“Shut up.” Another steps beside her, crackling flame in his palm. “You couldn’t just follow the damn path like a good littlegiftless, could you?”
“Ah, the lanterns.” Glad I looked at my damn codex. “That wasn’t obvious at all, now, was it?”
The other jerks forward again, lips curled back in a sneer. “If Galley would have done her job, we wouldn’t have needed a backup plan.”
Galley. The girl from the Flying Grounds.
That’s what she meant. She was supposed to somehow lead me right into the palm of their hands.
She picked the wrong fucking place to do it.
“Trail to the dark lands or right here in the heart of campus, it doesn’t matter,” she continues. “We’ll just have to kill you a little more silently than planned.”
My head yanks back. “Kill me?”
Angry gifted out for my blood twice in one day?
This place is feeling more like home by the day.
“We know you’re behind the murders!” One hisses, light flickering from her fingertips.
“Right,” I drawl, sliding my gaze across them, counting angles, advantages, and I’d count weapons but these are gifted kids. Their weapons live inside them. Fuck. “Because when I kill someone, I always leave them in public places for maximum inconvenience.”
The girl’s face twists. “You killed your partner in combat class—everyone saw it. But he was a Stygian and you didn’t have the guts, not with our Kings so close. So, you went after someone you saw as weaker just because she was Argents.”
“We know you killed Elena!” another yells.
My jaw ticks. “That’s cute. Completely wrong, but cute.”
They advance, magic thickening in the air around us.
Double fuck.
I throw the first strike, blade aimed low, not to kill but to disable. I don’t miss, drawing a clean line across the calf of the boy on the left. He yells, stumbling, but the girl is already on me, hurling a blast of energy that knocks the wind from my lungs and sends me sliding through the dirt.
I roll, spring back up, only to take a second hit across the ribs.
The force seizes my breath, vision pulsing black at the edges. I slash blindly, catching one across the forearm, and the scent of blood fills the air.
Two down but not enough.
“Whatever enchantment you put on King Legend,” the girlsnarls, magic gathering around her like storm clouds, “it’ll fade. And when it does, he’ll see you for exactly what you are.”
I spit blood into the dirt. “Deadly? Gorgeous? Really flexible?”
“Murderer.”
Her spell hits like a sledgehammer.
My knees buckle and pain blooms at the base of my skull, jabbing like someone driving spikes through my neck.
A third steps in, voice cold. “You slit her throat so we will slice yours.”
“I didn’t—”
“You think Argents are weak?” he sneers. “You’re not one of us. Not Stygian. Not Argent. Not even Fae. So, what the hell are you?”
His magic wraps around my ribs, squeezing. A bones creaks and my vision fractures.
