Fight it. You have to fight it, Rissa, I screamed at myself, willing my muscles to work. Adrenaline kicked in and fought against the sluggish fever, but my motions were still choppy.
My assailant came at me again with another knife. They threw a punch at my head with one hand and swiped at my waist with the other. I ducked and blocked their arm, slicing a thin line at their wrist with one of my twin daggers. They let out a low hiss and snatched their hand back. I aimed a kick at their stomach, but my balance was so off that I barely nicked their side. With a grunt, they grabbed my extended foot and yanked me forward until I was sprawled on my stomach in the dirt.
The force rocked a gasp from me.Get up!I ordered myself, blinking away the fog from my mind. I quickly flipped onto my back as my attacker jumped on top of me, straddling my waist. They wrapped their hands around my throat, and I let out a strangled cry at the pain that reverberated from my wound.
From this close, I could tell it was a man. While the rest of his face was hidden by the mask, gray-blue eyes stared down at mefrom beneath bushy brows. They narrowed as he pushed harder, causing my vision to go in and out of focus.
I thrashed against his hold and brought my knees up to shove into his back, but that only made him press his fingers deeper into my neck. Searing pain shot through my chest when I tried to draw a breath. My shouts came in croaked bursts as the fight swiftly faded from my limbs.
I should be wondering how the assassin got here when we’d been so careful. I should be thinking through his motives and his weak points, searching for clues on how to read him.
But all I could think about was how tired I was. How every part of me begged to rest.
And of course, I thought about Thorne.Always him. How I’d never get to see him again. How I’d never get to tell him I loved him. Not that it made any difference in the end, but still…he deserved to know. He deserved to know he was more than enough, and he didn’t have to live in the shadow his father cast over him.
Fight for me, Empress.
His voice wafted through my mind, caressing me, filling the painful spaces that hurt too much to lift on my own.
Come back to me.
I let out a whimper and flexed my outstretched hand. My fingers dug into the dirt at my side. As the man leaned in closer, I wrenched my arm up and threw a handful of sand into his eyes.
He fell backward with a howl. I sucked in as much air as I could, tears stinging my eyes and lungs burning in my chest. Wiggling out from beneath him, I snatched his dagger along with mine and kicked him in the head, sending him to his back. My vision swam as I tried to right myself and took off in the opposite direction.
Find the waterfall. Find the waterfall.I could hardly keep one foot in front of the other, but I thought I was heading west.Just keep going. He had to have gotten here somehow. Maybe he’d left a horse somewhere nearby I could use.
I tripped over a log and caught myself before bashing my headon a rock. I wiped away the hair from my face with shaking, sweaty hands.
Focus. You’re not dying. You’re just tired.
Sure, Rissa. Let’s go with that.
Fates, now I was talking to myself.
Footsteps sounded behind me. I let out a weak growl and cursed myself for not killing the bastard.
The man let out a sharp cry.
With a wince, I craned my neck back to find him. This time when I stumbled, I fell straight to my knees.
I saw death.
Rotted, blackened death. And it was moving. Just like the hill in the Mid Territory.
The curse crawled like a slow tide across the jungle floor. The once vibrant, green, leafy trees that hovered above me were now sucked into its path, instantly rotting before my eyes. Black rot overtook the trunks from the roots upward, as if someone were twisting their branches into gnarled lumps.
Small streams dried up, birds and snakes and other animals fell dead from the branches, and green grass crumpled to dirt. The magic pulsing from its depths was a hundred times stronger than the rotted fields and rivers I’d healed before.
It was still many yards behind me, but my attacker was mere feet from its edge.
“Help me!” the man pleaded, eyes locked on me. He pumped his legs and stretched out his hand, his arm straining for rescue.
It was too late.
The black edge of the curse brushed against his heel, and in a single breath, his body went still. He crashed to the ground as the rot spread from his ankles to his head. The small space of skin around his eyes was the only thing I could see before it went ashen, pieces of him flaking off and drifting in the wind.
I blinked back my disgust and took a few unsteady steps forward until my hands crossed over the curse. My magic sweptthrough my body, filling me with relief and strength as it immediately worked to fight against the poison.
