The world seemed to slow as the prisoner’s head tumbled onto the scaffold, blood streaming from his neck. Nausea rose up my gut, and I covered my mouth with my hand.
Now the crowd’s cries were bloodcurdling, and they rushed forward, like they were about to storm the scaffold.
A jolt of fear shot through me. If they kept shoving me closer to the bayonets, I’d find my skull impaled.
“Come here.” Finn pulled me closer to him, one arm around me.
I shouted over my shoulder, “Stop pushing! There’s bayonets!”
The mob was screaming “Clovian scum!” and “Get out of Albia!”
The Clovian soldiers were barking orders I didn’t understand, and Finn and I were inching closer to them. Any minute now, I’d be stabbed.
“We’ve got to get out of here, Finn.” I started throwing elbows again, trying to clear a way out.
“Clovian scum! Clovian scum!” The mob chanted.
My attempts to flee the crowd achieved only two things: losing track of Finn, and my shoes.
The crowd was like a living thing that had consumed Finn, that would eat us both up and spit us out.
The first gunshot rang out, and my stomach sank. I was nearly certain it had come from one of the Clovian soldiers, although in all the chaos it was impossible to tell.
The crowd started screaming louder, incoherent. But they weren’t dispersing. It was like a sea of rage rising around me, unstoppable. And still, as much as I fought, I couldn’t fight my way back out of it. Someone’s elbow slammed into my cheek.
I had a dagger on me, but what was I going to do? Murder everyone?
More gunshots cracked, sending my heart racing. My ears rang, and the scent of gunpowder filled the air.
At last, the crowd started to flee, screaming, away from the gunfire. I looked around wildly for Finn. I caught a glimpse of my suitcase, trampled in the street, all the delicate clothes crushed into dirt and mud. The perfume bottle smashed.
Between the fleeing people, I saw the bodies of three dead Dovreners, too. Shot by the soldiers, blood pooling between the cobbles.
“Finn!” I shouted.
I took a few shaky steps, then I felt it—the count’s dark magic thrumming over my skin. The hair rose on my nape.
When I turned, I found him looming over me, his cowl raised. All I could see were those pale, penetrating eyes. “You’re late.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” I blurted.
I watched him sheathe his gory sword. Every other part of him was completely still. “Enter through the Lion’s Gate. Give your name. They’ll be waiting for you.”
I glanced at the castle, at the crowd of Dovreners swarming around the moat, some of them falling into the water, shrieking. Many Dovreners couldn’t swim. And I was supposed to walk through this chaos to my first day at my new job, working for the man we all hated.
He turned, walking toward the crowd, and I stared. They’d tear him to pieces. Didn’t he know that?
Already they were surrounding him, hurling death threats, every obscenity in the book. A large man in a leather apron tried to swing a plank of wood at the count.
The angel hardly turned his head. He just lifted his forearm, and the wood shattered against him. The man looked stunned, then terrified as the count pivoted. Saklas grabbed the man’s forearm, then wrenched it behind his back with an audible snap, clearly breaking it. The attacker fell to the ground.
The crowd pressed in closer around the count, too tight for him to draw his sword. I thought I saw the flash of a dagger as another man lunged for him, then the count’s gloved hands gripped the man’s head. He twisted sharply, snapping the man’s neck. The sound of breaking bone horrified me.
I followed after him at a safe distance, wanting to see what I could learn about how he moved, how he fought. He managed to draw his sword, and the frantic mob began hurling rocks, bricks, anything they had. They wanted to bring him down, to bash his head into the stones.
What followed was like nothing I’d ever seen. His sword carved into them with a ferocity that seemed straight from Hell. He moved like a storm wind, a maelstrom of whirling steel, blood arcing around him. Each movement was precise, slashing through two people’s heads at once, the speed of his sword unparalleled.
He was a masterpiece of death. A swift strike of the blade across someone’s throat, then a pivot