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It’s only me. I have to stop him before he unleashes even more terror on my city, however I possibly can.
My magic shudders in my chest alongside the queasiness in my gut, but there’s no direct threat to me yet. It isn’t wrenching at me the way it can.
Let’s hope I can keep it that way.
I slide Stavros’s sword from its sheath, testing the weight in my hands. It’s about twice the size of my favorite knife and three times the weight, but I’ve wielded bulkier weapons when I’ve needed to.
Maybe the interruption will shake the accomplices’ loyalty to the man who’s channeling their gifts. Maybe I can take him prisoner without any more bloodshed.
I have to try.
I heft the sword in my hands and adjust my position on the steps. Inhale and exhale to steady my body and my mind. Wait until Wendos appears completely focused on the world beyond the tower.
And then I launch myself at him.
Thirty-Nine
Ifling myself up the last few steps and over the smooth stone tiles of the tower’s highest platform.
There’s little room to maneuver. I’m going with the best strategy the environment allows: barrel straight into my target and knock him down.
If I can pin him to the floor with the sword at his throat, I don’t think there’s much his ravaged accomplices can do. And once Stavros gets here, possibly with the king’s soldiers in tow, he can take Wendos into custody.
That’s the idea, anyway. I didn’t take into account the scourge sorcerers’otheraccomplices, unwilling or not.
I hurtle across the floor, the blade flashing. Wendos starts to whirl at the thump of my feet, too slow.
Just as I’m about to dart between two of the slouched figures to reach him, an invisible force smacks into me from the side with a crackle of supernatural power.
He must have commanded at least one daimon to play guard.
I stumble to the side. As I regain my balance and whip back toward him, Wendos’s eyes widen.
He snaps out a sharp, nasal-toned phrase of words I don’t recognize, and all at once I’m battered by a supernatural onslaught.
Blows pummel me from chest to calves as if a heap of invisible fists are slamming into me all at once. I hiss in pain and stagger backward, and something flits past my ankles, knocking my feet out from under me.
Right at the top of the stairs.
I skid down several steps as I grope to catch my fall. My tailbone jars against the stone edges, pain spiking up my spine.
The royal sword goes spinning out of my grasp, clattering farther down the stairwell.
Just as I manage to snag my fingertips on a small groove in the wall, Wendos sweeps his hand downward as if in command. I don’t know what specifically he was hoping his harnessed daimon would do, but the stairs above me shake and crack.
Chunks of stone surge toward me, some bashing into my body, others tumbling past me after my sword or raining down through the widening crack onto the stairs below. One particularly large piece crashes down on my shin.
I can’t hold back the cry of pain at the agony that lances through my leg. It feels like the blasted chunk of marble shattered the bone.
A pit has opened up in the stairwell between me and the platform where Wendos is standing—six steps fallen away, leaving nothing but empty air unless I want to plummet a story down onto the rubble beneath.
My magic surges through me, battering me from the inside out in turn for a chance to fight back. I clamp down on it with the clenching of my jaw.
My power scratches at my innards with its usual frustration, but not nearly as overwhelmingly as the last several times. As if the fact that I let it out yesterday has partly appeased it.
I don’t know whether to rejoice or cringe away from that fact.
I wrench myself into a proper sitting position, pushing close to the wall and gasping for breath. I could have jumped that distance, even going upward, at my best.
