It’s too late, however; Vesper spins around to charge the guards before the latch gives way, only hesitating long enough to shove Eos back into the darkness. Eos doesn’t argue. She doesn’t try to prove herself anymore. She can’t fight, and Vesper—Vesper is emotional. She’safraid. If not for herself, then for her family, and Stavros is… well, he is many things, but I’m not certain he can beat four guards on his own without his explosives.
And then—
I blink rapidly, trying to clear my vision, trying to eradicate the darkness, trying to blow out the candle of terror burning in my mind, but I can’t. I can’t, and we’re going todie. Clutching my tool belt of treasure, I edge backward a step.Not for anyone. Not for anything.
“—sick of midnight duty. Every time we come down here, it’s always rats,” one of the guards grumbles. He sounds older, his voice wan with exhaustion.
“Yeah, so we’ll stick ’em with our spears and get gone,” another answers.
“Back to the boring, fucking procedurals,” a third says.
We already defeated one repulsive monster, but the odds of defeating four more? The walls have stopped closing in. They’ve fallen away completely. We are standing in the open, trapped in this fucking tomb, without a way out. We’re juststanding herewhile four of the king’s savage guard corner us. We aren’t cats chasing our prey through the street; we’re the fuckingmice.
“Run to your bedroom, Zephyra. Run fast. I so love a chase.”
Something hot, sharp, presses into my lower back. It draws blood.
The memory rears up inside me, painful as that fucking knife, when Vesper darts forward. Before I can think it through, I move with her.Afterher. The latch opens. The guards clomp down the steps. And I shove Vesper with all the strength I can muster, sending her toppling to the floor.
She lands wrong. She lands on her knife.
An agonized curse flees her lips, and she stares down at her hand. At the blood pooling around the blade impaled in her wrist. Eos shrieks. She rushes to her sister’s side and falls to her knees. Tears water in her gaze.
“Don’t,” Vesper commands. “Don’t cry for me. Donottransform.”
If Eos cries, if merrow saltwater tears trickle down her cheeks, she’ll be doomed.
But we’realreadydoomed. This isn’t like the ruby necklaces, and this isn’t like the sewers either. This is life or death, and I—I’ve never been part of this team anyway. Stavros picks up Vesper’s injured arm, glaring at me with a sudden rage. The hammer quakes in his fist.
“What the shit was that?” asks the older guard from the staircase. He sounds near; he’s going to reach us first. “Did you hear someone?”
I turn away from Vesper, away from Eos and Stavros, and run up the stairs.
Sure enough, four bulky guards descend the staircase in a single-file line, their heavy boots thudding on the sandstone and the hilts of their spears clanging against the gold of their armor. They gasp, yell, when they see me barreling toward them. But I can’t stop. I have toflee.
“Halt!” the older man commands, gray eyes visible through the visor of a bulky helmet.
“Is that a—” another begins.
“Fuckinggirl?” the one in the back finishes.
Near feral with fear, I attack the older man first. Spinning around, I kick out at his chest plate and send him tumbling to the floor. Two more reach out to grab me, colliding with me at once, but I duck away before they can touch me. Their helmets crash together. A horrible, earsplitting sound. It dazes them enough that I can steal a sword from one and smash the hilt into the other’s back. He bowls over, careening forward and taking his friend with him.
My chest rises and falls with adrenaline, my skin mottled red. I don’t stop to think or breathe. I can only move. The last snatches me by the hair, but it doesn’t hurt. Not as his fist tangles with my blonde locks. Not as he yanks with all his might.
Not as the wig falls to the floor and my real pink hair spills in waves over my shoulders, down my lower back.
I seethe, raising the stolen sword in hand. He glances quickly at the hair in his possession, at the cheap, artificial locks, before releasing it. His gaze narrows on my face.
“Merrow,” he curses.“Mermaid.”He unsheathes his sword with renewed purpose. “You will pay for what those demons did. You will suffer—”
I swing my sword. It connects somewhere between his helmet and his shoulder plates. Bone crunches. Tendons snap. The silver doesn’t cut all the way through his neck, however; it lodges in his spine.
No one will make me suffer again.
I don’t bother pushing his body over the edge. I allow physics to do the work for me. He stumbles, and then I’m gone. Vesper and Stavros have a chance against the rest.I’ve injured the guards, I tell myself.Given my team a head start.Vesper’s wound will hurt, but she can overcome it. I hope they make it out. I hope they survive. But I don’t stop to be sure. I can’t.
Run fast.
