Sandis’s focus shifted from Kazen to Rone, Rone to Alys, Alys to Rone. He had come back? He . . . what? She strained to see better and slid, falling to her hands and knees in Galt’s blood. Bile burned up her tender throat once more.
Kazen laughed. “You stupid boy. I’ve watched you. I’ve researched you. I know you. You won’t kill my vessel. You’re already dead.”
Rone clenched his jaw. Shrugged. Dropped his knife and let Alys go.
Then he whipped a pistol out of his jacket pocket and fired.
Sandis’s ears rang. The wall behind Kazen popped with the impact.
Rone had missed.
Before a curse could leave his mouth, Kazen’s hand flashed silver, and his own pistol fired. The bullet rang when it hit the metal of Rone’s gun and knocked it out of his hand. Rone instinctively cradled the hand as Kazen dropped the first single-fire pistol and drew another. Aimed.
“No!” Sandis screamed, and she launched her blood-drenched body at his legs. She hit him a split second before he fired.
Dust exploded from the ceiling where the bullet hit. Kazen slid in the blood and fell onto his hip. Sandis tried to move away, only to reach the end of her chain.
She didn’t know how many guns Kazen had. If the second pistol was a single fire or not. She grabbed his wrist, smearing Galt’s blood over his hand and sleeve.
Kazen wrenched his arm free and smashed his elbow into Sandis’s jaw, knocking her back into the pool. She slid in the cooling blood. Grabbed his belt and yanked him down, away from the dropped gun and the ceremonial sword.
A silver key fell from his pocket, falling just outside the blood puddle.
Then Rone was on them. He launched himself onto Kazen, and the two rolled out of Sandis’s reach. Someone’s fists thundered against the door. The wood holding it began to splinter.
Rone threw a hard punch into Kazen’s face, and the man went limp. Sandis gawked. Was he crushed so easily?
She strained for the key. Couldn’t reach it. “Rone.” His name was high and choked from the collar pushing against her windpipe. “Key.”
Rone leapt from Kazen and dropped to his knees in front of her, swiping the silver key. More fists on the door. His fingertips flew over her collar, looking for the keyhole. She bent her neck so he could find it in the back.
The collar fell into the blood, and Sandis breathed for the first time that day. She looked up into Rone’s dark eyes, and for a moment they stared at each other. Confusion boiled inside her.
Why? Why everything?
Kazen laughed.
Sandis and Rone both jumped at the sound. Kazen stood on the far edge of the room. The sight of Alys in his grip sucked Sandis’s organs together and turned them to ice. A bruise had begun to bloom on the side of Kazen’s nose. “So easily distracted by a semblance of freedom, hm? You’re in my domain, Rone Comf.” He pushed his hand over Alys’s forehead.
The key had been a distraction. The unconsciousness faked. Now Alys would be his weapon . . . They couldn’t fight Alys. She would take all the injuries, not Isepia— Rone leapt to his feet. “Wait!” he shouted, and he pulled something from his pocket. It glimmered under the light of the lamps.
The amarinth. Sandis’s heart plummeted to her navel.
“Want this?” he asked. “Let’s make a trade.”
“Rone, you—” But Sandis stopped herself. Stared.
That wasn’t the amarinth. The center was wrong—it looked like a carved piece of silver, not the sparkling, unearthly white core she knew. A fake? She struggled to get her slick feet beneath her.
Kazen grinned. “In due time.” And he began chanting.
Rone bolted across the room to stop him. But Kazen was a practiced summoner. The words were out of his mouth before Rone could reach them.
A flash of light, a distant scream, as if Alys wailed from the far end of a hallway. Rone skidded to a stop mere feet away from Isepia.
“Kill him, my darling,” Kazen crooned.
The gray-skinned numen stretched out a single black wing and clenched her taloned hands. Hissed at the sight of Rone.
She lunged, and the wood barring the door shut finally broke in two. Ravis and Staps ran in and froze at the sight of the numen, who would have decapitated Rone had he not dropped to the floor half a second later.
Sandis ran toward him, but Kazen shouted to Staps, “You, grab the vessel! Ravis, get the amarinth!”
Staps charged toward Sandis, his corded hair whipping behind him. She backpedaled, then tried to duck under his arm, but he was too fast and caught the back of her shirt. Wound her in like a snake. Struggling against him, she spied Rone wielding his knife again.
“Don’t hurt her!” she cried, as Staps hauled her back to the lake of blood. “It will hurt Alys!”
“Are you kidding me right now?” Rone swiped at the numen, only to have her backhand him. He flew back and hit the wall— Staps turned, blocking Sandis’s view. She heard Isepia hiss, a gun fire.
“Hold her!” Kazen barked, and Staps’s grip tightened.
Kazen, blazing with fury, reached for Sandis’s head.
Don’t hurt the monster. Yeah. Good plan.
Rone’s current plan was to, first, stay alive and, second, keep the deranged eagle woman between himself and the grafter. Who had a gun. Because this was the best day ever.
The numen launched at him again, striking out with her clawed hands. It was like fighting a giant viper. The monster could fly, but the ceiling wasn’t particularly high, so she had little room to do so. Rone tried to use that to his advantage. The numen swiped; he ducked. Swiped again; he blocked—bad idea. The strength of her blow cracked up his arm and sent him face-first into the wooden floor, smashing his nose. He heard her wing flap behind him and rolled, barely missing her next attack. Her talons stuck into the wood floor.
Rone jumped to his feet, his nose, head, back, and arm throbbing. He flexed his fingers. Nothing broken yet, but blood from his nostrils ran down his lips.
Beyond the numen, a gun cocked.
Rone ducked. The grafter fired.
The numen screeched like a banshee and ripped her hands free from the floor in an explosion of splinters. A few drops of black blood pattered onto the ground beside her. For a moment, her hair flashed blonde, her skin peach. Alys. But the numen held on.
She also turned her attention to the grafter and, with a single beat of her wing, soared toward him and separated his throat from the rest of his body.
Rone’s stomach tightened, ready to upend itself, but his thoughts kept him focused, even as the grafter’s corpse fell to the floor.
The numen had killed the grafter.
Kazen hadn’t told her to kill the grafter.
Everything Sandis had taught him about the occult zipped through his mind. Blood. Kazen needed blood to exercise full control over the numina.
Could it be that he didn’t have Alys’s? That in his quest for this Kolosos and for Sandis, he’d let this vessel’s maintenance slip?
Despite the macabre scene surrounding him, a smile twitched on Rone’s mouth. He could use this.
He chucked the fake amarinth at the numen.
“Hey, gorgeous,” he said as she swerved toward him. “Want to play tag?”
“Vre en nestu a carnath—”
Sandis tore more hair from her scalp, trying to twist out of Kazen’s grasp. His fingers touched her lips, and she bit down until blood filled her mouth.
Kazen shouted and ripped his hand back, the incantation ruined. Sandis spat. Staps squeezed her in his arms, threatening to pull her shoulders from their sockets.
Kazen’s other hand flew forward and clamped around her neck, each fingernail pushing a bruise into the skin. He leaned in close, his moist forehead sticking to hers.