Ghyslain grabs Tamriel’s arm and tugs him toward the door—the Assassins now dead, they may be able to make a run for the servants’ entrance—but Tamriel doesn’t budge, struck dumb by the sight of the people who have just walked through the broken double doors.
Cassia, Dayna, and Matthias leap into the fray, arrows flying, blades slashing, and immediately take down two Assassins whose backs had been turned. Ino sprints into the room behind them, a body in midnight-black armor in his arms. Mercy. Tamriel’s blood runs cold at the sight of the bright red rash striping her flesh and the blisters dotting her face and neck. She’s . . . infected. Her immunity had not been enough to save her from the plague, but—
But they still have time.
She has not yet joined the ranks of the undead. If the Creator exists, if he has any mercy for them at all, he’ll see that she never does.
“Help me,” he says to Ghyslain, ripping his arm out of his father’s grip. Together, they run to Niamh’s side and help her hold off Faye. “Mercy—she’s infected,” he gasps to the healer. “Save her.”
Niamh’s eyes widen. She scans the room and sucks in a breath when she sees Ino cradling Mercy to his chest, being careful not to let her skin touch his. “Try not to die,” she calls over her shoulder, already sprinting away. His gaze lands on Master Adan, sparring with Firesse in the middle of the chaos. Mercy’s double-edged dagger gleams in the light as the First parries strike after strike, until Adan’s sword locks with one of her blades. He knocks her back and, while she’s still off-balance on the slick floor, plunges his sword through her stomach.
Ghyslain makes a sound of horrified shock as Firesse twists the double-edged dagger apart and shoves one blade into each of Adan’s eye sockets. He drops like a stone. The sword, still clenched in his fist, slides out of Firesse’s stomach without so much as a drop of blood. “She’s made herself invincible,” his father murmurs in disbelief. “Just like she did to Niamh—locked herself out of the Beyond.”
Sensing their eyes on her, Firesse’s gaze flicks up and meets theirs. She braces her foot on Adan’s forehead and yanks the daggers out of his skull, then starts toward them. No more games, her expression says. She’d come here to destroy them, and she has toyed with them long enough.
44
Niamh
Niamh and Ino hurtle through the empty, labyrinthine halls of the castle as quickly as they dare with Mercy lying huddled in her brother’s arms. Her body aches, pain jolting through every cut and bruise she’d sustained during the battle. The infirmary. Get to the infirmary. Save Mercy. Save everyone. Kill Firesse—kill the magic wielder, kill the magic. Mercy lets out a low groan as they careen around a corner and stumble down the darkened staircase to the sublevel of the castle.
“Foolish, stupid, stubborn, selfless girl,” Ino hisses through clenched teeth, his arms tightening around his sister.
“Left here,” Niamh says, and lets out a relieved sigh when they turn the corner and the door to the infirmary—and the men guarding it—come into sight before them. She has no idea where the entrance to the escape tunnel is, but every step of the way, she’d feared the worst—that they’d return to find the infirmary buried under rubble, all of Alyss’s priceless notes lost under tons and tons of rock and brick.
Adriel wakes with a start when she and Ino barrel through the door. Mercy’s brother gently settles her onto the bed next to him while Niamh searches the cluttered desk for Pryyam salt and a vial of the cure. She curses under her breath, her blood-covered hands shaking violently. Being in the throne room, watching men die and come back to life, tasting the coppery tang hanging in the air, had dredged up the horrors of the night she’d nearly died—the night she should have died.
“What happened to my Bareea?” Adriel asks, his voice tight with panic. “Is that the plague?”
Ino explains as he rips off Mercy’s armor, being careful not to touch her skin as he reveals the tunic and pants underneath. Niamh’s fingers close around a cool glass vial. She finds the jar of lavender Pryyam salt a second later and nearly trips over her own feet in her haste to get to Mercy’s bedside.
