She has a bottle in her hand, and she hurls the contents in my direction. I scramble backward, wondering what trick she’s playing as liquid arcs toward me. The water sizzles as it hits the ground, and I scream as a fat droplet lands on my boot and burns right through the leather. I stumble and nearly fall. She’s turned the water into acid, and now it’s eating through my skin, searing me.
I writhe against the tunnel wall, unable to take another step. The pain’s so bad I want to rip my foot right off, but I see her advancing, readying to douse me. I can’t let it hit me. Not if I want to make it out of here.
Though my foot feels like it’s on fire, I pull myself up using the wall, trying to find my speed again. I take a right turn, and another, unsure if I’ll ever be able to lose her. Then I hear the clash of metal and feel a spark of hope in my aching chest.
I must be near the main passageway again, which means Leon and Alastor are also nearby. I move toward the noise as best I can.
At last, gasping and limping, I stumble back out into the tunnel I’m looking for. But I’ve ended up on the other side of the fray, staring at the backs of the cleavers as they fight Leon and Alastor. Neither side has made much progress in the last few minutes.
Boots drum behind me, and I spin around in time to see the aquari cleaver, the flask still glinting in one of her hands, her sword in the other.
I lift the knife Leon gave me. It won’t be much use against a sword, but I have an idea.
Tira taught me to play darts in her family’s tavern. I took a shine to the game—pleased I didn’t automatically lose because I was slower or weaker than the other children—and I practiced enough that I got pretty good at it.
In fact, I have excellent aim.
I fling my knife toward the cleaver. The blade glances off her wrist, the handle striking the bottle hard. She barely reacts to the slice across her skin, but the flask flies out of her hand, skidding across the tunnel floor into the shadows.
I have no weapon now, but I’d never have won in close combat anyway. At least the acid is now out of direct reach. I enjoy two whole seconds of relief before she starts to advance.
I’m acutely aware of the cleavers behind me. I can’t move back. I can’t move forward. I have nowhere to go.
“Rowas,” she calls, and I glance over my shoulder to see another cleaver turn, his eyes falling on me. He’s holding one hand to a thick gash on his shoulder, blood bubbling through his fingers, but you’d never know it from his blank, passive face.
The female cleaver nods to him, and all the air is ripped from my throat.
It’s instant, the dreadful emptiness in my lungs as the aesteri suffocates me. I fall to my knees, unable to hold myself up as I fight to pull in oxygen. But no matter how hard I try, I can’t catch a breath.
I’ve been here before. Screaming for air. Darkness creeping into the edges of my vision.
And I’ve survived this before.
But this place is so cold and the eyes of the cleavers so black—how could I possibly conjure the heat in my veins now? I reach deep for any magic I can find. The golden light…just isn’t there. Instead, I find something else entirely.
The power throbs within me, deep and irresistible. I’m at the center of it—the source—but its pull reaches far beyond me. It’s rearranging the world around us—me and this unknown force—making us the point around which all the others turn.
The aesteri’s suffocating magic falters as his sword is wrenched from his hand. I’m barely aware of my relief as I finally pull in deep lungfuls of air. I’m mesmerized by the way the sword hangs in front of me, suspended in the air. Then it starts to turn in a wide circle, moving around me.Orbitingme.
The magic throbs harder, giving off an audible hum as the aquari cleaver’s sword leaves her hand too. My knife, lying on the ground where it landed after I threw it, joins hers, spinning around me with the other weapons. Shouts of alarm ring behind me, and more blades join until they’re revolving around me in a dance of sharp-edged metal, glinting as they flip and rotate faster and faster in the torchlight.
Just when the speeding metal becomes a blur, it stops. The swords spinning around me scatter, flying outward like a flock of birds. The aquari cleaver is impaled on her own sword, the blade driving through her chest with astonishing force, while my knife lands in the aesteri’s throat.
I hear wet gasps and thumps behind me as the other blades find soft, fleshy targets. I turn to see three more bodies lying on the tunnel floor.
I was right, I think light-headedly,the maroon of their tunics does hide the blood.
I lift my head, my vision still blurring. Only one cleaver is left standing in front of the fae, disarmed and alone. He straightens, speaking in his dead, toneless voice:
“All praise to Ethi?—”
Leon cuts his throat before he can finish.
* * *
LEON
I didn’t understand what was happening at first. I thought the aesteri’s magic had malfunctioned.
