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“I’d like to gut her for what she’s done,” he grated, “but my orders are to bring her back alive.” He swung high with his sword. Kieren dodged and spun away.
“Too bad,” said Balisk. “She’d make a pretty corpse.”
All the rage I’d held bottled inside behind the fear boiled to the surface. For myself, for Maxine Mendale, for Layla, for the Primus slave-girls, for every young woman taken against her will. For the rapes, the beatings, the terror, the murder, the mutilation, and for Gaius, I swallowed that fear and used the anger to do something besides cower and wait my turn.
Lying on my side, I swung my leg the way Demetrius taught me to when I needed to do serious damage. I felt a crack when I landed a hard kick sideways against his knee, sweeping Balisk to the ground. Before he landed, I lunged, using all my weight to keep his head pinned with my bended knee, grinding it into the tile roof. One of his hands jerked up, grasping for my throat. Kieren lowered to his knees and shoved his short-sword directly into Balisk’s heart.
“You’re so lucky”—Kieren’s voice ground out like crumbling stone—“that I’m the one killing you and not my brother. He’d keep you alive to cut your heart out slowly for what you threatened to do to his mate.” Balisk’s hand squeezed my forearm. Kieren twisted the blade in his body and gave it a violent jerk. Balisk sputtered blood out of his mouth, wide eyes glazed, his arm going limp and dropping away from my arm.
“Get up, Moira.”
I did. Kieren took hold of one of his wings, dragged him to the edge of the roof, and launched his body over the edge.
I crawled to Gaius’s side. His eyes stared up into the night. A slow blink and the faintest of breaths told me he still lived. I angled his face toward me. “Gaius. Can you hear me? It’s going to be okay.”
I knew it would never be okay, but thoughtless words of comfort still spilled from my mouth. He blinked again, focusing on my teary gaze. “No,” he choked out. “I don’t want to survive this.” What was he saying? “I had to become one of them, you see.” He gasped for breath, pleading me to understand. I listened as I always did when someone wanted to tell their story. “They threatened to kidnap my sisters, my mother, to do to them what they did to the others.” Blood gurgled and streamed from his mouth. “I became one of them. My sins are so great.” He gasped for breath, a line of blood trailing from his mouth. “But you. When you came…had to get you out. My captain’s mate, I couldn’t leave in their hands.”
His breathing was shallow and raspy. He closed his eyes as he exhaled one last breath. I held in a sob welling in my chest. “Sleep, Gaius. Rest now.”
“Kieren!” Bowen bellowed from across the rooftop. “Go. Get her out of here.”
Jolted from the somber scene at Gaius’s side, I glanced up to see Kieren storming in my direction, having just fought and killed another Morgon. Bowen and Valla were in combat with the last two soldiers. Valla defended herself with swift moves, leaping through the air and slicing her opponent across the face with the twin rapiers in both hands. She literally kicked him in the ass after she ducked and slipped under his lumbering form, knocking him off balance.
She glanced over her shoulder. “Go! To Blind Bird Falls!” she yelled, ducking her attacker as he tried to snatch her by the hair. She twisted away, slicing him across the face.
Kieren sheathed his sword and pulled me off my knees. “Arms around my neck, Moira darling.”
I wrapped my arms around him, locking one hand on the wrist of the other arm. He lifted my legs, holding me in a tight embrace, took three long strides, and leaped off the building. My stomach dropped out from underneath me. He banked hard right away from Cloven, winging high up into billowy clouds.
“Where are we going?” I asked, teeth chattering. From fear or cold, I wasn’t sure. Probably both.
“A special place. Hang on tight. My brother would never forgive me if I let anything happen to his mate.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Did he say mate? Just like Gaius had. But I wasn’t.
Teeth chattering, we flew into a spray of misty sleet.
“Cover your face,” he commanded, sounding so much like Kol. “I’m going to speed up. This’ll sting.”
I turned my face into his neck, the flap of my collar forming a tent across my cheek. We rocketed forward, flying at a speed that would have me dizzy and nauseous if I were looking.
“Morgons have skin of leather, t-t-too?” I stuttered.
He chuckled, the sound dying on the biting wind. “Our bodies relegate temperature much differently than humans.”
“I n-noticed.”
He wore nothing but a long-sleeved black shirt as a second skin and wasn’t fazed at all by the freezing cold. I, on the other hand, was suffering rather badly, even wrapped in an insulated trench coat.
“How f-far is Blind Bird Falls?” was all I could mutter between my teeth.
“Not far. It’s not a place, actually. Blind Bird Falls is a childhood game Kol and I used to play with Valla at our summer home. That was Valla’s clever way of telling me where to go.”
He dipped out of the clouds.
“Sorry about the cold. I’ll have you warm soon enough.”
