Royo pushes me back toward the painting as he stands partially in front of me, wielding the bloody saber. He moves from side to side, visibly torn between guarding me and helping Mikail.
I wait, breathless, my hand by my necklace. Mikail is looking to die, and I don’t know if I can save him. His calm is eerie as he stands with his arms out, like he’s ready to embrace Lord Yama.
The guards continue toward him until they can nearly cut him down. The men and women of the palace guard seem keen to do away with the spymaster, to claim the accolade of being the one to kill him. Their gazes are sharp; one is even smiling. And maybe Mikail is looking to be with Euyn—I don’t know, but it’s terrible to just stand here and watch this.
“Turn!” Sora yells.
Mikail spins around, his expression puzzled. She opens her palm. He takes one look at her hand and then ducks his face into the crook of his arm. I wonder what he’s doing until Sora leans over him. She takes a deep breath, then blows the pile of rose-colored dust into the faces of the guards.
All six of the guards suddenly start coughing and wheezing. The four closest to her clutch their throats and fall to their knees, silently choking. The other two move back, covering their faces.
Poison. She created an aura of death by blowing poison at them.
Mikail looks up at her, stunned and grateful. It’s the most genuine I’ve seen him be. She places her clean hand over his.
“Kill them all,” she whispers. “For him.”
“Stay here,” Royo says to me.
He’s coughing, but he pulls his shirt over his mouth and nose, moving forward. Even though Sora blew the dust in the other direction, there’s still enough poison in the air to burn my face. I put my sleeve over my nose and mouth, but my eyes sting.
Royo leaps over the barricade and grabs the sword off the nearest guard—the one on his hands and knees, dying from the poison dust. He tosses it to Mikail before reaching down and slitting the guard’s throat with the bloody saber.
The spymaster comes alive with a sword in his hand. He swings it and nearly decapitates the guard who rushes at him with an axe. The guard crumples, his head lolling grotesquely to the side. Mikail kicks the axe out of his hand and sends it skittering on the marble floor over to Royo.
Before Royo can get it, though, another guard swings a sword at him. Royo ducks, and the guard hits the table instead. The palace guard is beet red, choking, and off aim. I flinch as the sword dents the wood, and I move back a step. Royo punches his face, his fist landing with a solid crack, and then he takes the guard’s sword and finishes him. Royo stoops down and picks up the axe.
I hold my necklace, watching, ready to freeze time to protect Royo and Mikail, but neither needs it. Once they have their preferred weapons in their hands, it’s a chaos of blades, blood, and screams. Royo grabs the last two guards who were closest to Sora and are nearly dead. He bashes their heads together, their skulls hitting with a sickening sound of bone striking bone. Then he kills them with a final stroke of his axe.
Sora sneaks out from behind the table and grabs a sword that fell a few feet from her. I’m about to do the same when two guards attack Mikail right by the blade I was eyeing.
“What did we talk about?” Royo shakes his head at me as he passes.
I hate just standing here, feeling useless, but I can’t kill like they can. Royo puts two hands on his axe, running to back up Mikail, but the spymaster simply waits, sword casually hanging by his side. Then the first guard gets close enough that Mikail can grab his wrist. He gets ahold of him and suddenly twists, bending the guard’s arm at an unnatural angle until it breaks. A wail of pain echoes through the room. Using the man’s body as a shield, Mikail attacks the second guard. That woman swings, but her sword gets stuck in the first guard’s neck. In her shock, she releases the blade. It’s a mistake. Mikail arches back and then headbutts her unconscious. Then he slits both guards’ throats, pulling their hair to create deep gashes in their necks. He moves at the frightening speed I remember from the warehouse, fluid and deadly accurate.
“Is this all you have?” he roars. His sword drips blood. “Is this all?”
He screams with the pain of losing Euyn, of taunting Lord Yama himself.
No one attacks. The guard who was standing at the far door has thrown down his axe and is desperately trying to pull the doors open.
I think he’s soiled himself. His pants are suspiciously darker in the front. But the doors remain locked. It doesn’t even dawn on him to use the axe to open them.
Mikail takes a second sword from the ground and strikes them together. He runs full speed at the guard and then launches into the air. I gasp as he impales the man on the doors, shoving the blades through the man’s lower abdomen, where the chest armor doesn’t protect. It’s a painful, horrible way to die.
The only two guards left alive are on the floor in the middle of the room. There is one kneeling next to the captain and the captain himself. The latter is still convulsing on the ground. Mikail walks up to them, slowly, intentionally, but seething. He stares at the captain for a second, and then he raises his boot.
“Who is sentenced to death now, captain?” Mikail mutters.
He stomps the hairpin dagger all the way into the man’s skull. I grimace at the sound of bone breaking, but the man stills, dead underfoot.
Mikail then faces the last guard, who puts his sword on the ground with his head bowed. He raises his empty hands.
“Mercy,” the man says.
I hold my breath, waiting to see what Mikail will do. Sora and Royo are watching as well.
Surprisingly, Mikail nods.
