He’d done it. Ice water sluiced through her veins. Her siblings would have to try their best without her.
And none of them could duel like Elizabeth could.
Reddington saw the line of wet blood drip from her hand and smirked. Rather than raise his fist in victory, he swung his sword toward her neck.
She dived out of the way just in time.
“Yield!” he commanded.
In relief, she realized his refusal to agree to cease at first blood had worked in her favor. The battle would end only when one of them surrendered. And it would not be Elizabeth.
She panted, gathering strength from her very marrows. “Not today, and not ever.”
This wasn’t a show. This was a real fight to the finish.
“What’s that?” Reddington mocked her. “A weepy boo-hoo-hoo from a little girl who didn’t realize she was up against a—”
She slashed down, then immediately back up, catching him off guard—and nicking the underside of his chin. Red blood dripped down onto the bright white of his cravat.
“You’ll pay for that,” he snarled.
Probably. She was already sinking below forty-five percent.
“You won’t be alive to find out,” she shot back, and rained down blows as fast and as hard as she was able.
Reddington was halfway across the lawn before he realized she had backed him up for twenty yards in front of hundreds of witnesses.
He let out a roar of rage and charged her.
She ducked and rolled at the last moment, kicking out a leg to trip him as he passed—a move that cost her five more percentage points. She was down to forty. Nonetheless, she followed it up with a swipe of her sword across Reddington’s buttocks, slicing the bottom half of his coattails clean off.
Her enemy looked as though he wanted to beat her with his bare hands. Elizabeth wouldn’t give him the chance.
She was on him before he could scramble back to his feet, swinging at him from above, forcing him to defend himself from a prone—then fetal—position.
“Youlose,” she shouted.
With a final thrust and spiral, she spun his sword out of his grip and sliced her own blade down toward his neck.
Reddington cried out in fear, turning his head and closing his eyes to block out his final moment of life before she extinguished it forever.
The tip of Elizabeth’s blade buried itself into the grass-covered soil instead, the sharp side of her sword coming to rest a quarter inch from Reddington’s throat. The thin skin of his neck brushed against the blade with every shuddering breath.
Dizziness rushed through her. This rich white bully of a man with a perfectly working body and all the privileges bestowed upon him by the blue blood of his viscount father lay helpless at her feet. The toes of a once-scared little girl deemed so worthless that her own family had traded her for a used dog cart.
Sheheld the power. And she would wield it to make a better life for all the children soon to find a home in Miss Oak’s orphanage.
“It’s over, Reddington,” Elizabeth said softly. “Surrender, or I shall liberate your head from your body and toss your dripping skull into the crowd.”
He glared at her with eyes as murderous as she had ever seen, but he could not deny the truth. The battle was over. She had won. He had been bested in front of his entire army and a hundred ticket-holding witnesses.
She felt all those eyes upon her. Not in pity or relieved superiority, as was so often the case when passers-by glimpsed a young woman gripping a cane as she struggled to navigate a world that had not been built for people like her. If passers-by even registered her presence at all.
They watched her in awe. These spectators weren’t counting their lucky stars that they were not her. Theywishedthey had lives half as interesting. That their enemies would cower at their feet, vanquished once and for all.
Bitterly, Reddington banged his palm against the grass in a clear gesture of surrender.
Elizabeth jerked her gaze toward the crowd to make sure everyone present had witnessed the moment of unequivocal defeat.
