Then he charges me without a word.
I roar at him, parrying his quick strikes. We have a similar fighting style, and this man has clearly been taught well. He’s a human but he fights like an animal, and he may just be the most skilled human swordsman I’ve met.
It takes everything to keep his blades from sinking into me. I wholly focus on that wicked silver dagger of his, willing to sacrifice cuts from his longsword to keep that poison-tinged blade from marring my skin. I won’t ignite like a fireball if the silver hits me . . . but I’ll become a smoky ruin, and I’d rather keep that from happening.
Feeling the man putting me on the defensive, I yell, “You’re fighting the wrong damn vampires! Sephania is just beyond!”
His face is calm, collected, wholly settled on ending me if I don’t put a stop to him. I know he used to be Seph’s friend before they had a falling out, and I’m hoping to use that to make him see reason.
But he doesn’t. He wants me dead—he wantsallundead fully dead, if I had to guess.
“You’re the dhampir Sephania lost to in the shadowgala years ago,” he mutters as his blades blur at me.
I fend them off, just barely, and bare my teeth. My feet kick up dust as I sidestep his next attacks. “I didn’t kill her, ether, if you remember.”
“Only because your lord stopped the bout,” the Silverknight says. “You hated her.”
“And now I love her.” Our faces meet inches apart, arms shaking and vying for the dominant position as our swords connect. “People change, Silverknight. Even half-people.”
He blinks at my remark.Can he tell I’m talking about him? This change of his does none of us any good!
“Now get thefuckoff me so I can help my little honey badger,” I shout in his face, kicking him away with a swift boot to the stomach.
He skids back, gathers himself upright, and stares down the hall where we can both hear Sephania’s desperate battle-cries and clanging swords.
I dash in that direction before Rirth can come at me again, breaking out into the next hall and room over. “Go stick that silver pinprick in some gray-cloaked fullbloods, you halfwit!” I shout back.
If he tries to stab me in the back, so be it. I’ll do anything to protect Sephania, and I can see glimpses of her now through the small window of Old Endolf’s cave. She’s fighting someone tooth and nail, using all of her skills against her opponent.
No,I think desperately.There aremultipleopponents in there.
I barrel into the cave, throwing caution to the walls, and bury my daggers into the back of the first vampire I see. Scanning the disheveled room, I take a quick appraisal.
Old Endolf, the elderly alchemist, stands in front of Jinneth on the other side of the room. Sephania’s mother appears angry but unharmed as her head whips back and forth from the melee taking place in front of her. Vials, beakers, and liquids are spilled all over the floor.
Besides the vampire I just dropped, there’s another in here—a woman ducking and avoiding every attack Seph throws ather. She’s casual in her dodging, cruel in her skill. Her midnight-black hair swishes left and right as the vampiress takes to the shadows, avoiding a thrust from Sephania’s sword—and vanishes.
My eyes grow as I catch a glimpse of the woman’s vanishing act. “Impossible,” I croak.
“Glad we’re all here,” says a raspy feminine voice, sounding like it’s coming from everywhere.
Sephania spins in place.
I hear swords behind me and glance over my shoulder to see Rirth has been delayed. The Silverknight fights another assassin just beyond the doorway. Sephania hasn’t seen him yet.
“Where is the auburn-haired menace who calls himself a lord, I wonder?” says the disjointed, floating voice.
Smoke wisps to my right—a split-second sign of danger to come—and I whip around with my daggers.
Alacine Mortis grins at me and shoves a blurring dagger into my stomach.
I grunt, shocked, and fall to a knee, swinging wildly to try and cut her throat as she lapses into nothingness again.
Pain squeezes through me as I try to get to my feet.
If I didn’t know better, I’d think the Spymistress just appeared from myown shadowto attack me. But Skartovious Ashfen, my master of decades, is the only living vampire who can do that, and it’s only because he’s tasted Sephania’s Loreblood that the power was awakened.
“Garroway!” Seph cries out. She runs toward me.
