My stomach dropped. My brain rejected it outright. Arthur adjusted. Arthur adapted. The idea that he could falter didn’t fit inside my head.
“No,” I said, words tumbling too fast. “No, no, no.”
He kept fighting, though.
He took another strike meant for me without turning, fury flashing across his face as he drove the attacker back again. But the assassins were coordinated. They boxed him in, cutting off space, forcing him to defend instead of attack.
This was another execution attempt.
Someone had decided this should end with Arthur’s body on the floor and everything he knew buried with him.
The room shuddered as one of the dragons slammed into a wall. Dust rained down as a shelf collapsed. I scrambled backward, heart pounding, hands shaking, mind racing through options that all ended the same way.
Arthur was bleeding.
Endure, and keep yourselves for days of happiness.
I held on to the line from Homer like a rule and a prayer.
“Keep moving,” Arthur said inside my head, not looking at me. “Stay behind me.”
I did, because I trusted him, and the alternative made my chest seize so hard I thought it might split.
The assassin lunged again.
Arthur met him head-on.
The impact rocked the chamber, sending cracks racing along the walls. The ancient den of secrets began to tear itself apart around us, history burning and breaking under the strain.
But Arthur was still standing.
And then the second assassin rose behind him.
I saw it before he did. The attacker moved like this was already over and Arthur just hadn’t accepted it yet.
I opened my mouth to shout.
The world narrowed to that moment.
18
ARTHUR
The attackers were on me before I could fully assess the situation. What started as two suddenly became at least five.
I struck first, the way I had been trained to strike when ceilings were low and noncombatants were behind me. Short arc. Controlled force. No wasted motion. My body knew the pattern well enough that thought never entered it.
My first opponent was already moving.
His counter cut across my path before my weight had settled. I shortened the swing, shifted my hind leg, tried to bait a response.
The second assassin slid into position at the exact point I favored when shielding something behind me. Not where I stood, but where I was about to be.
Understanding arrived in fragments. They weren’t studying me as we fought.
They already knew me.
Someone had trained them how to fight me specifically.
