Nevernight (The Nevernight Chronicle #1) - Jay Kristoff Page 0,191

how far they were from home. That the dark around them was not only angry. It was hungry.

She dashed up the stairs, met two more soldiers at the top, gifting them an end the same as the ones below. They seemed so small here in the Mountain’s belly. Without their sunblades and white mail and their cloaks like crimson rivers. Just tiny little men, their faith in the Everseeing not quite enough to protect them from his bride. From the one she’d marked. The one she’d chosen, in this, her house. Her altar. Her temple.

Mia was almost at the Hall of Eulogies when they spotted her. Quietly ending two legionaries, she failed to notice two more descending from above. She heard roars of alarm, turning in time to see the Luminatii rushing toward her. She slipped low and sliced one from knee to privates, severing his femoral artery and bleeding him out on the floor. The second cracked her across the temple with his club, and she staggered, wrapping his feet up in darkness and slipping behind him, burying her blade half a dozen times into his back. But she heard more shouts now, more running feet.

Half a dozen Luminatii were charging down the stairwell toward her, among them Alberius, head of the century himself. She could throw on her cloak of shadows, perhaps slip past them unnoticed. But the thought of Ashlinn’s betrayal, of what she’d done to Tric, of these bastards invading the place she’d come to think of as home—all of it burned in her chest with an intensity that almost frightened her.

No more running. No more hiding.

“All right, bastards,” she whispered. “Follow me.”

The legionaries saw her, shouted warning. She drew her gravebone dagger. Osrik’s blade in her off-hand. The dried blood at her lips cracking as she snarled, the shadows about her writhing as she charged up the stairs to meet them. Alberius and the legionary beside him were both as broad as houses, cudgels and shields raised. The centurion squinted at her in the dark, at the blade in her hand that had claimed his eye. Recognition at last dawning on his paling face.

“You…,” he breathed.

The centurion touched three fingers to his brow and held them out to Mia.

“Luminus Invicta!” he roared.

Mia screamed wordlessly, heart singing as she raised her blades. The Luminatii roared answer, barreling down the stairs toward the blood-streaked daemon, raising their clubs, eyes growing wide as the girl stepped

into the shadow

at her feet

out of the shadows behind them

and kept right on running.

The Luminatii skidded to a halt, the rearmost soldier watching her disappear up the stair. Alberius bellowed and the chase was on, out along the broader hallways and into the Mountain proper. Mia saw four more Luminatii ahead, sprinting toward her. She picked up her pace, blades gleaming. And just as they reached her, cudgels raised, teeth bared, again she skipped

through the shadows

and out of the dark at their backs.

They turned, looked at her dumbfounded as she bent double, pausing to catch her breath. Alberius’s furious shouts ringing in the distance. And straightening, Mia raised the knuckles, blew them a kiss, and ran on.

There were thirty men chasing her by the time she arrived. More cries ringing through the Mountain, the sound of more approaching feet. Mia glanced over her shoulder and saw fury and murder in their eyes, skidding to a halt at a huge pair of double doors, slipping inside and sealing them behind her as she turned and ran.

Out into the dark of the athenaeum.

The Luminatii burst into the room, the doors swinging open and slamming into the small wooden trolley marked RETURNS that had been placed—rather carelessly, it might have appeared—directly in the door’s path.

The trolley upended, smashed to the stone, dozens of tomes sent sprawling, skittering, skidding. A red-faced Alberius stormed into the room and booted the trolley aside, more books sailing across the mezzanine as his soldiers fanned out around him. He scanned the dark, a black scowl on his brow.

And somewhere out in the forest of pages and shelves,

came a rumbling,

chuddering

roar.

“… What in the Everseeing’s name was that?” one soldier asked.

“Fan out!” the centurion ordered. “Find that heretic bitch and gut her!”

Twenty-nine salutes thumped against twenty-nine chests. The Luminatii marched down the stairs and into the shelves, weapons raised. Splitting wordlessly into small columns of six men apiece, they spread out, scouring aisle after aisle. Alberius led a group of his finest, narrowed eyes searching every nook and corner. Six years he must