picked up the blue sleeping concoction that had been left for me.
“I see you didn’t drink much of the draught,” she said. “Did you sleep freely then?”
I shook my head. “I took a bit and it made me—”
“She hasn’t needed it,” Bahlin interrupted, the underlying malice in his voice leaving no room for argument. “I used some of my skill as a healer to help move the natural process along.” He looked at me, his mouth settling into a harsh line. If he wasn’t telling her, either, of our suspicion that I’d been poisoned, I was pretty sure there was a good reason. He moved in behind the healer and cocked a hip up on the edge of the bed, the mattress depressing and rolling me toward him. I pushed myself back closer to the middle of the enormous bed with a grunt. Bahlin nodded his head so slightly that I wondered if I had imagined it. Then I understood. He wanted me further back from the healer in the event there was any conflict. We were both so much larger than her that the idea of us fighting with her was ridiculous.
Voice nearly devoid of inflection, Pirsen kept her back to us and said, “How much did she drink, dragon?”
“So you were the one to leave the sleeping dram? I suspected as much when you were the one to return to the room instead of Tarrek,” he said conversationally. “So where did you stash the lad?”
Confused, I looked between the two and then it dawned on me. Tarrek had gone out for clothes and not returned. He wouldn’t have sent Pirsen in without sending word. He’d been too involved in overseeing my care and recovery to suddenly abandon his watch over me.
Pirsen sighed and her hair began to darken, lengthening from her shoulder to her hips in seconds and ending as a deep black. She curled in on herself and when she stood, her power flowed through the room sending a feeling like biting ants up and down my bare skin. Her walking stick glinted metallic and before she could turn around, Bahlin yelled, “Run, Maddy.” Then, instead of giving me a chance to respond, he grabbed the covers and flipped me off the opposite edge of the bed. I landed in a tangle of limbs, skirt and sheet on the floor, striking my hip hard enough to send pins and needles down one leg. If I survived this, I’d end up with a nasty bruise. There was a tremendous crash and a masculine grunt of pain followed by the sounds of flesh striking flesh. I crab-walked backwards trying to get my back against a wall and scanned the room for some type of weapon. The only thing I could see was the dagger Tarrek had taken off when he went to meet with Bahlin earlier. I scrambled to the dresser, grabbed the dagger and turned toward the fight.
The woman held a short sword and had split Bahlin’s arm from elbow to wrist and I could see the red of meat and muscle laid open to the room. That arm hung ineffectually at his side, but he was fighting well one-handed. My movement had distracted the woman, and he grabbed her by the hair and yanked, propelling her past him and knocking her off balance. Unfortunately Bahlin’s back was to me, and he inadvertently threw her in my direction. Bahlin spun around and the look of shock on his face had him pausing. I didn’t have that luxury.
With a shriek of rage, the woman gained her balance and launched herself at me, walking-stick-turned-sword raised over her head as she prepared to cleave my head from my shoulders. A primal survival instinct took me like a firestorm, and I lunged forward to meet her charge.
“No,” Bahlin roared.
I dropped to one knee and blindly struck out and up over my head, the dagger gripped in my fisted hands. The feel of the knife entering my attacker’s body was a shock. It wasn’t anything like the movies portray it, where the knife slips into flesh like it’s little more than butter. Instead there was brief resistance before my dagger pierced her flesh and grated across her rib cage. Her momentum carried the knife well into her chest cavity and, I would later learn, shredded her heart. At the time I didn’t care. It was her or me, and I was intent on it being me. She sagged on my blade, her sword