“Dread lord sounds so sexy.”
“If you want sexy, watch him move landscapes around.”
“No shit—he does that?”
“I wouldn’t lie.”
She focused on the gray stone corridor, the flashes of light through high arrow-slit windows. “How does it feel when a vampire bites?”
My feet thudded beside hers. “How does it feel to be an assassin?”
“Once, decades ago, the Blackfish cultivated that reputation. But not now. We accept kill contracts, but not because someone wants a problem solved.”
Muscles in my jaw ached. “Making those choices because they’re right?”
“Bad people live in this world, Noa. Preying on the innocent.” Angel’s voice lowered into steeled confidence. “I save those I can, and when I kill, when I order my men to kill… a decision can be morally gray and still be on the right side of justice.”
“When a vampire bites, all you feel is euphoria. And each time after that, you want more.”
“That could become a problem,” she said.
“I fight it every day.”
“How often have they bitten you?”
“Too many times. They say I need a lot of protection.”
My feet slapped against the stone, suddenly loud to my ears. The air chilled. Shadows turned murky. When I looked back, I was alone. Angel was nowhere to be seen.
It took only an instant to realize I’d slipped into a passage that closed behind me, leaving her on the outside. My body slicked with fear while my heart pounded. The alarm swarming through my head made thinking a struggle.
Work through it, Noa!
Amal never intended an easy approach. Traps would be everywhere. Even after the shadows in the throne room, the attack from conscripts, arrows, and her hybrid enforcer, I’d been foolish enough to stumble into a passage with dead ends. More of a pocket where I’d likely rot if I didn’t find a way out.
And I had no bow and arrows. I’d forgotten them in the madness of vampires.
But magic fueled passages, at least those belonging to the King of the Forest. I would find a solution if I focused.
Slowly, I ran my palms along the stone wall. Then the opposite wall. My fingers shook beneath the pressure to sense something—anything. Behind me, magic was smokey and solid, and six feet ahead, I came up against the same barrier.
Insubstantial mist concealed an impenetrable wall of black ice. Angel would be on the outside, looking for a way through. She wouldn’t find it. This trap was Amal’s doing. Her fury sank beneath my skin, and I felt her sick satisfaction. I’d spend my days circling this space the way I’d circled around a hidden cave above a nymph pool. My fingers might press until they numbed, but I’d never find a softening to mark the way out.
Every breath juddered with the remnants of old nightmares. I’d been trapped in the dark before, unable to move while terror approached. The feelings were the same, the panic rippling the way water ripples around a submerged predator. An invisible threat the prey still senses without knowing which way to run.
I needed to find Grayson. Needed to destroy Amal. When I gripped Pelonie’s rune stone, the grooves scraped across my skin. Of all the failures, why did this one feel like a puzzle I needed to work through? I’d opened passages before and saw no reason not to open one now. Although I’d not been consistent before… hadn’t understood how I did it…
I thought I heard breathing that wasn’t mine. Then a low laugh. “Such a determined little rat.”
Amal’s voice, bouncing around the passage as if she stood beside me. The same parroted trick she’d used with the dead witches and their upward flicking smiles. In unison, and devoid of emotion.
I glanced around the passage, peered through the dim light. Saw nothing that looked like Amal. “Are you worried?”
“I don’t worry about rats.” Another scornful laugh, floating through the dark mist. “I send my children after them.”
The abominations were her children?
“Perhaps you should worry more about those children. I left them behind in smoldering piles.”