“Stand back.” Save her. Save her. Save her. Mercy’s eyes flutter when Niamh drops to her knees and tears the gauntlet off her wrist, rubbing the salt into her tender, blistered skin. The flesh shreds into ribbons at the slightest touch, the milky pus oozing out and dripping onto the sheet. Mercy’s agonized scream is so loud it makes her ears ring. Niamh chokes back a sob as she opens the vial and massages the cure into the raw flesh, repeating the ancient Cirisian incantation over and over and over. Save her.
Adriel and Ino watch in mute terror as Niamh continues to work, removing Mercy’s armor and treating the skin underneath until there is not one inch of plague-infected flesh left. Ino pulls the sheet over his younger sister and tucks it in around her shoulders as Niamh slumps back, exhaustion sweeping over her. “Is she going to live?” he finally asks, his voice ragged. The devastation on his face as he brushes a strand of hair from Mercy’s forehead breaks her heart.
She nods. She doesn’t trust her voice not to wobble—or give out completely. She could be wrong; with Firesse so close, with her magic so strong, the cure and the incantation might not be enough to bring Mercy back from the brink of death. Kill the magic wielder, kill the magic.
“Thank you,” Adriel whispers, laying a hand on her shoulder. She lets herself lean into the touch, into that little bit of comfort, for only one second. Then she straightens and pushes to her feet. Firesse is still upstairs. Tamriel’s people are still dying.
Ino’s eyes go to the ceiling. “Back to the battle, then.”
She nods again, but when she turns to follow him to the door, her gaze snags on the corner of a paper peeking out from below a box of vials—the notes she and Lethandris had made while they’d been working on translating the ancient Cirisian book. One word catches her attention:
Aitherialnik.
The thread which links the powers of the Old Gods of a single gens together.
She freezes, realization and dangerous, dangerous hope sweeping over her. Ino turns to her with a confused expression. His gaze follows hers to the paper.
Whatever unnatural ritual Firesse had performed the night Niamh should have died had created a link between them, a thin, tenuous string binding their souls together. Niamh had tried to ignore it, had tried to bury it alongside the memories of that night and the strange sense of otherness which has haunted her since, but it has never gone away completely. She closes her eyes and reaches for it.
It’s there, so faint she nearly misses it—not a series of thoughts or emotions, but . . . a presence. A darkness, as if Firesse’s soul has been irrevocably tainted by her abuse of Myrbellanar’s powers. Niamh lets out a sharp breath. Firesse had locked her out of the Beyond. Perhaps she can find an incantation to force her former First into it.
She lunges forward and rips the paper out from under the box, sending the glass vials tumbling to the floor at her feet. “Come on,” she orders Ino. “Quickly.”
She scans the notes as they race through the halls and bound up the stairs, the strange words swimming before her. She and Lethandris had transcribed every passage which had related to Myrbellanar and his gens, but they’d only managed to translate a fraction of it. Which one? She sends a prayer up to the Creator, to the Old Gods, to any gods who are listening. That slender, glittering thread hangs between her and Firesse, mocking her.
“What are you reading?” Ino asks between puffs of breath.
“Spells—I’m trying to find one to kill Firesse.”
“Well, can you hurry it up? We’re in a bit of a rush, in case you couldn’t tell.”
She ignores the sharpness of his tone. “I can’t just pick one at random. For all I know I could bring the castle down on our heads.”
“Maybe you should.”
She scans the paragraphs of text again, and her pulse picks up as her eyes sweep over a short phrase in the middle of the pa
ge. This one. Her stomach clenches. She mouths the words, not daring to give voice to the incantation until she is certain of the pronunciation. Myrbellanar only knows what hell she could unleash with the wrong spell. As she tests the words on her tongue, the magic flowing through her veins sings in response. This one.
She screams the incantation—screams the words over and over until her voice is raw. Beside her, Ino flinches, but he keeps running, keeps dragging her along when she begins to fall behind. They race through the broken doors of the throne room and skid to a stop on the bloodied floor. The guards are severely outnumbered—surrounded by undead creatures and Cirisian soldiers and Daughters of the Guild. The remaining guards are standing in a line before the dais, trying in vain to hold off Firesse’s remaining forces. Behind them, Cassia, Dayna, Matthias, Nynev, and a few more guards are locked in combat with Firesse and Drake, fighting to keep them away from the prince, who is kneeling beside his father, pressing his hands to a long gash in the king’s stomach, just below the edge of his breastplate. A steadily-growing pool of blood seeps out from Ghyslain and trickles down the steps.
