When I finally turned to face Silas, his expression was one I’d never seen him wear: pure, mortal terror.
But I wasn’t going to take his life hiding behind the shield I’d built. No. I wanted to look him in the eye as I killed him.
I told myself I wanted to be the last thing he saw before he departed this world — that I wanted him to go to his grave with the image of me burned into his consciousness. But there was another reason.
I wanted him to see what I’d become — that I wasn’t the scared, broken girl he’d found in that alley five years before.
I was no longer weak.
No longer powerless.
No longer his to control.
His eyes widened as I dropped the wards, a dagger clasped in each hand. I lunged for him, but Silas was faster, and he blocked my first strike.
It didn’t matter. I’d anticipated as much. I brought myother blade around in a sweep of steel and fury, but he blocked that one, too.
On my next strike, he lunged with his own knife, and I narrowly avoided taking a blade to the kidney.
Still, I felt the long tip slice through leather and flesh. A searing heat curled out from the wound, but I was used to fighting through pain.
I lost myself to the clash of steel. I blocked. Parried. Attacked. Blocked.
Silas was stronger, but he’d been tucked away in his safe house for far too long. He hadn’t been staking vampires every night as I had, yet I took more cuts than I would have liked.
A few of Silas’s strikes slashed through my clothes, opening gashes on my arms and sides. The wounds throbbed as blood pooled beneath my leathers, but I didn’t stop moving — not until he twisted to the side, sinking his blade into my gut.
Time seemed to slow as Imogen screamed. All of my attention went to the length of cold steel in my stomach as pain cut through every other sensation.
I regained my focus a second too late, shoving Silas off before his blade could do any more damage. The knife had gone straight in and out, but a familiar terror sank into my bones.
Blood was seeping from the wound, soaking my leathers at an alarming rate.
I was afraid to move — afraid to draw breath, worried what vital organ he might have punctured. Silas was nothing if not precise.
My next strike was a millisecond too slow. Silas movedout of the way, and I stumbled. He struck the back of my neck — hard — and I careened into the filthy brick wall.
Fresh pain flared through me as the movement tore at the wound in my belly. I squeezed my eyes shut as I pushed off from the wall, opening them just long enough to fling a dagger at his throat.
Silas deflected it easily, and my weapon skittered across the floor, landing in a pool of blood.
“Didn’t I tell you that your emotions would one day get you killed?” he crooned.
I didn’t answer him — not that I could have. I could scarcely breathe.
I pressed a hand to the wound in my stomach, but I was losing too much blood.
Fury pounded through my body, but I wasn’t angry at Silas anymore. I was furious with myself because he was right: I’d let my emotions get the best of me.
The others had been easy to kill because I wasn’t invested. Vince and the others might have made my life miserable, but they weren’t Silas.
They hadn’t found me at my most vulnerable and twisted my self-doubt into some fucked-up flavor of loyalty — hadn’t used it against me.
In that moment, I realized I hadn’t stayed with Silas because I was afraid. I’d stayed because I’d thought I was worthless — thought I wasnothingwithout Silas.
Now I was letting all my pent-up resentment get in the way of this fight, and I was losing — badly.
The realization was enough to cut through my haze of pain. I allowed that clarity to fill me up, sharpening my anger into focus.
