Emiliana must be injured, but I’m not sure how, even if I can guess why. Galla must have found out that Emiliana showed us the Chronicle.
I don’t have time to consider more.
The air rings with the hum of steel as all ten of Mother’s men draw their swords.
Demanding my full attention, they pace around Thyra and me, a slowly moving circle that will make it harder to determine which of them will attack first—if not all of them at once.
I quickly assess their weaponry. Their swords are steel, but the daggers at their waists are iron-bladed. They’re wearing even more regal white tunics and pants with elaborate embroidery on the cuffs and lapels, but the shadowed hue across their torsos indicates they could be wearing leather armor underneath.
It won’t protect them from me.
They’re fools to take me on.
Thyra gathers up the circlet’s chain, pooling it in her right hand as she draws close to my left side, her pale blue eyes meeting mine.
Fuck, I wish she’d received that combat training I promised her, but she’s proven to have quick reflexes and, as she once told me, she can run fast. She may need both, but we’ll see.
Returning my helmet to my head, I draw my axe, filling the air with the deadly scent of blood and iron.
No matter what direction the men attack from, I will keep their blades away from Thyra.
“Come on then,” I snarl into the fraught silence, these moments of held breath as Galla and the powerful highborn watch on from the room’s outskirts, some with pale faces, others bright with glee. “Which of you is foolish enough to start this fight?”
Quintus is now located directly ahead of me, his sharply angular features drawn tight as he bares his teeth, but I don’t expect it will be him. Not yet. He will want the others to wear me down first.
Not that they will.
He gives a shout.
At his command, two lords leap at me, one diagonally from my right, the other from my back left, striking at me and Thyra at the same time.
In a heartbeat, I switch my axe to my left hand, whip an iron dagger from my waist, and throw it, my power carrying it straight into the eye of the man attacking from my right.
The moment the dagger leaves my hand, I swing left, my axe cutting through the air at the man coming at Thyra, my mind continuing to hum with my power over iron.
Beside me, Thyra has dropped into a crouch, no doubt toavoid the sword striking toward her, but the lord lunges faster than she can evade him, the sword’s tip headed for her heart, and his downward trajectory ensures my axe narrowly misses the top of his head.
I adjust my aim as fast as I can, needing to strike him down before he kills Thyra, but she reacts quickly, taking my breath away.
As she drops, she arcs her right hand around in the air in front of herself, as if she’s drawing circles with the chain, creating a tunnel of spiraling metal surrounding the path of the oncoming blade.
With a savage wrench, she meets the floor, bringing me down with her. I land at a crouch, bending back and bracing as she pushes into me, as far back from the oncoming blade as she can get in that dangerous heartbeat before the channel she was creating closes around the sword.
All along the sword’s blade, the circlet is now wrapped.
My ears fill with the scream of metal against metal as the man’s downward momentum drives his weapon forward.
For the briefest moment, his gloating eyes meet mine, and it’s clear he doesn’t realize what’s about to happen.
The chain’s teeth trigger.
The ruby circlet reacts with the full force of its gruesome mechanism.
Shards of steel shoot across the air as the chainsaw cuts through the sword at every point of contact.
Too late, the man tries to throw himself backward, but his momentum takes him straight into the path of the chain’s triggered section.
It whips free of the broken shards and strikes his neck, severing his throat.
