It’s a bit of an odd ring to it. I hope she doesn’t mind being calledMrs. Innkeeper’s Son.
I turn with my hand buried deep in my pocket, just to see Lek standing there. I’ll be honest, I had expected him to follow along after Estelle like her second shadow. But here he is standing uncomfortably close to me.
I feel my eyebrows rise. “What are you—” I begin but I don’t get the rest of the sentence out because suddenly Lek is swinging his arm around, plunging a knife into my chest.
My mouth drops open as I draw in a sharp inhale, one that dissipates before I’m even done. I watch in shock as Lek rips the knife out of my chest and plunges it into my stomach. He rips it upward, slicing through my skin and sinews and organs.
I raise my eyes to meet his, they seem to be the only thing I’m capable of moving. Fortunately, it is as if I am disconnected from my body altogether. It’s as if I am watching this happen to another person. While this state of disconnect it leaves me useless to respond, at least I don’t feel it. Becausegodsthat looks like it would jetting hurt.
“It was over, it was supposed to be over. Ibram was going to take the fall, but then you had to mess it up. You couldn’t keep your hands off of her, could you?” Lek’s spittle flies all over my face as he speaks, adding insult to quite literal injury.
“What?” I splutter, it’s half a word and half a cough. I can feel a thickness filling my lungs just as something warm dribbles out over my chin.
“Estelle!” Lek gasps, his eyes wide. “I’ve done this all for her. To show her that I’m someone interesting, but she goes for you instead. She always goes to you instead.”
I want to tell him that Estelle has never seen me that way. I’ve only ever been a shoulder to cry on, but I’m too busy gagging and choking on the fluid filling my lungs.
I can feel Likho’s magic rushing to heal me, but there is so much internal damage. It’s sluggish. To be honest, I’d likely be dead already if it weren’t for him literally forcing me to live.
I stumble backwards, hitting the floor before I realize that I’ve dropped. My head is ringing, but not loudly enough that I don’t hear the scream.“Victor!”
Chapter Seventeen
Corallin
“Talyria, don’t!” I cry, but my sister’s scream echoes through the hall.
Lek whirls at the sound of us, his hands going up in a pacifying gesture. “It wasn’t me! Victor was the sorcerer. He was going to kill everyone here if I hadn’t done what I did.”
“You,” Talyria snarls as she stalks toward him. “You killed Ibram, you killed them all, not Victor.”
She draws her dagger and flicks her finger. The dagger goes flying through the air toward Lek far too quickly and smoothly to have been thrown. His eyes widen for a second, showing his surprise in discovering that Talyria is a sorceress and that he wasn’t the only one hiding a deadly secret.
However, he quickly recovers and thrusts his hand up. A book goes flying off the shelf and blocks the dagger. It embeds up to the hilt, the blade quivering only an inch from his nose.
“I’m going tokillyou,” Talyria hisses. I grapple with her, trying to hold her back. I can feel her quivering with anger, but we need to be smart. Most of the room Lek is in is obstructed from view. There is no knowing what he already has at his disposal with his sorcery while we only have this mostly scarce hallway. There are a few pieces of furniture against the wall. A table, a candle, and a mounted head of a wolf on the wall. We need to be careful when dealing with another sorcerer.
A fact that he proves as he raises his hands.
“You fool!” Lek cries as a green mist forms around his fingers, a physical manifestation of his power. Since sorcery is illegal, many sorcerers refuse to allow their powers to take this form. I think it only goes to prove that he has grown unstable or has stopped caring who learns what he is. Either way it’s a dangerous position to be against. “I am the necromancer who has plagued this village. With every one of you that I kill, the more powerful I get.”
The green smoke spreads out around his feet, pooling there for a second before it shoots off, moving faster. It races past Lief and me and veers off in two directions. One toward the back of the inn and another down the stairs just behind us toward the wine cellar. I move back, not allowing the smoke to touch my boots.
Down the hall, the door bursts open, and Ibram strides out. I hear footsteps coming from my left and look down to see the two bodies coming up the stairs.
Lief inhales sharply as he glances over at me. Despite the situation, his expression is oddly calm. He picks up a small round table in the hall, taking the candle that had been resting on it in his other hand. “Corallin, my love, you take care of that necromancer. I’ll make sure that you aren’t disturbed.”
I reach out, giving Lief’s arm a brief squeeze. It’s in this moment that I realize that I had nothing to fear about bringing Lief home. I don’t care that he isn’t a warrior or a criminal. He is willing to fight off the dead with a table and a candlestick.
That’s the quality of the man I want to marry.
If we make it out of this alive, I’m making sure that my family knows this.
I step away from Lief as he lets out a war cry that would make his Highlander ancestors proud while he swings the table by one of its legs at Ibram who tries to lunge at him. I bend over and pull a dagger out of the hidden sheaths in each of my boots.
I turn to Talyria. “We will take him together.”
“Just like old times?” she asks with a faint smile despite the tears dried on her cheeks.
