The chairs and tables Rorrik splintered have been replaced. With a wave of Albion’s hand, he sends a group of them flying to the side of the room, along with the thick rug beneath them.
Dread burrows deep into my gut as the rug lifts, revealing the sigil painstakingly drawn on the stone floor.
“Albion.” I keep my voice low. “You know it’s over. I can’t let you kill anyone else.”
“They’re not gone forever. They’re coming back!” The words are desperate, his eyes wild. His sigil begins to glow, and I freeze. Albion is a half-crowned silver. If this comes down to his power versus mine, I’m dead.
“What do you mean?” I have to keep him talking. Neris will have spread the word. The others will be coming. I just have to distract him for a little longer.
He opens his hand, his expression turning pleading. “When Mortuus breaks free of his cage, all our loved ones will return with him.”
“That’s not how it works, Albion!”
I shouldn’t have snapped. Should have kept him talking. But his words are like salt rubbed into an open wound.
“It is!” Spittle flies from his mouth as he suddenly turns, advancing on me. “Mortuus will take them back from Viderux. He has the key! It’s why the other gods betrayed him!”
I duck around a table, careful to avoid the sigil on the ground. “The other gods caged him because he was going to lay waste to this world.”
“Lies!” Albion’s eyes are so wide I can see the whites, his cheeks so red they’re almost purple. Muscles strain in his neck as he waves his arms. “That’s what we’ve been told, but it’snottrue!”
My stomach churns. Someone took advantage of his grief, twisting it for their own purposes.
I’m betting that someone was Tiberius Cotta.
“There are others like me,” Albion continues, his expression softening, voice turning cajoling. “More of us than you can imagine. And when Mortuus is free, we will be reunited with those we have lost.Don’t you want that, Arvelle? Don’t you want to see your friend again? To give her another chance at life?”
Bitterness coats my tongue. “More than anything. But Kassia wouldn’t want this.” Of that much I’m certain.
“You’ll make that decision for her?” Albion’s tone turns scathing. “Leon told me about his daughter. He told me she was loyal. Courageous. With a soft heart. She would have done this for you.”
I can see where he’s going with this. But he shouldn’t have mentioned Leon. Because all I can see is his body slumped in that bed, with Albion looming over him, a dagger in his hand.
“Kassia would have killed you for what you did to her father.”
“He was going to comeback!”
“No one is coming back, Albion. They’re still in there, you know. The people you killed? They were trapped in their rotting corpses. I witnessed it myself.” I don’t mention that I was somehow able to free them.
Horror slides through his eyes, but it’s immediately followed by denial. “You’re lying.”
I shake my head. Albion wouldn’t even believe it if he’d heard those desperate souls himself. He’s too far gone.
He advances on me, knife in his hand. The point of the blade is a black ruin, as if something has eaten away at the steel.
Poison.
Both of my swords are locked in my room with my parma. I slide my hand down to the dagger Kassia gave me. I have this dagger and three throwing knives. And none of them have been dipped in gorgon poison.
I move back, luring Albion farther from the sigil and closer to the silver door behind me.
I need to buy time.
Holding my hands up placatingly, I do my best to seem small, weak. Albion slows his steps, some of the desperation melting from his eyes.
A body sails through the air and hits Albion with a thud. My heart leaps as the knife clatters from Albion’s hand, bouncing on the stone floor.
I lunge for it.
