It didn’t matter, though.
Whether they were wicked enemies or innocent souls with families and loved ones, they’d come to his castle. Threatened his home. His kingdom. His wife.
Soldiers were essential tools for war.
But Darius’ men would die tonight.
Teryn turned away from the enemy squad.
“Don’t move,” called one of the men.
Teryn paused but didn’t bother turning around. “Your king has my wife. You think I’m going to act against him now? Besides, he didn’t leave any orders for me. What harm can I do?”
Only silence answered, so he proceeded once more, past his guards who remained at the ready, swords drawn, eyes locked on the other squad. He stopped only once he reached the wall. Moonlight glinted off the shields hiding the hundreds of bodies filling the castle grounds, illuminating the archers who stood on the wall, awaiting orders to defend or attack.
He breathed deeply and unsheathed the dagger at his hip. Shuffling footsteps and the creak of armor sounded behind him, followed by one of the enemy soldier’s voices. “What is he doing?”
Teryn brought the blade to his palm, laying the flat of it over its center.
“I have the means to signal our attack,” the same man said. “We don’t need to wait the full ten minutes for our king to return. One wrong move, and you’ll lose any chance at escaping this alive.”
“Your king isn’t returning,” Teryn said. Even if Darius did, even if everything went wrong and the King of Syrus returned triumphant, Teryn was determined to greet him with a massacre. A tableau of death.
“Is that a threat?” the soldier said. “Or do you not trust His Majesty to honor his word?”
“It doesn’t matter if he honors his word. My wife won’t be honoring hers.” He angled his head over his shoulder, his lips peeling into a wicked grin.
The soldier huffed a dark laugh. “If that proves true, your reign is at an end.”
“We’ll see.” With that, Teryn turned the blade, slashed its edge over his palm, and closed his fist. Blood dripped from his hand as he thrust his fist toward the wall and the grounds beyond. Then, with a whisper, he said, “My blood. My command. Your final fight begins.”
54
Cora’s steps were more precise than any dance.
She left the cliff’s edge and planted her feet on soil. The sound of waves was muted by half, though Darius remained in sight. She was behind him now, at the edge of the woods that lined the coastal road. It was as similar a location to the real tear as she could get without positioning him too close to it.
Her hands moved with practiced ease. Even in the dark, in the shadows of the trees that stood behind her, she knew what to do. She kept her eyes locked on her target—Darius standing at the edge of the cliff, in the space Cora had vacated, feeling through the air as Cora had done—as she reached into the underbrush and extracted her bow and quiver. She didn’t bother shouldering her quiver, simply plucked out an arrow, nocked it in place, and pulled the bowstring to her cheek.
She’d practiced this shot numerous times over the past week.
Practiced shooting from this distance.
Imagined her enemy standing exactly where he stood now.
She released the arrow, watched it soar straight for Darius’ neck, just above the back of his cuirass—
Before the arrow could meet its mark, Darius stepped to the side and whirled toward her. The arrow whizzed past him, over the cliff’s edge, and to the beach beyond. A small, winged silhouette shot into the sky, as if startled by the rogue arrow, and flew away.
Cora forced herself not to follow the shadow with her eyes lest she give away Berol’s importance. She couldn’t let Darius see the place the falcon now dove to, at another cliff’s edge much like this one, far in the distance where the coastline curved toward the east.
Darius, oblivious or uncaring of the startled bird, took a step forward. In the next breath, he was before her, tearing her bow from her grip. She took a breath, a step, and used her abilities to travel several feet away, to the center of the road. Unsheathing her dagger, she brandished it at him, ready to strike should he get too close.
But he didn’t draw his sword, nor did he close more than a few feet of space between them. The unveiled disdain in his eyes was sharp enough. “Did you think the crashing waves would be loud enough to mask your presence? To stifle the sound of your bowstring? You tried to fool me, and you failed. That makes you the fool.”
She said nothing. Perhaps she should look more disappointed. In truth she was, though she’d never counted on her arrow reaching its target. It would have been satisfying, but Ailan had told her how difficult he was to kill. How he could heal from many wounds a regular human could not. Not only that, but he could worldwalk while injured, flee to safety until he healed.
There was only one weapon that could stop him long enough to land a fatal blow, and Cora was not in possession of it.
