Stella stilled, and a terrible, cold knowing settled in her bones.She jumped to her feet, yanking on her dagger-filled vest, only taking the time to fasten one strap, and belting her short swords at her waist.
She took the rungs down at a reckless speed, ignoring the tearing of the wind and the terrifying heaviness of the dark. Her heart was in her throat as she felt blindly for foot- and handholds. When she finally jumped the last few feet to the ground, Teddy’s panic hit her in the chest.
It could be the Roach and his friends finally coming to finish the job. Of course, that would only make sense if they also had to retrieve their memories from nearby caves. Otherwise, they’d be wasting precious time.
She squinted against the icy driving rain and forced herself to move slowly so as not to trip or make extra noise in the dark.
She paused at the edge of the stone for a moment and listened. The death whispers were swelling by the second, becoming more insistent and drowning out everything but the storm.
As Stella rounded the corner, she caught sight of a man dressed in black, a red Sons of Endros symbol embroidered on the back of his armor.
Sheets of rain blew underneath the stone overhangs, but the man didn’t move. He was focused on a second man who had a cord around Teddy’s throat.
Teddy flailed, his legs splashing in the bathwater, his hands wedged between the cord and his skin.
Stella drew a blade from her vest and sent it sailing toward the chest of Teddy’s attacker. She didn’t have time to see if it struck. The struggle stopped, and in the split second of silence, Stella heard a third assassin behind her. She drew her short swords and spun toward him.
The man’s face was half-covered, just like the assassin she’d fought in the streets of Olney several nights earlier.
“Lady McKay,” he said menacingly. “A two-for-one deal, is it? Royal prick and his whore.”
“Nice that you know my name. Care to share yours?” Stella asked,slipping her sword up to slice at his face covering. “Perhaps the name of whoever sent you?”
“What makes you think it wasn’t the god himself?” the assassin taunted.
“Endros doesn’t answer prayers,” Stella said.
Stella was vaguely aware of the other assassins watching them closely. These men were just waiting to pick her off. It didn’t matter if she was tired of fighting. They’d left her no choice.
The assassin came at her hard. He was broad and strong. She blocked a sweeping overhead attack. The strike rattled down her arms and she felt every bit of the previous day’s blood loss, but for all the fighter’s bulk and skill, he was too slow. His movements were precise in the way of someone who understood moves and countermoves but had practiced a perfect sequence over and over without trying variables.
She tested him with slight deviations in movement as they parried a few times. He had a habit of looking where he was going to move next. It would have been less obvious if the bottom half of his face wasn’t covered, but the only places she could search for tells were his eyes. It was a common battle habit, one her mother had trained out of her.
While her father’s training had been full of precision and skill and strength, her mother’s had consisted of how to fight someone who was bigger than you and how to trust senses other than sight. She’d made Stella spar blindfolded until she learned to read movements through touch and sound.
Stella twisted away from the attacker. Just as she’d hoped he would, he stepped forward. She spun the blade in her hand and plunged it backward, right through her attacker’s breastplate. She shoved the blade up and twisted, meeting so little resistance that she worried she’d done it wrong. But when she pulled her blade free, blood poured out of the assassin’s mouth and chest. He made a choked sound as he fell to his knees and then onto his side. By the time he was on his back, his sightless eyes stared back at her.
She couldn’t breathe. All the air rushed out of her lungs. Her heartbeat pounded loudly in her ears.
It was exactly as her mother had once told her. The most dangerous person in the room was the one who was willing. Most fights were about size, strength, and skill, but for the first time, Stella understood that it wasn’t just survival that was the great equalizer. It was a threat to someone you wanted to protect.
She felt the air shift with the slide of the next assassin’s sword before she heard it. She rolled her shoulder back at the last second and the blade skimmed her vest, leaving a gouge down the front of the fine leather. This fight needed to end fast.
It was only some innate animal instinct to survive that kept Stella moving, that sent her charging toward this new adversary as if she laid waste to villains regularly. She crossed her short swords and blocked the swipe of his left blade, slicing across his wrist.
Stella slammed her shoulder into his chest, and he stumbled back, throwing up his right blade. She anticipated the movement, the cause and effect of battle like a complicated puzzle that came together in her mind a second before it happened in real life. Moments like that always felt to her like she was animated by something other—some uncanny and innate talent for violence that she hadn’t quite earned.
She parried with her left sword and spun toward him as she turned, cutting his throat with her right blade. Blood sprayed across her face and hands, but she kept turning as a fourth man charged at her from the bushes.
There was no thought left in her head, just pure instinct. She finally understood what her father had meant when he’d called it a complicated dance. Her body knew every movement, but instead of following as she did on the dance floor, she led. She crossed her short swords to block a heavy-handed cut, then shoved her elbow up into the man’s chin. His head snapped back, and she spun, sliding her crossed blades up to deflect his blow and drawing them both across the man’s throat.
He dropped in a bloody heap, and Stella stared at him. There wasno one else coming at her. Something in her chest released, and she was finally able to draw a deep breath again.
She turned and glanced at Teddy, who stood panting with nothing but a bright red line on his neck where the thin rope had been. The man who had been choking him was in a heap at his feet.
Stella stared down at the bodies crumpled around her.
She thought it would be hard to kill, but it had been remarkably easy. Survival was an instinct, but still, she couldn’t draw her eyes away from the carnage. Killing was as easy as breathing, and she felt nothing.
