“Scared?” Shivhai laughs, his ruined windpipe scraping. “Don’t worry, I’ll grant you death long before the Praeceptor gets here. I have no intention of losing my vengeance to his plans.”
I wonder briefly what my father thinks of his son abandoning him and then hislegatus, both driven by something he has always deemed a weakness—emotion. Though different ones forced us down our respective paths, our decisions both driven by something good assassins should never feel, love. Shivhai’s all-consuming hatred began with the death of the brother he loved and now he goes after the weapon itself, rather than the one who aimed it.
“My father ordered your brother’s death,” I tell him, ducking beneath a swing aimed for my head. I bring my sword up just before his blade slices through my spine. I roll over, springing to my feet and then lunge, landing another slash at his side. “He ordered it to be slow. To torture him until your brother begged for death and then refuse to grant it.”
Shivhai rushes me with a roar, ducking beneath my guard. I scramble to bring my sword up, but he’s too close and I’m forced to resort to a dagger, pulling the small blade just before I’m decapitated. The dagger blade sings, metal against metal, but it won’t last long. The blades are made for stealth, not to withstand hard blows.
“Your brother is lucky I was who my father sent, lucky that even at eleven, I could already see what you can’t. My father is a monster who metes out judgement on selfish whims and twisted pleasures. Not a leader to be followed.”
Shivhai snarls, his lips pulling over his teeth. “You know nothing about what the Praeceptor has done or the lengths he’s gone for the Dark World. You’re nothing more than an attack dog gone feral.”
I bare mine back, the blade growing warm in my hand. “You should consider your brother lucky for what I gave him. My father would not have been so kind.”
The blade shakes in my hand. I’m strong, but I will never be able to overpower Shivhai. The logical move would be to bring my sword hand up, to threaten his side and force his retreat. But he will see it coming. We’ve been trained the same and though I know my father saved a special part of his cruelty for only me, Shivhai will know how to match almost every move I make.
We will go on and on, blocking and reciprocating until one of us drops dead from exhaustion. And with revenge fueling him and the abyss fueling me, it could be days before one of us relents.
But unlike Shivhai, my father could never quite train me the way he wanted. He was never able to strip me all the way down in order to build me back up in his image. I held parts of myself out of his reach and it was those that saved me and Max on that fateful night. Broken soul notwithstanding, those parts were still wild and fierce, unmalleable. My father has no patience for sentiment, and therefore, was never able to predict the lengths it could lead me to.
And so, I do the exact opposite of my father’s training. I leave myself wide open.
I feint left, leaving a hole in my defenses so large, Shivhai’s eyebrows rise in surprise and then lower in determination. He knocks the dagger from my hand, victory blazing across his face. My sword skitters across the damp stone, and I meet his eyes as he raises his sword tip to my throat.
I see the moment he realizes his mistake. I watch the moment he knows I allowed him to disarm me to get him close, but it’s too late. I slide a dagger between his ribs, and he roars as his blood pours over my hand. He staggers backward and I pounce, throwing my weight at his legs. He topples over, his massive body hitting the ground with a staggeringthud.
I slice the tendons at his elbows with brutal efficiency and he howls in agony. The abyss roars its approval, demandingmore, more, more.More of his blood. More of his suffering.Let him burn with it.For the way he hurt Mirren. For the myriad of women before her, the daughters that were used and then discarded, tortured and killed. For the sons that will never come home, slaughtered on his orders.
And more than that, for my father—proof to him that I will never be contained, that I will never bow to him. I couldn’t take his life, but I took his blood heir and now I will take hislegatusfrom him, too. He raised me in blood and torment, to be a weapon, and because of it, he will never know a moment’s peace.
Surely, no vow is worth letting Shivhai and my father go unpunished. No soul, especially not mine, is worth more of their reign of terror, more of their sanctioned bloodshed.
And if this kill takes the last piece of my soul with it, so be it. A ruthless heart has always beat inside me, cunning and ambitious. Willing to tear itself, and the world, apart in order to shelter those it beats for.
I raise my dagger, but it is not the weapon. I am. A breath of relief whooshes out of me as I exact my will.
ChapterThirty-Nine
Mirren
Though my father’s weight is diminished, he’s still heavy enough to knock the air from me as we tumble to the ground. The sounds and feelings of the surface come back in soft waves, dragging me up from the chasm inside—the scrape of rough stone against my back, the ring of steel, and there, faintly, the dim plod of my father’s heartbeat against my chest.
He’s alive, but barely. I’m no healer, but with the extent of his external injuries, it isn’t a leap to assume there’s damage inside as well. I roll him gently to his side, wincing as his head bounces off the floor. “Dad,” the word isn’t as strong as I wish it was, “Dad, please wake up.”
I call water to me, gently this time, and trickle some into his mouth. “Dad, you have to wake up,” I plead as the droplets run over his cracked lips. His breathing hitches painfully and fear ices over my heart. What if he stops breathing and never starts again?
The fight rages closer. I try to shut out the sharp sounds, to focus solely on my dad, but it’s like trying to pull my own heart back inside my body. Only feet away, Anrai, Max, and Cal fight for their lives. For mine and Denver’s, and Easton’s, and my fear for them is a breathing thing.
I trickle more water into my father’s destroyed mouth. His skin is so ravaged, I have a hard time finding a place to touch that won’t cause him more pain, so I settle for running my fingers gently over his scalp. When I was little and frightened, he would always let me lay my head in his lap and run his fingers through my hair until I fell asleep. It’s a memory I haven’t allowed myself in a long time, tender and tinged with heartache. But now, it floods me. “Dad!” A curse and a plea.
He spasms beneath my fingers with an anguished groan. His eyelids flutter. “Azurra,” he moans. My mother’s name.
“Drink, Denver,” I tell him, the word ‘dad’ suddenly too intimate. He was once the most known entity in my world, my entire being wrapped up in one person. But now, the broken man before me is a stranger.
“Shaw,” the name is more a gasp than a word.
I swallow roughly. “It’s Mirren. I’m here to take you home.”
Two fat tears roll from the corners of his eyes. They take on the red tinge of blood as they trail down his cheeks. “Mirri,” he cries, his hand grasping jerkily in the air as if trying to find me through total darkness. The sound of my old nickname is like the edge of a sword, but I envelop his hand anyway. “Mirri is gone. Shaw will be lost, too.”
