Dornar laughed. “You would risk the queen’s life on that guess?”
“No.” Mathos looked left and met Jos’s eyes. His friend gave a small nod, and together they took another step closer to the window. Behind him, he could hear running footsteps as more of the Hawks flooded into the room.
Mathos focused on Dornar. “No, I won’t risk her life. I’ll risk mine.”
He let the beast take him, allowed his fury and fear and desperation to flood his veins as his scales set hard over his body and his claws lengthened impossibly further. And then he leaped.
A lifetime living in danger with his beast had built them into a weapon. A honed, ferocious unit, acting together almost entirely on instinct as he hurled himself at Dornar.
Dornar let the dagger fly and the blade struck Mathos with vicious power, slashing through his scales and sliding deep into his flesh below his ribs, scraping against bone. But he hardly felt it.
He met Dornar in the air, rolling and twisting to grab the former High Chancellor’s head and pull him through the window. Holding him under his arm, with his forearm gripping Dornar’s throat, legs braced against the wall.
Lucy screamed, pain and terror curdling in her voice, but Jos was already through the window, the sound of his wings beating reassuringly against the wall.
He had to trust that his friend would hold her.
Dornar cursed and released her hair to push himself further into the room, grappling hard against Mathos’s headlock. Surging up, he knocked the blade, driving it even deeper, and Mathos grunted in agony as he fought to hold his twisting, coiling opponent.
Dornar swiveled, snaking under his arm, but Mathos caught him, hauling him back. They both breathed hard, beasts rumbling savagely as they battled.
Mathos clenched his arm around Dornar’s neck, ignoring the torture of the knife grinding between them, and squeezed.
Dornar flailed like a berserker, reaching desperately for his ankle and the knife that was guaranteed to be hidden there.
Mathos tightened his grip, using all the strength in his arms to crush the hard scales shielding Dornar’s throat. The sides of his vision blurred and blackened, and something crashed heavily behind him. But all of his focus was on the thrashing man gripped in his arms.
Dornar reached his ankle, and the blade came free with a rasp. He started to lift it, swinging up, and Mathos used the momentum of Dornar’s swing to haul him round, twisting brutally, throwing all his remaining strength and fury into that one devastating movement.
Dornar’s neck broke with a crack, and he sagged limply, the knife falling uselessly to the carpet.
Mathos dropped him, unable to hold him, and sagged slowly to his knees, breathing heavily over the bloody corpse.
“Matt! Gods!”
He looked up to see Lucy running toward him. Her neck was bleeding and bruised, her white shift splattered with blood and her hair standing in rough clumps where it had been torn from her head.
“Oh, gods!” She flew into him, clutching him from the side, completely ignoring the butchery around them, entirely unconcerned by his beast, by the fact that he was fully battle-scaled and covered in gore, his long claws still extended.
“Lucy?” he asked in a gruff voice, terrified he might have frightened her. She lifted her head and pressed a rough, frantic kiss onto his mouth. “I thought he was going to….” Her small hand touched the knife, and he grunted in sudden agony.
She lifted her face, her hands fluttering over his shoulders as she screamed, “Rafael! Haniel! Help me!”
And then he felt the pain. The deep, burning torture. He groaned as she helped him lie back, the Hawks standing back to let Rafe and Haniel rush forward.
The two healers knelt beside him, working together to hold his wound, muttering about a perforated liver and shouting orders for boiled water and clear alcohol.
He shut his eyes, trying to breathe.
Someone pulled out the dagger, and he ground his teeth to hold in a rough scream. Firm hands held him down, warm drowsiness spreading up through his body.
Lucy’s freezing fingers rested on his forehead and then took his hand in a tight grip as she hovered beside him anxiously, as darkness blotted across his vision.
There was a rough murmur, somewhere far away, that could only be Tristan, and frantic discussion about how Dornar had avoided the increased security.
People came and went while the healers worked. He must have passed out briefly, but he awoke when they sat him up to wrap a bandage around his torso, Lucy still beside him.
Tristan and Rafe worked together to lift him onto the bed, and a flurry of guards cleaned the room and set a new fire as Haniel gripped his shoulder and a soothing warmth slid through his bones once more.
