Ruhle.
He materializes in front of me, just as my eyes finally recover.
Ruhle stares down at me, his teeth bared. “You little slut. You think we weren’t prepared for you?”
A web of finely spun spider silk from the demorari on the Gilded Isles is flung into the air above me. I recognize it from the gilded gleam of that silk; the enormous, bloated spiders weave pure light into a net so tight that nothing can break the strands or escape.
Not even a shadow.
I punch into nothing, but I’m too late.
Thin razor-fine wires of light sink over me—through me—and then I’m gasping on the ground like a beached fish, landing back in my corporeal body with a heavy thud.
It hurts. I can feel those little burning lines all over my skin, but it’s the dull ache in my bones that warns me that the jarring thud hurt me more than I immediately suspect.
A boot drives into my stomach.
The shock of such pain wrenches a gasp from me, but I barely have time to absorb it, because another one replaces it.
“I’ve spent years waiting for this moment,” Ruhle whispers, advancing on me menacingly. He grabs a fistful of my shirt and the net, his knee sinking into my stomach even as he presses the tip of his knife against my throat. “Beg me for mercy.”
Sharp iron trails down my throat, leaving behind the wet slide of blood.
I grab his wrist, but it’s like straining against steel. He’s always been stronger than me.
I can’t escape. I can’t even feel the shadows here. All I can feel is those thin strands of light seeking to sink right through my skin.
The burn of the light. And the kiss of the knife.
“Beg,” he insists, and the knife cuts a little deeper.
“No!” I slam a palm into his arm. Desperately. Uselessly. “You think… I don’t know that nothing will come of it?” I kick and strain, but his weight’s too heavy to move. “You like them to beg,” I gasp. “You like to have us… on our knees before you. You want us to have a moment of hope…. Before you take it away from us!”
He laughs. “Maybe. Now where’s the fucking horn? I know you hid it here somewhere.”
“I’ll never tell you! I’ll never beg!” I scream, even as the knife drives through my chest with slow, inexorable pressure. It hurts. It hurts so much. I kick and scream, but there’s no stopping him.
Until the wraith right next to us suddenly slumps to his knees with a gasp, clasping at his throat before he slams face-first into the stone beside us.
Ruhle pauses.
“What the fuck?” he demands, pushing to his feet.
I grab the knife, gasping against the feel of it embedded just below my collarbone. Hurts…. Fuck. I don’t want to die, but even as I drag the knife out of my flesh, my vision wavers.
What happened?
I blink and find Karseem’s wide eyes staring blankly at me as Ruhle rolls his friend over.
His throat bleeds red. Someone cut it open to the spine.
I scramble upright, holding onto Ruhle’s bloody knife.
“Karseem?” This from Gwyvaen.
Ruhle draws another knife, his gaze cutting around the cavern. “Who did this? Show yourself.”
“A pity I don’t obey the whims of wraith born bastards,” a voice mocks.
Ruhle freezes, his knife hovering in his hand.
The breath I inhaled leaves me in a rush as I slowly lower my hands. My heart pounds fit to tear through my ribs. I recognize that mocking drawl. And while I don’t dare call the emotion I feel hope, I can’t help feeling as though… there may be a way out of this.
“Serruen?” Ruhle hisses. “I thought these caverns were secured?”
Serruen straightens, drawing the vicious scimitar he prefers. “They were.”
He takes one step toward where the voice came from and then he jerks back, as if something grabs him by the hair. A hiss of movement glints, and then blood spatters through the air as his throat is cut.
Serruen goes down like a bag of wheat. He slams to the floor, grabbing at his throat and choking. Blood wells and spurts through his fingers. His heels kick the floor. A death rattle echoes in his throat.
Cauldron’s piss. I kick my way free of the net of demorari silk, still bleeding like a stuck pig. A shadow grabbed him. A fucking shadow.
Falion.
I try to shove to my feet, but the world sways around me. Curse it. I have to get out of here. Ruhle wants my head. And who knows what Falion wants of me.
He surely didn’t just save my life because he likes me.
It happens so slowly, I almost think my eyes are playing tricks. A shadow forms, one tapping a knife against the stone wall.
“Blast it,” Ruhle snaps to the side, toward Rhyvaen.
“I can’t,” the light bringer returns. “I need time to recover.”
Grabbing a torch from the wall, Ruhle shoves it toward Rhyvaen. “Then fucking light this. Lights! Everyone get a torch!”
“All the better to see you with,” says the shadow, as three torches flare into flame. The light only paints it larger across the walls.
“Who are you?” Ruhle demands.
“I’m your nightmare, little wraith princeling,” Falion mocks. Suddenly there are a dozen shadows circling us. One of them actually holds a knife, which I thought was impossible.
Is he half-Sifting?
How is he holding that knife?
“Two down,” says the disembodied voice, as the knife draws sparks as it trails down the granite. “Four to go. Interesting to find a horde of wraiths daring to walk among the fae lands…. I wonder what brought them here?”
“Kill it,” Ruhle says.
One of his wraiths lunges forward, driving for the floating knife.
The shadow simply vanishes, and then the wraith is screaming—a brutal, tortured sound as if something drove a hand through his chest and grabbed his windpipe.
He dies with a gurgle, blood spilling from his lips as he falls but no other apparent injury.
The glimpse I catch of Ruhle’s face will warm my heart for centuries.
