flap opened, she was ready.
Linn sprang from her position like a viper. Her arm shot through the chute, her fingers clattering past the tray of food and latching on to Isyas’s wrist. She yanked him against her cell door, and before he could let out a sound, her other arm was through, hand clapping against his mouth.
Linn needed only one hand to kill a man.
She twisted.
Isyas’s body went limp. Linn heard the jangle of his keys cut short as they scraped against her cell door, tucked awkwardly in that position at his hips. Leaning against the cold blackstone door, she tugged him against the opening at the chute, fingers creeping along his uniform until she found the cold metal and sharp-cut edges of the keys.
With a few deft twists of her fingers, the keys were in her palm, and she couldn’t still her trembling as she fit them into the keyhole.
The door swung open with a cringingly slow creak.
She hauled Isyas’s body into her cell, swiping two daggers from his uniform and strapping them to her wrists. She had to throw her entire body weight against the door to press it shut. It closed with a grating sound that echoed throughout the corridors.
It took all of her willpower to shove the upturned tray and bread through the chute and to ignore the watery kashya porridge already seeping into the cracks on the floor. It should have turned her stomach, but she swallowed against the urge to drop to her knees and lap it all up.
Her head spun as she started down the dimly lit dungeon corridor, dehydration sending nausea pulsing through her stomach. The daggers were heavy in her hands, and once or twice, she leaned against the wall, certain she was going to pass out.
It had felt all right sitting there in the darkness, yet standing outside, she realized how weak she really was. She’d overestimated herself.
As another bout of dizziness crashed into her, one thing kept her grounded. A pair of fire-ice eyes. A deep, steady voice.
I will come for you, at the midnight shift.
No, she had to be far from this place by then. She’d planned this precisely so that she would escape during her mealtime, hours before the midnight shift. Hours before that yaeger would come for her. She didn’t trust him, and there was even less of a chance that she would lead him to Ana.
She was breathing hard as she navigated the corridors, tracing the familiar paths she had taken twice each day to the stairs. The shadows around her seemed to shift, and once or twice, she thought she caught movement at the corners of her vision that turned out to be nothing.
A small draft stirred her Affinity. She latched on to that. She was close, so close.
Linn slowed before the last turn. Taking care not to make noise, she pressed herself against the wall. Two guards always stood sentry before the spiraling staircases; she caught the tremors in the air from their breaths, pulsing warnings against her senses.
She’d have to fight them to get past them.
Gods, she thought, drawing deep, silent breaths, as though that would replenish her strength. She palmed the daggers she had stolen from Isyas. Her hands shook as she lifted the blades before her face in a silent prayer.
Footsteps clattered in the corridor beyond. Before she’d had a chance to react, the dungeon doors burst open, and Vasyl’s snarl echoed in the corridors. “…don’t care that that Nandjian bastard’s ordered us to lay off. I’m the Deputy Warden, and I’ll get a confession out of that Kemeiran if it’s the las—”
Linn sprang the moment Vasyl and his guards rounded the corner. Her daggers cut two wicked red lines across their throats. Their bodies thumped as they fell to the floor, blood gushing down the gray of their armor.
Vasyl was backing away and screaming at the remaining two guards at the entrance to get her, get her.
Linn’s head pounded; her hands shook as she refocused her blurring sight on the two guards charging her.
The Wind Masters had taught her that the most successful warriors borrowed from each of the elements, their bodies attuned to whichever suited the moment best. Fire. Water. Air. Earth. Always adapting, always fluid.
In that moment, Linn became water.
She slid beneath the outstretched sword of the first guard, curving around the twist of his body like water around a rock. And then she was fire: her arm shot out, dagger plunging into his