Ryu heaved a long exhale. “We’ll take him with us for now. We can’t leave him here to die.”
“Pity,” Dewdrop murmured.
The door under his hands clicked and started to slide open inch by inch under Dewdrop’s steady pressure. Tate touched his shoulder when he would have stepped through.
“Let him first.” She sent a hard look in Tyne’s direction. “He’s perfect to set off any unexpected ambushes that might be waiting.”
“Why me?” he asked.
“You’re the only one who I don’t care lives or dies.”
Tyne’s gaze was steady. “The emperor will.”
“But I won’t and that’s all that matters,” Tate responded.
Tyne’s eyes flicked over her shoulder to Ryu. “You’ve changed.”
“We all do.”
“Whatever we do, we should hurry. The other sentinels are almost here,” Dewdrop said in an urgent tone.
Tyne took a deep breath and stepped forward. For several seconds nothing happened. He relaxed and looked from the left to right. “That’s odd.”
There was a whoosh as a blade in the shape of a scythe swept from his left. Tyne lifted his bone blade as he threw himself forward. There was a screech as stone met bone.
Tate darted forward, impaling her sword in the sentinel’s chest. Silver snaked over his body, but not fast enough. His blade whipped up, biting into her side.
A voice in her head spoke. “Damage at fifteen percent.”
Tate poured more of her strength into her relic. It ate away at the sentinel until bits of stone flaked from his body.
Ryu roared as he intercepted a second sentinel, one hand plunging into its stone chest while the other ripped off the sentinel’s arm. Dewdrop stabbed the sentinel in the side, yanking futilely when it stuck. He backed away as the blade started to hum.
The sentinel burst apart in a shower of dust. The dagger clattered to the floor.
Dewdrop’s wide eyes came to Tate’s. “I love this blade of yours.”
“The door,” Tyne said softly.
They whirled to find the door gently sliding shut as if the battle from before had never taken place.
“I thought you said the sentinels would pursue us into the prison,” Dewdrop said, not taking his eyes from the door.
“That’s what’s supposed to happen.”
Dewdrop looked at Tyne. “Then why aren’t they chasing us?”
SIXTEEN
“It can’t be this easy, right?” Dewdrop asked.
It was a reasonable question where Christopher was concerned. He wasn’t the type to go easy on them. Every other time he’d escaped it had been a bloody, deadly affair.
Tate had no doubt there was likely another surprise waiting just around the corner.
“We should head up and inform the Lord Provost’s people of what happened,” Ryu said, keeping one eye on Tyne as the other man drifted toward a wall.
Tyne paused, surveying the surroundings with a puzzled expression.
