“Skar!” I yell.
He’s fighting three vampires at once. Skar controls rising shadows to keep two of them at bay while squaring off with the third. Somehow, the nobleblood bastard always finds ways toput himself in the most danger, despite telling the rest of us to be careful.
“He’s too far for us to reach from here without his shadowwalking,” Vallan growls, punching a chunk of stone out of the banister we’re white-knuckling. “The skirmish will be long over before we can make it the hundred feet to him.”
Right on cue, one of Skar’s opponents ignites in a ball of fire, evidently catching the wicked silver blade of Lord Ashfen’s saber on his flesh. If Skar is harried or pressed, from this distance he doesn’t look like it.
The battle, formerly confined to the shadows until a minute ago, with disparate bouts and stabbings taking place in different pockets of the plaza, now radiates with a white-hot flame erupting like holy fire directly in the center of the widest street. It pulls all the attention from the shadows right onto Skar and his combatants.
Shadows catch my peripheral. My eyes wheel to one of the crescent bridges. Past a copse of trees, figures clang swords on the arched bridge in a vicious melee. They’re about a hundred feet from where Skar fights, equidistant with us but on the surface level. With the trees in their way, the two groups may not even know the other exists.
I inhale sharply at a figure on that bridge, fighting one of our men. It’s the effortless gait, the stooped posture like a wild animal, so offset from Skar’s upright fencing pose.
Lukain,I breathe, not willing to say his name out loud.
I find myself clutching the rail even harder.
A discordant bell peals from a distance, high atop one of the guardtowers.
“Fuck,” Vallan grumbles.
The clanking of armor fills the night from various sections of roadway behind us.
A second adversary of Skar’s erupts in a wreath of fire. A swift stab from Skartovius transforms the vampire’s head into an orange, flaring globe. The assassin collapses a moment later, a smoldering ember.
Armored blackguards careen into the streets with halberds and spears leveled. They roar with battlerage, falling into a frenzy at any shadow they see.
Thiswas not part of the plan.
Madness ensues below us as the Military Ward’s expert soldiery joins the fray and stabs at anything fucking moving. Vall, Garro, and I have a front-row, high-level view of the carnage.
I watch one of our Manor Marquin vampires catch three spears in rapid succession, pinning him to a wall and lifting his limp form. At least one of them found his heart.
A female Intelligence Ward assassin tries to flee around the corner of a building only to run directly into Barnabac’s soldiers and die from a bevy of polearms thrust into her.
My eyes pop.Barnabac’s soldiers are killing Marquin and Mortis vampires alike. There’s no discrimination here—no alliance between the two Ministries. Just death.
I watch Vallan’s eyes and see him squinting at a figure plodding through the streets toward Trithea Plaza, in no hurry. I’ve never seen the Red Butcher, but this vampire’s black armor, with red veins added as some kind of monstrous accouterments, tells me I’m staring at Overlord Barnabac Craxon.
“We can’t let him join the fight,” Vallan growls.
“How can we stop him?!” Garro pleads.
My eyes swivel from Barnabac—still a distance away—and catch Skar finishing off his final opponent in a flurry of rapid strikes.
Barnabac’s soldiers meticulously, methodically make their way through the streets toward the plaza, leaving no stoneunturned from the invaders of their ward. They swarm every inch of the exits around my nobleblood mate.
Luckily, Skar doesn’tneedan exit to leave.
A piercing whistle chimes from Skar’s position.
“That’s our cue,” Garro says. “Grab hold, little honey badger.”
I hug the dhampir as planned. He spins us around, lifting us onto the banister, and my eyes swerve over his shoulder and catch the bridge one last time—
To find Lukain Mortis finishing off one of our Manor Marquin rebels and pitching him over the side of the bridge into the canal below. I swear he looks up at our balcony then, even though we’re so far away, nothing but shadows in the dark night.
I canfeelhis gaze on me.
