He laughed. “As many as it takes before the people realise they have to fight back!” he yelled.
“Fight back against what, exactly?” she asked.
“Fight back against those that take our resources, our taxes, and leave us to starve. I thought The New Foundation was all for feeding the people—how are you not on our side?” he questioned.
“You mean, why aren’t we making a grab for land and power on the bodies of the innocent?” she laughed nervously as she pushed us back further, until my back hit a worktop. “How muchare they offering for Percy’s life? How much are they paying their murderers?”
“Enough that I won’t ever have to work again,” Daniel answered, stepping forward, cleaver in hand—but there was no space for us to retreat further.
Katrina was obviously skilled—she had proven that—and she had some vampiric strength, but Daniel was double either Katrina or myself in size. I watched as the skin of his face knitted itself back together. What had once seemed terrible, bloody injuries were looking more like black scabs by the second. Was he a pureblood?
Daniel lunged forward. Katrina released my elbow for the first time, striking his wrist with both her arms and turning sideways, stepping into Daniel’s space and pulling him forward and off balance.
I screamed as the cleaver narrowly missed me, stabbing the space between my arm and side.
Katrina tried to push Daniel over, her shoulder crashing into his chest, but he grabbed a fistful of hair at the back of her head and threw her to ground.
She hit the stone floor with a great force, her head hitting the ground and bouncing. I watched her try to get up, and fall back down, disorientated.
“Now, I’m not a monster. I can make this quick and painless—like butchering a pig. It’s up to you?” he said, stepping closer.
Fear paralysed me. My eyes trained on his red-stained teeth.
Poseidon must have heard my earlier cry of fear, because as the mad chef pulled his meat cleaver hand back to strike—an earthquake hit.
The stone slabs around his feet cracked and broke, and flew upward with such force I crouched and covered my head. The rumbling of the floor sent me to ground and when it stopped, I opened eyes to see jagged pieces of stone slab jutting from the ceiling.
The meat cleaver glinted to my side and I scurried away from it, my hand landing on a large, fleshy arm that I pulled back from just as quick.
Daniel was near unrecognisable. He was pierced like the ceiling—thin shards of stone slab having lodged themselves all over his body, a particularly gory piece piercing through his left eye and out the back of his skull. His fingers twitched.
“Percy Flores, if you ever run away from me again—”
Sasha’s voice cut through the horror, and I looked to the door where she stood, her hands raised in front of her.
“Sasha?” I asked, looking back to the horror in front of me.
27. A Life Saved, A Debt Owed.
Persephone Flores
Katrina groaned to my left, and I quickly crawled to her. Blood wept from a nasty cut at her temple.
“Who is she?” Sasha asked warily as she entered the kitchen, her eyes shifting around the room as if she expected another madman with a scarily large knife to appear.
“Katrina, she’s a servant… or I mean, I don’t know,” I replied.
“What was she doing here?” Sasha continued questioning.
“Protecting me,” I told her.
Sasha nodded and ran her hand over her forearm in an almost anxious manner.
“Right. We can’t leave her, can we?” she asked.
I gave Sasha a look that I hoped made it clear that leaving Katrina wasn’t an option. She had saved my life as much as Sasha had. She was mean and neither of us particularly liked each other, and she was a member of a rebel group which I’m pretty sure wanted to overthrow the Borealis monarchy—so she was no friend. And sure, she had been trying to kidnap me before… I looked to what was left of Daniel and back to Katrina. But I owed her my life, and you didn’t repay that kind of debt by leaving someone injured in a warzone.
Sasha knelt down beside me. “Are you injured?” she asked.