A roar of rage and pain fills the hall, and everyone—every single person—turns to Firesse as dark red blood begins to spill out over her armor—from her face, her neck, her arms, from the gaping wound in her stomach. Mercy’s double-edged dagger slips out of her slackened fingers and clatters to the floor. She sways, shock written across her face as her body slackens and she crumples to her knees.
“Help the prince,” Niamh hisses to Ino, never taking her eyes off the dying First. He sprints toward the dais as the fighting slows. One by one, the undead soldiers drop to the ground, lifeless once more.
Something warm and wet trails down Niamh’s arm—blood. It starts as a slow trickle, collecting at the tips of her fingers and falling to the ground in fat droplets, but soon the entire left arm of her tunic is soaked, as well as the left side of her torso. The wound she had received the night she should have died has begun to bleed. She closes her fingers into a fist and cradles her arm close to her chest. At the front of the room, Nynev’s full attention is trained on Drake, who is standing frozen beside the throne, watching Firesse die. Niamh’s heart swells with love and pride and sorrow as she watches her sister, the woman who has given up so much for her.
Her thoughts drift to Isolde as a shudder rolls through her and her knees give out. Sweet, wonderful, fiercely protective Isolde, who had spent two long years dragging her out of the darkness of her mind, two years cradling and soothing her when she woke up screaming. Beautiful, cunning, gentle Isolde, who had been her first friend in the Islands, and who had later been the first and only person to have ever shared her bed. She had never learned if her beloved survived the wound she’d sustained when they fled the Islands, but she’ll find out soon enough. I’ll see you in the Beyond, my love, she thinks as her heart pumps its last few beats. Hopefully many, many years from now.
45
Calum
The First is dying.
Drake freezes in shock, gaping at the blood pouring down Firesse’s leather armor as she staggers, presses a hand to the gaping hole in her stomach, and slumps to her knees. A low moan—of surprise or pain or frustration—escapes her small, lovely mouth. Between them, half hidden from his view by the guards who had immediately leapt onto the dais, the prince kneels beside his father, his hands shaking as he alternates between trying to remove the king’s breastplate and keeping pressure on the wound leaking blood onto the stone tiles. Firesse’s face pales. She sucks in a shuddering breath, the fingers over her stomach now slick and painted crimson, and crumples.
Dead.
Distantly, the yelling of the guards and the thump of bodies hitting the ground reaches his ears, but still he does not move. As people swarm the dais and surround the prince and king, shouting over one another to go after the Daughters, to hunt down the rest of the Cirisians, to find a healer and a surgeon for Ghyslain, someone roughly grabs Calum’s arm. Calum’s arm. Those mental shackles around his mind and the ice-water in his veins are gone; every last trace of his father’s corrupting presence is absent, save for the memories of the horrors he’d witnessed at his own hands. As the person gripping his arm yanks him backward, away from the chaos, he turns his head and meets Faye’s wide, terrified eyes.
“Don’t make a sound,” she whispers. She leads him around the mass of people surrounding the wounded sovereign—where Nynev, Dayna, and several dark-haired elves are now shouting commands, sending soldiers to chase after the Daughters racing out of the throne room. He catches a glimpse of Mother Illynor’s green-and-gold scales just as she steps through the broken, splintered doors, her Assassins close on her heels. They’re not fleeing; their employer dead and unable to pay, they’re likely headed out to take advantage of the chaos they have unleashed upon the city by pillaging whatever they can carry.
Faye rips open the door and shoves him through first, silently shutting it behind her. Before his eyes adjust to the dimness of the narrow, dark hall, she presses a little blade against his throat—the oyster-shucking knife. “It’s you in there, isn’t it?” she hisses. Her eyes narrow and she pricks him with the knife. His knees nearly give out at the sensation of the droplet of warm blood rolling down his neck. It has been so long since he felt anything beyond his father’s possession of him, beyond that oily, slimy coating under his skin which had kept him separate from the rest of the world. The few brief minutes he’d managed to overpower Drake and take control were nothing compared to what he feels now, knowing he is truly, inexplicably, miraculously free.
