Total pages in book: 247
Estimated words: 235897 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1179(@200wpm)___ 944(@250wpm)___ 786(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 235897 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1179(@200wpm)___ 944(@250wpm)___ 786(@300wpm)
My dagger lodges in the left side of his chest, and his eyes bulge in shock as he falls gracelessly to the tunnel floor. His body shrivels in the span of a heartbeat.
“Damn. Sometimes I forget how good you are at that,” Rhi whispers, scanning our surroundings as we move forward.
“How did you know?” Ridoc asks in the same hushed tone, quickly kicking the husk of a body over and retrieving my blade.
“A scribe would have run toward the Archives.” I take the blade back and wrap my hand around the hilt. “Thanks.” The alloy’s hum of power is a little dimmer but still there, hopefully capable of another killing blow. How many of them had Imogen and I seen on our walk to the infirmary without even realizing? “That’s how they fed without notice. They’re dressed as scribes.”
Two figures in cream robes approach from the opposite side of the tunnel, mage light shining on their first-year rank, and I prepare to throw again.
“Drop the hoods,” Rhi orders.
They both startle, and the cadet on the right lowers her hood quickly, but there’s a slight tremble in her counterpart’s hands as she complies, her wide blue eyes locked on the body at my feet. “Is that…” she whispers, and her friend wraps an arm around her swaying frame.
“Yes.” I lower my blade, noting that neither of them carry red in their eyes or at their temples. “Get back to the Archives and warn the others.”
The women turn and run.
“Up or down?” Ridoc asks, facing the steps.
Someone shouts beneath us.
“Down,” Rhi and I say simultaneously.
“Great.” Ridoc rolls his neck. “Down the stairwell to the torture chamber where an untold number of freshly fed dark wielders wait. Good times.” He takes the lead, switching his dagger to his left hand and lifting his right in preparation to wield as Rhiannon steps in behind me.
We edge down the stairs rapidly, keeping our backs to the stone wall, and I send up a silent thanks to Eran Norris for building Basgiath with stone stairs instead of wooden ones with the potential to creak…or burn.
“Pay attention to the present, not the past,” Tairn lectures.
Metal clangs beneath us, the pitch varying from the ting of colliding blades to the ear-grating rasp of steel scraping against stone. But it’s the maniacal laughter mixed with grunts of pain that has me hurrying faster, has power rising, crackling along my skin.
“Control it!” Tairn orders.
“Quiet time,” I remind him, throwing my shields up to block him, knowing he can still push through if he wants.
“Stop playing with your kill and help us get this door open!” someone demands from below. If they want a cell door open, they’re definitely not on our side. They’ve come for Jack.
“How many guards are on Barlowe?” Ridoc whispers as we near the turn in the staircase that will expose us to whomever waits beneath.
“Two—” Rhiannon’s answer is quickly muffled by the sound of a low and painful scream.
“Make that one,” I reply, readying my right hand to throw.
The antechamber of the brig comes into view, and my gaze flies over the all-too-familiar space, taking quick stock of our situation.
Two dark wielders dressed in scribe robes yank at the unmoving door handle to Jack’s cell, while a female pulls her ruby-hilted sword across the neck of a second lieutenant who’s been pinned to the thick table with daggers through his hands, and a fourth stands at the edge of the shadows.
Her long silver braid swings free of her hood as her attention whips in our direction, and her eerie red gaze jumps to mine and widens slightly under a faded tattoo on her forehead. My blood chills when a smirk tilts her mouth, distorting the red veins at her temples, and then she…disappears.
I blink against the sudden breeze that rustles a loosened strand of my braid, then stare at the empty space she’d occupied. At least I think she had. Am I seeing things now?
Rhi gasps behind me, and my focus jolts to the imprisoned guard. Blood floods the table from the rider’s wound, and I swallow back the burn of acid in my throat, catching sight of two corpses to the left, one in cream, the other in black.
The female with the jeweled sword at the table pivots, her short blond hair smacking her sharp cheekbones as she turns in our direction, revealing branches of red veins at her temples.
I flick my wrist just in case this one disappears, too.
“Riders—” Her alarm dies with my blade lodged in the middle of her throat.
Ridoc rushes the two at the door, but they’re ready, one drawing a sword that Ridoc blocks with a thick band of ice.
I throw my remaining dagger at the other as I jump the last two steps, but the dark-haired venin moves unnaturally fast, dodging the strike. My blade bounces off the stone wall behind him as I run toward the rider bleeding out on the table.