Thiswas more like it. Slicing and stabbing, not snooping and spying. His comfort zone.
His wolf panted, craving the violence promised by this bounty of honed steel.
Mireille bent over a table, running her fingers down the length of a long broadsword with a skull-shaped pommel. “This is a human sword.” There was something thoughtful, yet pained, in her examination. “I saw my father carrying one like it in the Halfway. Is it Typhon steel?”
“No. But it’s sharp and heavy enough to kill a Fae if you know where to strike. My advice? Go for the head.” Layla loosed a wicked cackle.
Mireille raised the sword in a two-handed grip, her fists tightening on the hilt. Ronin swallowed.
Was there anything sexier than a beautiful female wielding an instrument of death?
She angled the sword, then brought it down in a swift, diagonal arc.
He prayed to whatever Gods existed that he’d get to witness Mireille use that cut on Otto. A sight he suspected would live on in his dreams for centuries.
“I want this one,” Mireille said, her face a mask of delicious savagery.
“Excellent choice,” Layla answered over her shoulder, her fingers dancing across a shelf of daggers. “Butcher?”
Ronin approached the axes, plucking up the selection he’d made as soon as he’d seen the weapon.
The two sharp curves of the double-headed axe held no carvings or markings. Just a simple, effective tool of destruction. A replica of the axe wielded by Vestan the Warrior, the very same that appeared on the Northern Territories’ sigil.
And what was Ronin if not a warrior? Perhaps even the greatest warrior Ethyrios had ever seen. At one time, at least.
He called upon that strength again, thatpurposehe’d felt on those battlefields, twisted though it had been for the Empire’s goals.
Now he would use his strength for his own purpose. To protect the daring she-wolf beside him. To protect the world from devious power-players like Otto.
To take a step toward the role he still had to play, the one that voice in the chronomancer’s shop—perhaps the Fallen Goddess herself—had alluded to.
He slung the axe over his shoulder and sauntered over to Layla, who nodded approvingly.
“Do you know what that one’s called?” she asked.
“The axe of Vestan?” Ronin guessed with a chuckle.
Layla shook her head. “Vestan is an ancient human god. No more real than the High Gods themselves, but as Otto has always said, there is power in stories. In thecollective beliefin stories. Adelphinae knows this better than anyone. It’s why she has been so angered that her own story has been erased from our history. Those ancient humans believed that Vestan used that axe to shape the skeleton of this world, carving the mountains, rivers, lakes, and sea beds. So it was only natural they gave his weapon an appropriate name.”
Layla elongated her fangs, bloodlust rising, and the words she uttered stirred Ronin’s soul.
“They named itBonecleaver.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Snowflakes drifted past the window, falling stars against the pitch-black night.
In the bed beside Mireille, Ronin’s breathing whispered a peaceful melody.Hecertainly hadn’t had any trouble falling asleep tonight.
Mireille, however, had been awake for hours, going over plans in her mind that seemed both too hastily thrown together and yet the only possible solution to acquire the flute and defeat Otto.
The plan was brutal in its simplicity.
Layla would hide the weapons Mireille and Ronin had chosen behind the statue of Otto’s ancestor in that alcove in the crypt. And as soon as Mireille began her dance, Ronin would grab them to make their final stand. She would have to give the most mesmerizing performance of her life to keep the Deathstalker billionaire and the guests enthralled.
The whole plan seemed patently ridiculous and hinged on so many things going right. But they were out of options.
And out of time.
