The Broken Ones (The Malediction Trilogy 0.6)(40)

It shrieked and released me, and I had the chance to see the sluag attacking Victoria just before it knocked the torch from her hand and we were once again plunged into darkness.

Ignoring the pain in my shoulder, I surged through the water and slammed my knife into its side, then pulled another blade, using it to climb the sluag’s flank. It screamed and twisted, and I slid from side to side over its back, feeling its stinger slam into my armor. All it would take was one blow to a chink in the steel, one sting, and I’d be done.

Biting down on one of my blades, I ignored the burning of the steel against my skin and grabbed wildly until my hands found the stinger stalk. Digging my fingers into the flesh, I pulled, my heels braced against its back. The sluag reared, rising higher and higher. My boots started to slide, but before I fell, I cut the stinger off at the base.

The sluag twisted and screamed, and I fell, water closing over my head.

A heartbeat later, the sluag’s bulk slammed down, crushing me against the rock.

I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t move. Couldn’t get my good arm positioned to heave the blasted thing off me. And until it died, my magic was useless.

Seconds ticked down, my fingers grasping futilely at the slick rocks, my pulse racing faster and faster with the desperate need for air.

All I could think of was Pénélope. If I died, her value to her father would cease to exist, and it would only be a matter of time before he found a way to kill her. I didn’t trust Tristan or even Ana?s to keep her safe. I was the only one willing to sacrifice everything for the sake of her life.

Desperation gave me strength, and I twisted, shoving the sluag’s dying body up enough that my head broke the water, and I gasped in a mouthful of air before its weight drove me back down.

And then it went still.

My magic flooded back under my control, but before I could do anything, the corpse was lifted off and hands were dragging me to the surface. Tristan’s blood-smeared face was suddenly inches from mine, his eyes full of panic even as the chamber shook from the impact of the sluag’s corpse hitting the wall, rocks splashing into the water. “Are you all right?” he demanded.

I spat out a mouthful of foul water and nodded, unwilling to waste precious air on words. My friends stood wide-eyed around me, battered, but alive, sluag corpses bleeding into the pool that glittered in the sunlight.

Blinking, I stared up at the small opening that had appeared above, which revealed the blue sky of the outside.

Tristan hauled me to my feet, the metal armor that was crushing my shoulder popping back into shape under the force of his magic. “We need to go,” I croaked out. “They’ll have been attracted by the noise.”

No one moved, all eyes on something behind me.

Turning, I found the half-blood crouched in the water, eyes fearful. Confused. And, worst of all, hopeful.

“You’re a miner?” Tristan’s voice broke the silence.

The girl swallowed hard, then nodded. “Yes, Your Highness.”

“Your team missed quota?”

She cringed, clearly afraid of him. “Yes.”

The guild crest stitched onto her grey tunic was answer enough to his questions, but I knew that wasn’t why he was asking them. My heart, which had only just begun to slow, accelerated.

“Do you know why your team chose you?”

Silence.

“Because my magic was the weakest, Your Highness.”

Tristan’s jaw tightened, silver eyes fixed on the girl, though I knew it wasn’t really her he was seeing. The half-blood had been sentenced to die. If we left her here, that was inevitable, either by sluag or starvation. But what would bringing her back accomplish? There was no way to hide her for long, and once discovered, she’d only be sent back here again. Or worse. There was only one path to her salvation, and that was for Tristan to take the throne by force. And he was considering it.

Would this be his tipping point? I held my breath, praying to the human gods, the fates, the stars, that maybe this strange twist of circumstance would conspire to provide Pénélope with salvation.

Magic filled the cavern. More and more and more of it, the weight of it making my ears buzz and my skin break out in gooseflesh. An impossible amount of power – countless times what I could ever imagine possessing. Tears broke onto the half-blood’s face, and she whimpered, dropping to her knees in the water, her pleas unintelligible as she begged for him not to kill her.

But that wasn’t his intention. This was a test. A test to determine whether all his magic, all his power, would be enough to defeat his father. To take the crown.

Then it vanished in a rush that made my ears pop. Tristan turned his head away from the half-blood, from us, and exhaled. Not enough.

A blade flashed.

The half-blood’s head fell from her shoulders.

Ana?s stood behind the corpse, face blank and unreadable.

“Why?” Tristan demanded. “What gave you the right to do that?”

“Necessity,” she said. “Because none of the rest of you would give her the mercy she deserved.” Bending, she wiped her blade on the half-blood’s tunic before sliding it back in its sheath. “And because to do otherwise would’ve put everything we’re fighting for at risk. The very fact we rescued her from the sluag was bad enough – how much worse if we’d brought her back to Trollus? She’d be discovered eventually, and even if she fought, they’d torture the information of how she escaped the labyrinth out of her. It can’t be more damning than you rescuing her from your family’s own laws.”