Not by choice.
A force likeice-cold hands wrapped around my throat.My bodyseized, locked in place, unable to even struggle.My breath stuttered, choked,gone.
Shaelith’s bladeflashed, slicing through the darkness,but it was useless. The shadows reformed around her wrists, her arms, crawling over her skin.She snarled, teeth bared, but the more she fought, thetighter they wound.
Brynellelet out a strangled sound,her body going rigid, her handsfrozen mid-motionas the tendrils of shadowcoiled around her ankles, her neck, her wrists.
A heartbeat of silence.
“That was foolish.”
Ashterion’s eyesraked over the bodies littering the corridor. Over us, drenched in blood, feral and unbroken even as his shadows pinned us.
And then he moved.
Straight to me.
My bodycollapsed onto my kneesbefore he even touched me.
I gasped,but the air didn’t come.
Hisboots stopped in front of me,the hem of his dark cloakbrushing my bloody fingers where they dug into the stone floor.
He crouched, his voicevelvet and steelagainst my ear. “I expected better from you.”
Somethingwhite-hot flared in my chest—fury, loathing, the need to rip him apart.
His shadowsloosened,but only enough to let the guards converge.
They didn’t hesitate. Thefirst blowlanded against my ribs.
Shaelith was wrenched sideways, her headsnapping against the stone. Brynellelet out a cry, her body curling inward as fists connected with her gut, her face, her ribs.
I tried to rise.Tried.
A fist cracked against my jaw.
A boot slammed into my side.
Another crashed down onto my leg.
Bone snapped.
I screamed.
The world blurred,tilted, spun.
“Enough.”
Everything stilled.
Ashterion’seyes were on me.Onmy bloodied face, my bruised ribs,the way my handsshookas I pushed them against the ground, trying to force myself up.
Broken—something was broken.
My breath came in ragged bursts.
My leg.Definitely my leg.
