Nevernight (The Nevernight Chronicle #1) - Jay Kristoff Page 0,189

your boots!”

The shadows snatched at their clubs and smothered their cries as she felled them one by one. The nearby comrades who heard them screaming and came to investigate met the same fates; felled by vicious blows or dropping with their throats cut. Until only one remained. A man with dark, blood-soaked curls, falling on his backside as he kicked off his boots, scrambling back against the wall, eyes wide with terror as this daemon from the abyss stepped from the shadows before him. Bloody knife in one hand. Bloody club in the other. Hair clinging like black weed to the gore upon its face.

And it opened its mouth, then. And it spoke with a girl’s voice.

“I’m sorry.”

The blade fell.

Rising from the bloody mess she’d made, Mia heard a groan, looked to where Osrik was trying to rise from the floor. Marching over to the Vaanian boy, she kicked him hard in the head, tumbling him back to the flagstones. Kneeling beside Marielle, Mia checked the weaver was still breathing, covered her tortured skin with the tattered remnants of her robe. Then she crouched beside Adonai’s head, talking carefully.

“Speaker, it’s Mia. I’m going to untie you now. Your sister is alive and well. Whatever you might see, I need you to not murder anyone for a minute or two, agreed?”

Adonai grunted in response, nodding. Mia cut his bonds, untied the gag and blindfold. The speaker was on his feet in a flash, face twisted, hands raised. Tendrils of blood rose from the pool, writhing like serpents, pointed like spears. The albino’s eyes fell on his sister, on the boy beside her who had threatened her life …

Osrik was trying to rise again, groaning and clutching his jaw. Adonai raised his arms above his head, fingers curled like a puppeteer over a marionette. Bloody coils whipped from the pool, seizing Osrik’s wrists, feet, dragging him across the flagstones and down into the red.

“I said don’t kill him!”

Mia seized the speaker’s arm, spun him to face her. With a wave of his fingers, the speaker wrapped another whip of gore around Mia’s throat and lifted her off the ground. The girl gasped, choking, legs kicking at the air. A dozen shadows about the room seized Adonai’s limbs, their ends fashioned into needle-sharp points, quivering just an inch or two from his eyes.

“Let me go,” Mia croaked. “I just saved your life. Your sister’s life. We’re on the same damn side. And we need Osrik alive to find out what’s going on upstairs.”

“Be it not obvious?” Adonai snarled. “The Luminatii hath come for Lord Cassius. What more need we know?”

“Let. Me. Go. Fucker.”

Adonai sneered. But the grip at her throat slackened, the tendril setting her down gently on the stone before slipping back into the pool. The speaker waved one hand and Osrik emerged, gasping, blood bubbling at his lips as he whispered

“Mia, please…”

before being jerked back down beneath the flood again.

“Adonai, you and Marielle need to get out of here.”

“And where shall we go?” he spat. “A traitor hath been reared in our midst. Like be the Luminatii hath the location of every chapel twixt here and Godsgrave by now.”

“That doesn’t mean they’re moving on all of them. They likely wouldn’t for fear of giving the game away. Lord Cassius is the prize, and they can’t be allowed to get him back to Godsgrave. With you gone, they only have one way back to civilization.”

“The Whisperwastes,” Adonai said.

“Exactly. So stop fuck-arsing about and get out of here.”

“And what shall ye do, little darkin? Destroy an army by thyself?”

“That’d be my problem, wouldn’t it?”

“… our problem…”

Adonai’s eyes never left Mia’s. His voice as cold and hard as stone.

“This cur threatened my sister love, my sister mine, little darkin. Were I thee and had need of his knowledge, on my life, I would ask my questions swift.”

Adonai gave a lazy wave of his hand. Osrik resurfaced from the blood pool again, coughing and blubbing, barely conscious.

“Osrik, can you hear me?”

“Mia, plea—”

“Shut the fuck up, you piece of shit,” she snarled. “You’ve got one chance to live and that’s by telling me what I want to know, understood?”

“I—” the boy sputtered, retching and coughing. “Aye.”

“You poisoned the initiation feast. Cassius, the Ministry and initiates?”

The boy nodded, bloody hair dripping in his eyes. “Aye.”

“None of them are dead?”

“N-no. We used a kind of Swoon. We had Carlotta brew a specialized dose that would act swifter than usual. Remus wanted the ministry alive for q-questioning.”

“What about Tric?