City of Spells (Into the Crooked Place #2) - Alexandra Christo Page 0,33
her jacket. She never let her pockets go empty, after all.
She smeared the blood—Lionus’s blood—from her shoulder where he’d pushed her and onto the doll’s face.
Then Tavia snapped the left leg of the doll inward.
Lionus let out an ungodly scream.
The sound of blades and thunder disappeared from the air.
The two remaining Crafters ceased their attack on Karam and looked to Tavia with destruction in their eyes.
“You’re going to pay for that,” one of them said.
Tavia clutched on to her blade.
If this Crafter got one step closer to her, then she would—
A fist cracked against the girl’s face with enough force to send her crumpling to the ground with a yell. The blood sprayed from her mouth and onto the soil and she grabbed at her face like it might just fall apart.
“Enough,” Karam said. She looked to Tavia.”You are bleeding.”
“Yeah, I noticed.”
“I thought I taught you not to do that.”
Tavia breathed out a laugh. “I’ll try harder next time.”
“Do we need to start killing each other now?” Karam asked, turning to Lionus as he clasped his leg between both hands. “Is this why you came? To begin a war with us, too?”
Lionus opened his mouth to respond, but the next voice that echoed through the forest was not his.
“No,” Saxony said. “And if they know what’s good for them, they’ll start respecting the way that things work around here.”
She was flanked by at least ten of the Rishiyat Kin, as well as Asees and Arjun.
“I might have summoned you, but I’m not going to hesitate to send you right back if you touch any of our people again.”
Saxony looked to Lionus, who was still weeping on the ground, holding his broken leg.
Tavia wasn’t sure what all the fuss was about. It wasn’t like his people couldn’t heal him in an instant. It wasn’t like she had sliced a blade across his neck.
“We’re on the same side,” Saxony said. “We called you here to help us fight a great enemy.”
“She was going to risk our location by harboring an enemy busker,” Lionus said.
At the mention of Nolan,Tavia’s eyes searched the forest floor.
Nothing.
For the love of—
“Nolan’s gone,” she said to Karam. “We need to send people out into the forest to find him. Now.”
Karam nodded. “I will get the buskers back out of their cozy beds.”
Tavia couldn’t believe that they’d let Nolan slip out of their hands while they were so busy fighting against each other. It was ridiculous and if Nolan wasn’t found, then she was going to use that mirror doll to break Lionus’s other leg. Or even his damn neck.
Saxony nodded and cleared her throat, like she was clearing away any awkwardness from the air. She turned back to the Crafters.
“Tavia’s buskers will find the missing prisoner,” she said. “In the meantime, you should all heal yourselves, and then some of my Kin will show you where you can rest. In the morning, we’ll talk strategy. Which, just to be clear, involves killing Ashwood. Not each other.”
Tavia smirked.
Saxony looked so much more like herself when she was taking charge, rather than waiting for someone else to give her orders. She looked like a warrior. Like a Liege. Like someone who could lead a band of Crafters from across the world and into victory, without them all turning against each other.
She looked like the person Tavia remembered being friends with and that she so desperately wanted to trust again.
10
Karam
KARAM APPROACHED THE CABIN where Saxony and her grandma were having dinner together. It was the first time they had properly spoken since Saxony went behind her back to summon the Lieges, and Karam knew that she should probably leave them alone to eat, but she had to speak to Saxony before it was too late.
She knocked on the cabin door.
Karam had been putting this choice off for too long, because she was scared to leave Saxony alone in a place where she seemed primed to lose that fire inside of herself. Karam wanted to help Saxony become the leader she knew that she could be, but Saxony was there now. All that was left was Tavia, who Karam had thought needed someone to watch her back, but Nolan’s initial capture—and the look on Tavia’s face as she held Wesley’s gun to his head—told her that Tavia didn’t need protecting anymore. She needed an escape from