For a moment, they stared at each other, Linn’s eyes black steel, Kerlan’s face contorting with the wild wrath of a man condemned.
And then the fury in his expression ebbed. “All right,” he said calmly. “Then die.”
And he shoved her off the edge.
Kaïs didn’t even stop to think.
When he saw Linn disappear over the ledge, his mind turned blank, and his body moved by some primal instinct.
He flung his swords aside and took off at a sprint.
Past the bodies. The dais. The throne.
Two, three steps.
The edge of Godhallem drew near.
Kaïs leapt, and for a moment he was airborne with nothing but the rain and the wind and the ocean unfurling beneath him.
Then gravity took over, and he dove after Linn.
As Ana’s scream reverberated through the hall, Ramson was on his feet, running, blade drawn. Out of all the people whom Kerlan had hurt and all the twisted things the man had done in the past, it was what he had done to Linn that Ramson could not forgive.
He would never forget the sight of the girl, sitting at the edge of life and death, her face a mask of defiance.
Nor the way she had looked at him the night they had first met in Novo Mynsk, her head tilted away from him like a frightened animal, her liquid black eyes betraying the faintest wisp of hope within her.
Ramson had seen his former master deliver death too many times to count, and he’d always thought that the moments before revealed the true character of a person. He’d witnessed mothers shielding their children with their own bodies before Kerlan cut them down; he’d watched Affinites die with their heads held high. Throughout all of it, Alaric Kerlan had always been less man than monster.
But now, on the precipice of defeat, Alaric Kerlan looked no more than a frightened child. With no henchmen to come to his rescue and no bindings holding his opponent back, he cowered against the wall.
Ramson plunged his dagger into his old master’s chest.
It was a surprisingly smooth stroke, the feeling akin to gutting a pig. Kerlan put up no resistance. His screech stopped, his mouth going slack, and with an exhale, he slumped against Ramson. A puddle of yellow had formed around his shoes.
Alaric Kerlan, the greatest criminal mastermind of the Cyrilian Empire, had died pissing himself.
It was only then that Ramson let out a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding. With a violent lunge, he pulled himself away from the body of Alaric Kerlan, slumping against the wall of Godhallem, right next to where it ended and open air and cliff began.
Behind him was a scene of massacre, with over two-thirds of the Three Courts slaughtered. The survivors had either fled the scene or cowered in the corners, too stunned to move.
The storm had passed. The rain had cleared and the sky had turned bright with the silver glow of the moon. That was when Ramson saw them. Silhouetted against the horizon were the outlines of hundreds of ships, small at first, but then growing larger, their sails blooming against the sky.
Kerlan’s fleet.
They approached fast, and Ramson began to make out the shapes on their sails: Morganya’s sigil of the Deys’krug and thecrown.
Desperately, Ramson searched the shorelines below for movement, for a sign—anysign—that the Bregonian Navy hadlaunched.
And then he heard it.
Somewhere, between the whistle of wind and crash of waves against the cliffs below, Ramson thought he heard music. A strange, rhythmic, and repetitive melody that was almost soothing.
It sounded like…bells.
And as Ramson watched, the night lit up with a hundred, a thousand flames. They soared into the air, arcing in a perfect curve, before descending in a shower of fire toward the enemy ships.
Arrows.Warbells, from…
