“You can fight all you want, but it will do nothing for you, just as it did nothing for Heath.” He smiled. “But you are not Heath. He was an experiment. You are my chosen one. This has been your destiny all along, Sandis. I didn’t realize it at first, but I knew. Deep in my spirit, I knew, even from the first time I saw you on the streets. You’ve always been special, my dear girl. Now you must live up to it, whether you want to or not.”
He pulled away from her, the lingering stale smell of his breath clouding in front of Sandis’s nose. She was about to spit in his face, but something from his pathetic attempt at encouragement stuck in her head.
“From the first time I saw you on the streets.”
Kazen had met her in a cellar, not on the streets.
“Kolin citizens can’t be sold as slaves.”
Then why would slavers look for slaves in Dresberg?
It clicked then, like the cocking of a gun hammer.
“It was you.” Her hands and feet were cold, her shoulders numb, her heart too big for her body. “They weren’t slavers. They were grafters.”
Kazen leaned back, nearly smug. “What a bright little girl you are, Sandis. An open spirit like yours is so hard to come across.”
“Then why . . .” Yet she knew why. Why the “slavers” had held her for two months before taking her to Kazen. So he would be her hero. Because life with him was so much better than life in the cellar with those men.
That was why they’d been so careful whenever they beat her. Why they’d still kept her fed. Why they’d never raped her. Because she’d belonged to Kazen all along. They had merely held her until Kazen deemed fit to bring her into his fold.
Her eyes watered. Had Kazen killed Anon to get to her? Used him as bait to lure her into the darker parts of the city?
But there were no more words to be exchanged between them. Kazen pressed his hand against Sandis’s still-wet hair and began the summoning spell anew, the words speeding past his lips— Footsteps thundered toward them, closer, closer. Staps shifted to look, giving Sandis some space to turn her head.
Rone barreled their way, Isepia on his heels. He launched feetfirst into the blood, purposefully falling and sliding forward, slipping right between Sandis and Kazen. Isepia didn’t even slow.
Sandis screamed, and Staps loosened his hold to avoid the numen. Sandis ducked. Isepia collided into Kazen, sending both of them hurtling onto the blood-soaked floor.
Staps grabbed Sandis’s arm and hauled her upright. Remembering the move Kurtz had taught her, she turned into him and sent her hand into his neck with as much force as she could muster. It worked; Staps let go and took a step back, putting enough distance between himself and Sandis for Rone to land a hard roundhouse kick to the side of his head. His eyes rolled back, and he fell, splashing coagulating blood over their legs.
Breathing heavily, Sandis looked at Rone. Just looked, their eyes meeting for several heartbeats.
“Why?” she asked.
Rone lifted his hand to his hair, then saw the blood on it and dropped it. “That is a question I have too many answers for.”
Kazen’s voice cut the air behind them. “Parte Isepia en dragu bai!”
A shiver coursed through the attacking Isepia, and she shrunk and paled into Alys. Kazen easily pushed her unconscious body off him, ignoring the bleeding wound on her shoulder. It absorbed Sandis’s focus completely. It needed to be wrapped, cauterized . . . something. Was the bullet still in there? Would she bleed out before she woke? Could Sandis somehow get to her before— Kazen jumped to his feet with surprising agility. Isepia’s talons had torn his coat, vest, and shirt, and his chest bled in streaks. A cut across his forehead dripped crimson into his eyebrows and down his long nose.
Rone didn’t hesitate. He covered the distance between Sandis and Kazen in two leaps and threw a punch at Kazen’s mouth.
The grafter’s forearm thrust upward and blocked the blow, opening Rone up for retaliation. Kazen landed a fist on Rone’s sternum. Rone slipped back, his shoes still wet with blood, and wheezed.
Kazen launched at him, throwing another fist, which Rone blocked just as Kazen had blocked his blow. Kazen kicked; Rone blocked with a knee. Threw a fist. Blocked. Kazen returned the gesture.
