I look him in the eye. “And?”
He seems taken aback, although the sneer doesn’t leave his face.
“Yeah, yeah, sure. I am going to die. And I am a big liar. So what?”
He pushes me against the wall, hard. “So you lose. Admit that you lost.”
I try to shrug him off, but he grabs for my throat, fingers pressing hard enough to cut off my airflow. “I could kill you right now,” he says. “And you would be forgotten. It would be as though you’d never been born.”
There is no doubt in my mind that he means it, no doubt at all. Gasping, I pull the knife from my little pocket and stab him in the side. Right between his ribs. If my knife had been longer, I would have punctured his lung.
His eyes go wide with shock. His grip on me loosens. I know what Madoc would say—to push the blade higher. Go for an artery. Go for his heart. But if I manage it, I will have murdered one of the favored sons of Faerie. I cannot even guess my punishment.
You’re no killer.
I balk and pull the knife free, running out of the room. I shove the bloody blade into my pocket. My boots clatter on the stone as I head for the stairs.
Looking back, I see him on his knees, pressing a hand to his side to stanch the blood. He lets out a hiss of pain that makes me recall my knife is cold iron. Cold iron hurts faeries a lot.
I could not be gladder of carrying it.
I round the corner and nearly run down Taryn.
“Jude!” she exclaims. “What happened?”
“Come on,” I tell her, dragging her toward the other students. There’s blood on my knuckles, blood on my fingers, but not much. I rub it off on my tunic.
“What did he do to you?” Taryn cries as I hustle her along.
I tell myself that I don’t mind that she left me. It wasn’t her job to stick out her neck, especially when she made it abundantly clear she didn’t want any part of this fight. Is there a treacherous part of me that’s pissed off and sad that she didn’t kick me awake and damn the consequences? Sure. But even I didn’t guess how far Valerian would go or how fast he’d get there.
We’re crossing the lawn when Cardan veers in our direction. He’s wearing loose clothes and carrying a practice sword.
His eyes narrow at the blood, and he points the wooden stick at me. “You seem to have cut yourself.” I wonder if he’s surprised that I’m alive. I wonder if he watched the tower the whole time during his luncheon, waiting for the amusing spectacle of me jumping to my death.
I take the knife out from under my tunic and show it to him, stained a flinty red. I smile. “I could cut you, too.”
“Jude!” Taryn says. She’s clearly shocked by my behavior. She should be. My behavior is shocking.