She didn’t answer, but I was filled with the sudden certainty that she was downstairs and in trouble. The men at the bar had eyed her like candy. What if?—
Please, she begged.
I slung my weapons belt around my hips, and my fingers touched the hilts of six throwing knives. Next, I grabbed my sword and threw open the bedroom door.
The hallway was eerily quiet, except for the moan of a man in terrible pain and Haven’s cry of alarm.
I ran, barreling down the stairs to the taproom.
Blood splattered the walls. Soaked the floorboards. It collected in pools. And its metallic scent perfumed the air.
Haven, who was surrounded by a ring of bodies, stood over Grayson’s fallen form and parried a thrust from a man to her right as she sank a dagger into another attacker’s arm.
He dropped his sword and retreated, leaving her to focus on the man to her right. A man easily twice her size. She stopped the arc of his blade. Barely.
My heart rose to my throat, and I raced toward her, throwing a knife at her attacker as I ran. The blade glanced off his back. Fuck! I turned my attention to the man she’d wounded, dispatching him with a quick slice across his neck. “Haven!”
The man attacking her heard me and hesitated. Haven kept fighting. She ran him through. Blood bubbled at his mouth, staining his lips as he looked down at the sword buried deep in his belly. His eyes squeezed shut. Then he collapsed, and the weight of his falling body nearly pulled the sword from Haven’s grasp.
“Fucker!” She tightened her fingers around the sword’s grip and yanked the weapon from his belly as she fixed her gaze on the remaining man.
“I was wrong,” he said, sounding almost pleased. “You won’t die tonight.” Then, before I could react, he leaped through the broken window and disappeared.
Forcing my hands to remain steady as the adrenaline ebbed, I drew a breath into my lungs and held it. Caustic fear coated my tongue—not fear for myself, but bone-deep terror for what I’d almost lost. For whom I’d almost lost.
I forced myself to focus on the present. Haven was alive. The immediate threat was over. My gaze scoured the bloodied room. “Where did they come from?”
Rather than answer, she surveyed the room. “Are they all dead?”
I created ice spears and sent them through our enemies’ hearts. “They are now.”
The silence that followed felt deafening. My heart still hammered against my ribs, and I couldn’t tear my gaze away from her face. Blood stained her cheeks and colored her hair, but she was alive. And, aside from a few cuts, unharmed. I swallowed hard against a lump of emotion I didn’t care to examine.
She knelt next to Grayson.
Grayson—a lake of crimson surrounded him.
“Where is he injured?” Panic tightened my throat. I was no healer, and Grayson obviously needed one.
She ripped his shirt away, and we both took in the wound in his gut. Agony, worse than any inflicted by a sword, welled in my chest. My friend—my brother—was as good as dead. He’d bleed out before we could get him to a healer.
“Let’s hope this works.” She pressed her hand against his abdomen.
“You’re a healer?” My voice was harsh.
“Grandmother tried to teach me.”
“Tried?”
Her hand was glowing. The light made the blood coating her fingers look sinister. Deadly. I reached for her arm.
She shook me off. “I think it’s helping.”
I had no choice but to trust her.
She glanced around the bloody room. “Where are Teal and Flynn?”
The question reminded me how alone she’d been. How she’d nearly died while my brothers slept peacefully upstairs. If I hadn’t awakened … my jaw clenched at the thought. “I assume they’re asleep.”
