Then came a sharp swipe out of nowhere. A slash of pain across her cheek. Warmth, dripping.
It threw Linn off-rhythm. She stumbled. The half second cost her; another blade came out of nowhere, cutting across her abdomen.
She hissed in pain, jabbing back, her dagger finding its mark. Bodies of Imperial Patrols lay before her, but still, they closed in…still, there were too many….
“Shi’sen,” she gasped. “You must go, without delay. I cannot expect to hold them much longer.”
“Listen carefully,” Gen said from behind her, his words coming fast, urgent. “In the Bei’kin Bookhouse, there lies a tablet carved in jade. It holds the secret to the Heart of the Gods. It must not fall into their hands. Understand?”
“Gen shi’sen—”
“Gen told this Daughter to prepare to run. Now…run.”
“No! I cannot leave you—”
A Whitecloak appeared out of nowhere, his sword arcing toward her arm. Linn heard the whistle of metal through air, saw its glint in the torchlight, too late to dodge—
“Stop.”
She sensed the blade’s cold kiss against her neck. Poised, like a scorpion’s sting. Waiting to strike.
“No, we don’t want to kill them,” that same female voice continued. “Question her and the old cur. Ask them why they’re here.”
Linn kicked out, but multiple sets of arms and legs pinnedher down, the cold armor crushing her painfully. She blinked, and a face swam into view: pale skin, framed by hair like spun gold. Eyes colder and crueler than ice.
“You yellow cur,” hissed the gold-haired Imperial Patrol Linn had seen earlier—the kapitan, by the looks of the badges on her armor. “You cost me half my team.”
Linn spat in her face.
The blow came sudden and harsh. The world spun; she saw stars, and when she blinked the blackness from her eyes, the kapitan had drawn out a sword. “You slit-eyed deimhovs better learn to behave,” the kapitan crooned. “I take particular pleasure in the pain of your kind.”
Linn’s stomach twisted. She’d known these types of people—barely human, reveling in the pain of others. Her traffickers—they’d looked at her like a slab of meat, like a pig to be used and abused, slaughtered at their whim or fancy.
Out of the corner of her eyes, she saw Gen lying on the ground. A long sword impaled his abdomen, rising into the night like the marker of a grave. Around him lay the bodies of the other Temple Masters, their pale robes fluttering like phantoms in the night.
Horror crept through her veins, freezing her like ice. With Gen dead, she didn’t have a chance against these soldiers. She would never know what this unit of Imperial Patrols had come to her land for; she would never find out what the Heart of the Gods was. It might have been a crucial piece of the puzzle to Morganya’s plans—and it would die here, with the two of them.
“Ask her who sent her,” the kapitan snapped at the Kemeiran translator, who stood to one side, fear bright in his eyes. They were expecting her to be a Kemeiran spy, perhaps an apprenticeto the Temple Masters. The truth, though, they would likely never believe.
At this, Linn laughed. That laugh turned into a scream as the kapitan brought her heel down on her hand and ground it into the dirt.
In the mist of her pain, Linn felt cold steel against her neck. “You slit-eyed deimhovs are all the same to me,” the kapitan snarled.“Worthless.”
A stroke of her sword and she would have proved her point right there and then—if not for the deep voice that rang out across the clearing.
“I would not do that if I were you.”
A shadow shifted in the trees. Then, out of nowhere, a dagger hissed through the air. It struck a Whitecloak who stood right next to the kapitan; Linn felt the thud of his body on the ground.
The kapitan raised her sword, and in that moment, Linn acted.
Summoning the last of her strength, she tucked and rolled, grabbing the daggers strewn on the floor. She pivoted and struck out. The close brush with death had cleared the fog from her brain, focused her energy. Her mind was sharper than a sword, her entire body strung together in perfect harmony as she whirled. A dance. She was dancing. Action, counteraction. Yin and yang.
The other half to her song was across the clearing: carved like the statue of a god, hair ink-black under the moon, eyes lethal as blue flames.
Kaïs.
The clearing had become a graveyard of bodies; Kaïs was engaged in combat with one of the last remaining Whitecloaks. From behind his back, though, a silhouette stole toward him.
