Nevernight (The Nevernight Chronicle #1) - Jay Kristoff Page 0,188

Whisperwastes are liable too do that too, hence Ashkah’s lack of any real tourism industry.

CHAPTER 33

STEPS

She waited.

Though her mind swam with images of what might be happening up those stairs, though her blood boiled at the thought of Ashlinn’s betrayal, her revenge against Remus within her grasp and yet untasted, she waited. If the Luminatii got Cassius and the Revered Mother in their clutches, every Red Church disciple was at risk. Her friends. Mercurio, too. Her first step had to be cutting off Remus’s escape. Cassius and Drusilla couldn’t be allowed to fall into the Confessionate’s hands.

And so she lurked in the blood. Cursing herself a fool. She knew it for certain now. Ash had killed Lotti. Tried to frame her for the murder. Every moment, every word she’d spoken had been a lie. Hush had warned her, too, that eve in the Hall of Truth.

you have one friend inside these walls

not carlotta

not tric or ashlinn

and not me

That friend lurked in the shadows of the room, watching with his not-eyes. Remus and his troops had marched out. But there were still a dozen Luminatii in the speaker’s chamber, clad now in ornate leather, embossed with the sigil of Aa. The armor was thick, the buckles made of wood, not a rivet or screw anywhere—specially crafted for the assault, no doubt. A half-dozen men stood watch over Adonai and Marielle. Six more at the threshold, watching the corridor beyond. The weaver was still unconscious, Osrik crouched beside her, his blade lingering at her throat.

Start at the beginning …

Mia couldn’t see much beneath her cloak anyway, and so she closed her eyes. Reached out to the shadows in the room. Just like she had among the strawmen in the Hall of Songs, she could feel those shadows like she could feel herself. She remembered what it was to be that fourteen-year-old girl again. Tearing Aa’s statue to pieces outside the Basilica Grande. Stepping between the shadows like a wraith. But most of all, she remembered the man who helped start it all, who’d seen her father hung, her mother in chains, her brother dead before he could walk.

She spread her arms beneath the blood. Fingers outstretched. Reaching through the flickering gloom, out to the shadows at each legionary’s feet. Curling them into hooks, digging them into the soles of the soldiers’ boots, every one. And, quiet as she could, she rose from Adonai’s pool.

She realized her mistake at once—though she was still hidden beneath her cloak of shadows, the blood she was soaked in wasn’t. As she hauled herself up on the ledge, scarlet spattered on the stone, bloody handprints appearing beneath her palms. The legionaries in the room turned to the sound, Osrik’s brow creased.

Confusion. Hesitation.

It was enough.

Mia stepped into the shadow beneath her

stepped out

of the shadow

on the wall

behind Osrik

One of the legionaries saw movement from the corner of his eye, cried out in alarm, but by then Mia’s knife was already buried hilt deep in the join between the boy’s neck and swordarm, severing the tendons clean. Osrik screamed, blade falling from nerveless fingers, Mia bringing her knee up into his jaw and sending him crashing to the floor. She snatched up his dagger, and then

she was

stepping into

the dark at her

feet and out of the shadows behind another legionary, cutting his hamstrings with her blade and dropping him to the deck. The man beside him struck out at her with his cudgel and she swayed backward, the blow whistling past her chin, stepping inside his guard and burying her knee into his groin hard enough to make every man in the room wince in sympathy. The soldiers cried out, but trying to charge this gore-soaked horror from the sorcerer’s blood pit, they found their boots stuck fast to the stone.

Mia could feel it. The power of the night, coursing beneath her skin. The hungry dark. The Mother herself, the goddess who’d marked her, staring with black eyes at these men who’d invaded her holy ground.

And she was angry.

She dropped one, then another, snatching up a cudgel and cracking it across jaws and the backs of skulls, skipping between patches of darkness and leaving only bloody footprints behind. They were men of the finest cohort in the legion—Remus hadn’t been foolish enough to bring any marrowborn lads or senators’ sons with him to the Mountain. But faced with this blood-soaked horror, black eyes and savage smile and red, red hands, soon enough, the fear had them.

“Your boots!” one cried. “Take off