in the face. My heel hit his nose. His head snapped back as he flew down the stairs. The assassin standingbelow tumbled down with him. They collapsed at awkward angles on the steps, but they were still groaning. Not dead yet.
Wendel squeezed past me and swooped on the fallen assassins. He sliced open their throats with his dagger and let them bleed out. Crimson trickled down the stairs in rivulets. He waited only long enough to revive them with his necromancy. His minions staggered upright and waited for his command.
“Nobody gets past you alive,” Wendel commanded. “And try not to lose your heads.”
I shuddered at the icy disdain in his voice. Outside, beyond the windows, the wind carried the wingbeats and cawing of crows.
Wendel met my gaze. “Almost there.”
His eyes blazed with conviction and certainty of the end. He started running again. I chased him higher and higher. My heartbeat thundered. At the top of the tower, we stopped outside a door and shared a glance.
“Talk to him,” he whispered. “I will protect you. If he tries to hurt you…”
He didn’t need to finish his thought. We both understood damn well what he meant.
Shadows crawled over his skin while he disappeared into darkness. I grabbed the door handle, the iron cold beneath my sweaty palm, before I yanked it open.
Candles flickered in lanterns. Plush Turkish rugs yielded beneath my boots. Across the room, a magnificent mahogany desk dominated the space beneath the windows.
His desk.
Thorsten Magnusson. The Grandmaster.
“You shouldn’t be here, Ardis.”
50
Fear poured through my veins and froze my blood to ice, but I pretended to be brave.
“You asked me to join you,” I said.
“Not like this.” The Grandmaster’s eyes looked dead in the candlelight. “Not with the Prince of the Undying ready to stab me in the back.”
“I want you to let Wendel go.”
The Grandmaster’s mechanical laugh raised goosebumps on my skin. “I had hoped you would help me. That you could convince Wendel to return willingly and fulfill his destiny with the Order of the Asphodel.”
I clenched my hands, being careful to keep them away from my sword. “His destiny?”
“To be my prodigy.”
A shiver crawled down my spine. “You hurt him, ever since he was just a boy, for years. I can’t even imagine the cruelty he’s had to endure.”
“Wendel considers cruelty an old friend. He slaughtered so many of my good men, I didn’t even bother with assassins tonight. I hired some mercenaries as fodder to keep up appearances. No offense, Ardis.”
Wendel crept from shadow to shadow, trapped by the pools of candlelight. The Grandmaster hadn’t located him yet.
My stomach soured. “Those men didn’t deserve to die.”
“Pity.” The Grandmaster lowered his gaze. His pen scratched across the paper on his desk. “Perhaps you shouldn’t have killed them. I would have welcomed you both here with open arms, had you only asked.”
“Welcomed? You mean tortured.” I bared the long scars on my wrists, remembering my agony. “Your technomancer, Hieronymus, did this to me.”
“Because you dared to be defiant.” The Grandmaster dotted a sentence with a period. “Are you finished? This letter is of a time sensitive nature.”