It was a dance Sandis had come to recognize. Kazen had always been so hands-off until tonight. She’d never realized he knew seugrat. She tried to find a way in, a way to slow Kazen, but the men moved too quickly. When she launched at him, a wayward kick hit her side and sent her skimming across the floor, just outside the blood pool.
Kazen deflected a blow and grabbed Rone’s wrist, turning it over his head as if they were dance partners. He pinned Rone’s arm behind his back, and from the way Rone’s face contorted, it hurt dearly. Sandis’s own hand pressed to her side, to the bruising ribs there. Each breath strained against the bones, threatening to snap them one by one.
The flicker of silver made Sandis’s breath hitch. A knife. Kazen’s. Its point pressed into the skin below Rone’s ear. A trickle of blood traced the side of his neck.
“Kazen.” Sandis’s voice was oddly even. She pushed herself onto her knees. “Kazen, don’t.”
“You cannot thwart destiny.” Kazen’s voice was breathy, his eyes wild. “You’re a sick dog, Sandis, crawling back to those who have already disposed of you.”
Rone’s jaw clenched at the words. Slowly, so slowly, his free hand moved to his trouser pocket.
“Kazen.” Sandis tried to stand, but her bare feet slipped in a smear of blood, and she fell. Her toe touched something cool and metal—the ceremonial sword. She turned back to Kazen. Put one foot under her. “Kazen, listen. I’ll do it.”
“Oh, you will. You don’t even realize what you’ve done. What I will do.” He dug the knife in harder, sending more blood down Rone’s neck. Sandis gasped.
Rone shifted from the pain—but no, he was using the movement to shove his hand into his pocket without Kazen noticing. He pulled out three familiar gold loops surrounding a sparkling center. The amarinth? Had the other she’d seen been a fake?
Sandis glanced at the sword beside her.
With a flick of his thumb, Rone spun the artifact.
Kazen peered over Rone’s shoulder.
Sandis’s hands flashed to the sword. Grabbed its hilt. Her sticky feet found purchase on the floor, and she ran, holding the long blade like she would a rifle, its pommel pressed under her shoulder.
She screamed as she ran.
The point drove into Rone’s belly above the navel, sliding through shirt and skin like they were butter. There was the slightest resistance as it glanced off what Sandis guessed to be his backbone, then further resistance as it met a well-tailored vest, skin, muscle, organs.
Sandis crashed into Rone, the sword buried into him up to the guard, the length of the blade passing through his torso and Kazen’s.
Sandis let go and stumbled back, the gentle whirring of the amarinth singing between her heavy breaths. Kazen looked at her, his pale eyes perfect circles, his mouth slack.
Rone pushed forward, pulling the sword out of Kazen before grabbing the hilt and yanking it out of himself. The blood that stained his shirt was from what the ox and Galt had left on the blade; otherwise, Rone was whole.
Kazen fell to his knees, then forward, onto his hands. Down onto one elbow as the life dripped out of him.
Rone leaned forward and put a hand on his shoulder. “Better luck next time.”
He spun around and grabbed Sandis’s hand, yanking her toward the door.
That’s right. Run. They had to run.
Sandis looked back at Kazen, saw a sliver of him as they passed through the doorway. There was no one in the hallway. Had Rone disposed of them all? Had they fled? The vessels . . . were they still in their room? And Alys. They’d left Alys . . .
Around the bend. Past the doors. One man looked up from an adjoining corridor as they flew past. He didn’t fight, but gaped at the blood-covered girl and the man dressed like one of them. Everything whizzed by Sandis as if in a dream. The rooms, the colors, the fight at the exit as Rone spun and jabbed, taking out men she didn’t have the thought to count.
They ran, ran, ran, underneath a black, smoke-filled sky. Until her bare feet bled. Until the guns shooting behind them silenced and there was only her, Rone, their breaths, and her frantic, broken heartbeat.
Chapter 26