“And then I will kill you quickly, instead of slowly and painfully.”
Well, if Lavana intended to kill her anyway, then why make it easy on her?
Riker backed away, around the island, inching into Magda’s peripheral, moving closer to Python. She couldn’t blame him. He’d never been equipped for a moment like this.
She, on the other hand . . .
She stuffed the Enneahedron into her bra, between her breasts, where its sparking energy fed straight into her heart.
For the first time since the day she’d been exiled, she reached into her shadow’s vault and felt the cool rings of her knives slide over her fingers, tightening around her digits—the magic-infused metal becoming like a second skin, tuning into her thoughts.
“Look who’s back,” Lavana drawled. “You know, I wish I had been of age when your mother died. I could’ve bested you and Alanna both. Only I would not have been so merciful as she.”
Lavana lunged forward, finger-knives shooting out of their sheaths as they raked towards Magda.
Magda swung her arm around, hooking the lamb carcass with her own blades and flinging it up into the air. Fifty pounds of dead flesh slammed into Lavana, knocking her off her feet and into the wall.
“Sorry about the gown,” Magda said as she spun to meet one of the warriors.
The first locked his blade to Damion’s—also drawn from his shadow’s vault—and shoved Damion up against the wall.
Her finger-knives pushed the second’s sword off target. She stepped in, seized his wrist, retracted the blades of her left hand, and smashed her sheathed fist against his face. Bone crunched. Blood spurted. She twisted his arm, broke his hold on his sword, hooked her foot behind his ankle, and knocked him off his feet. His head thudded against the edge of the butcher block and he crumpled.
Leaping onto the blood-drenched wood, ducking beneath the deadly iron rack, she avoided Lavana’s next swiping strike. Two more warriors pushed in past Damion and the first. As they fought, Damion tumbled back into the colonnaded hall, out-of-view.
Riker huddled in the corner. Python continued to lean by the sink, watching impassively.
She leapt, knives catching in the wooden beam, and slashed two of the chains holding the rack. It swung free, clipping Lavana’s face. She screamed, doubling over. The scent of seared flesh burned Magda’s nostrils. One of the warriors was also hit, thrown back into the hearth, which was, unfortunately, cold.
Magda drew back her knives, dropping to the floor before Python, who didn’t even flinch.
“Thanks a lot,” she snarled at him.
“You gouged my beam,” he said.
But she was already seizing Riker by the arm, pushing him ahead of her and out of the kitchen. The second warrior, who had been attending his mistress, launched over the one with the broken nose, wielding double blades. She raised her knives in time to deflect the first blade, but not the second, which sliced across her thigh.
She growled through her teeth, stumbling back a step, but then surging forward, driving her knives into him. He lurched as his lungs were punctured, his eyes widening. The drenching heat of his life’s blood poured over her hand. A dizzying hot tang swamped her breath, as though she were drinking his blood.
“You have been killed in service to your mistress by a Rae. You will travel the High Road,” she said as the light faded from his eyes.
She slid the knives free and let him fall.
Lavana had pushed up to her feet, chest heaving, a charred black mark crossing her temple and cheek, her eyes bright as twin suns.
Magda turned and ran.
SHE DIDN’T GET FARbefore she came upon Damion, clutching a seeping wound on his side and standing over the gaping, bloody corpse of Lavana’s warrior sprawled on the pool table.
She whipped Riker into the billiards room.
Damion took a staggering step and then slumped against the table.
“Heal him,” she said to Riker, pushing the Prince towards Damion.
“Do what?” Riker said.
She retracted her knives and grabbed Riker’s hands. He stared at her blood-soaked fingers clutching his.
