A Vow So Bold and Deadly (Cursebreakers, #3)(100)

He startles, then almost smiles. He touches a hand to his cheek as if he’s expecting the damage to be gone, but he must feel the scarring, because the smile vanishes, leaving only a bleak look in his remaining eye.

Harper takes his free hand again. “It’s okay,” she says softly. “Scars mean you survived something terrible.”

“Ah, yes, Princess,” whispers a voice from across the room. Lilith, her voice slithering into the silence. “He has indeed survived something terrible. But haven’t we all?”

I whirl to my feet, weapons in hand, only reaching for my magic secondarily. But I’m a second too late, and her power drives me back, knocking away the furniture, sending Harper and Rhen scrambling.

“Don’t you see?” she calls to me. “You are weak, Grey. I’ve had a lifetime to learn this power. You’ve had a few months.”

“I don’t just have magic,” I snap, and I pull throwing blades from my bracer. They drive into her midsection, and she stumbles back. Tycho has a bow in his hands, and just as quickly, an arrow appears in her chest.

I go after her. “I’ll make sure you’re truly dead this time.” Then I pull my dagger, the one weapon I’ve saved for this moment, the one weapon I know will make a difference.

I aim right for her heart.

She screams and thrusts a hand at me, driving me back. It’s like a blast of cold wind, and I stagger, trying to stay on my feet. I call for my own magic, but it’s like standing against a hurricane with a piece of silk. I can feel the edges of my power fraying. The bones of my fingers begin to snap, and my grip on the dagger weakens. My magic flares to heal the injury, but as soon as I heal one bone, another fractures. The wind is intense, freezing cold, and I wish for Iisak, for mastery of my power, for anything.

Another bone snaps, and I cry out. I’m going to lose the weapon.

“You are too weak,” she says again.

“To me!” calls Tycho, and I toss the weapon in his direction, but the wind is stinging my eyes, overturning furniture, and I cannot tell if he’s caught it. Harper surges forward, but the wind catches her too, sending her flying back against the stone wall.

Lilith stands in the middle of the maelstrom, her hair lifting in the wind, blood streaming from her wounds. She laughs. “You thought you could stop me?” she demands. “All I have done to you, and you thought you could stop me?”

Tycho gets low to the floor, crawling with the dagger in his hand, his teeth gritted, his eyes clenched against the wind.

Lilith sees him. She smiles. It’s terrifying.

“Tycho!” I snap. “Tycho, hold!”

“Ah, Grey,” she croons. “You’ve found a little lapdog.”

Then she pulls the daggers out of her chest, draws back her hand, and throws.





CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

RHEN

I don’t think. I leap. The boy is wearing armor, but I know Lilith’s talents, and those blades will go right into his neck. I slam into him and we roll. A knife hits my armor and bounces away, but fate never goes easy on me, so the other slices across my neck and jaw. I cry out. Tycho’s dagger goes skittering across the marble floor.

But he’s alive. He’s panting underneath me, staring up at me in surprise.

“Are you all right?” I say.

He nods quickly. “You’re bleeding.”

I slap a hand to my face, and it comes away slick with blood.

Somewhere outside the window, a creature screams in the darkness. Lilith picks up the dagger. She drags the blade across her fingertip, and blood wells up. “I know what this is.” She looks at Grey and some of the wind quiets, but the force still pushes against us. “Where did you find it?”

He seems to be having more luck than the rest of us, because he’s still on his feet, facing her, bracing against her power. His eyes are dark and furious, his hands gripped tight on his weapons—but he can’t move forward. “I know where I’m going to put it.”

She laughs. “Look at you. You can’t even touch me,” she says. Her gaze shifts to me. “Rhen, would you like to watch me carve her heart out of her chest this time?”

“Go ahead and try,” says Harper, and her voice is fierce—but weak. I saw her hit the wall. Blood glistens in her hair.

“As always, you are all too weak. Rhen, I have offered you many chances. Your people destroyed my people. You used me and turned me away. Your kingdom will fall.”

“Grey brought an army,” I snap. “My kingdom was going to fall anyway. And so will you, when they come for him. You can kill us, but you can’t kill them all.”

“An army?” She laughs again. “Grey brought a handful of soldiers.”

My eyes snap to his, but Grey hasn’t looked away from her. “You brought no army?” I say.

“I came to kill her,” he says. “Not to take your throne.”

Lilith claps her hands in delight. “You’re such a fool, Rhen! This is why you are always destined to fall. You yielded to a man who didn’t even arrive with a battalion of soldiers. You yielded to a man who came with a broken girl and a boy who was likely weaned from his mother’s breast a week ago.”

She takes a step forward, toward Grey, completely unaffected by the wind. It’s beginning to flay the skin from Grey’s cheeks, but it barely ruffles her skirts. “And you. Your loyalty was once a point of pride, and now you sit up and beg for scraps from your enemy. I was once friendly with Karis Luran. I imagine I can be so with her daughter.”