She crashes through the table.
Skartovius is right behind her, rolling.
Kleora stands, ready to rip at me with her talons—
She’s forced to flick her hand over her face in sheer annoyance as the moth manages to flutter in front of her face.
It gives Skartovius all the time he needs to complete his somersault, slashing the irons holding my ankles bound to the floor.
I duck from Kleora’s attack, feeling the hair on my neck split from the closeness of her. She attacks in a fit—
But Madame Kleora is a historian, not a fighter.
Not like me.
I throw a punch into her gut and she gasps, nearly doubling over.
The footsteps are almost here, almost to this room, leaping faster up the stairs.
My hand comes up to Kleora’s face, palm out, and she tries to bat my hand away to defend herself.
She may be a fullblood vampire, but I’m much taller, larger, and faster, even in my half-drunken stupor. Perhaps the stupor helps me, in fact, because it allows me to wobble to the side and spin behind Kleora without pain when I step on glass.
I tighten my forearm over her thin supple neck from behind, lifting the shackle and chain still connected to my left wrist so I can press it against her throat.
Kleora struggles, kicking, hands reaching up to grasp the chain at her neck—
Her skin starts to singe and burn from the silver, and she screeches.
Skartovius cocks back with his own pointed length of silver, ready to plunge his blade into her chest. I’m right behind her though and I’ll be impaled if he isn’t careful.
Bregsitch collapses into a ruined heap of ash and soot that looks much less imposing as a skeleton than he did as a vampire.
The door to the prison room flies open.
“Hold!” I yell at Skar.
He pauses mid-strike, arm reeled back.
Kleora groans and hisses as her flesh slowly burns under the weight of the silver chain I have wrapped around her neck, even with barely any pressure applied.
All three sets of eyes flip to the door, where a tall figure stands in a flowing black cloak.
My heart stammers, my eyes bulge.
The man smiles.
“Hello, little grimmer.”
Chapter 56
“Lukain,” I breathe in Kleora’s ear.
“Master!” she croaks, writhing in my chokehold.
She stops squirming when I press a little bit harder on the shackles, smoldering her skin more. She knows one flex of my arm will send the silver chain straight through her neck.
The man standing before me, known as Overseer Verant now, is much the same as when I last saw him. Still brutally handsome, still unnervingly in control.