It is through lips wholly his own that he says, his voice wobbling, “It’s me.”
“Can you run?”
He nods.
Together, they sprint down the narrow corridor and skid around sharp corners, Calum hissing directions through labored breaths. He keeps them to the smaller halls, the ones not important enough to patrol during the battle, the ones he had explored for hours as a child after being thrown out of meeting after meeting after meeting, and they arrive at the servants’ exit without crossing paths with a single guard. He enters the password into the complicated combination lock, but the lock doesn’t budge. He curses under his breath. Of course they’ve changed it since the last time he was here. With Faye’s help, they slam into the door until the aged hinges snap. Those hadn’t been changed in a long, long while.
They stumble out into the bright sunlight. Faye grabs his hand and pulls him toward the open castle gates, using the tall hedge mazes as cover from the guards running down the long gravel carriageway. “Stay here,” she whispers. Before he can say a word, she slips out, two throwing knives in her hands, and launches herself at the guards. A few heartbeats later, she reappears at his side, her face flecked with fresh blood. “Come on.”
“Why did you save me?” he asks as they pass under the gates and duck into an alley between two massive manors. The alley opens up to a large courtyard, hidden from the street by the houses surrounding it, with a gurgling fountain at its center. Calum does a quick scan of the windows. Every single one has its curtains tightly drawn.
“Take off your armor and wash off the blood.”
With that, the Assassin darts back into the street. He obeys. A few minutes later, she returns and tosses a clean shirt and pants at him, then steps up to the fountain and begins to scrub the blood off her hands and face, her hair, and her weapons while he changes. When he turns back, she is dressed in a simple cotton tunic and leggings, her weapons hidden somewhere under the bulk of her oversized shirt. She perches on the edge of the fountain, the water behind her tinged pink, and begins to braid her wet hair back.
“When I was six, my twin brother fell deathly ill,” she finally says, her voice so soft he can barely hear her over the gurgling of the fountain. “It was a long, slow, painful process. Every night, I slept beside him—my other half, my first friend—and whispered prayers to the Creator that he would get better, that the healers Papa brought in
from all over the country would find a cure for whatever was ailing him. They never did. They treated him with every manner of medicine, with leeches, with so much bloodletting that he fell into a coma for a week, but nothing worked.
“One day, later that year, Papa opened our door to find a rich nobleman on our stoop, asking about Fredric. He said he’d heard the story from the people in town and wished to offer the services of his healer, who was on his way back from treating the queen of Rivosa of a wasting sickness—the same one the nobleman suspected Fredric had. All he asked for in return was my hand in marriage.” She shudders, ties off the braid with a strip of leather, and pushes it behind her shoulder. “Mama and Papa refused, but, fool that I was, I begged them to reconsider. I would do anything to save Fredric, as he would have done for me. I would not live in a world where he did not exist. And our parents . . . they were heartbroken and desperate. The nobleman and I were engaged the next day, and he sent for his healer immediately. To show that he was sincere in his offer to help, he promised he would not wed me until my brother was healed.
“The healer came too late. I was lying beside my brother when he took his last breath. When my father tried to break off the engagement, my fiancé sent men into our home to shatter his legs so he could never work the fields again. They pretended it was a robbery gone wrong, but we all knew who was truly behind it. All he’d wanted was a pretty young wife to warm his bed, to fulfill his filthy fantasies, and a family who was forever indebted to him. He liked the power it gave him. On the day we were to be wed, I slipped out of the bedroom my twin and I had shared, laid some fresh flowers on Fredric’s grave, and walked for two and a half days to find the Assassin it was rumored was staying in the next town over.” She stands and gestures for Calum to follow her through an alley opposite the one through which they had come—one which will lead them away from the castle and, if they continue south, to the city gates.
Born Assassin Saga Box Set Page 111
