House of Dragons (Royal Houses #1) - K.A. Linde Page 0,63
And then the person was in her space, thrusting the dagger toward her. Kerrigan tried to twist out of the way of the weapon, but she was too slow and the knife plunged through her shoulder.
She cried out in shock and pain. While she’d averted a killing blow, searing pain still coursed through her body, and she saw double as the agony wrecked her, disabling her reflexes. The assassin became a blur. She could hardly concentrate on them. She’d been beaten to within an inch of her life. She should have been able to process through a little stab through the shoulder, but somehow, she just couldn’t. She had blocked out the memory of that pain so thoroughly that this blindsided her.
Then, to her horror, the person did something worse.
They wrenched the knife out of her shoulder.
She saw black. Thought she was going to pass out. Gods, she couldn’t just collapse. This was what she had trained for.
“Who… are you?” Kerrigan croaked as she watched her own death loom before her eyes.
“No one,” the throaty, female voice said before bringing the blade back down to end it all.
24
The Assassin
A wave of dark power flooded the bedroom, and both Kerrigan and her assailant were blasted off their feet. Kerrigan collided with Ellerby’s bed. Her head hit the metal post with a resounding clang. She groaned and tried to focus on what was happening in front of her. The assassin had landed in front of the balcony doors, her blade flung wide. With the light from the fading sun, Kerrigan could see that the girl was younger than she had appeared in shadow. And to Kerrigan’s surprise, the girl was already getting to her feet, leaning down in a crouch, and glaring at who had just attacked her.
“I’ve come to finish what I started,” the girl hissed at them. “You will not stop me.”
“Won’t I?” a sinister voice growled back.
It took Kerrigan’s addled brain a second to realize what had happened. That Fordham stood in the doorway, wreathed in a full black cloak of darkness, the same incredible shadow that had made his grand entrance in the arena. Kerrigan blinked, momentarily mesmerized by it. She didn’t know if it was just her mind playing tricks on her. She hadn’t thought of that darkness since that day, certainly hadn’t thought of how he could use it against his enemies.
Scales.
“Finish what you started?” Kerrigan croaked.
“The boy was in my way,” the girl hissed, tugging her dark hood over her face.
Kerrigan’s heart broke into a million pieces. This was Lyam’s killer. She had been right. It hadn’t been some accidental murder. The assassin had been for her, and Lyam had been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Fordham lashed out with a rope of flame this time, a tendril of red that slashed around the girl’s leg and dragged her back to the ground. Beneath the mask, her eyes widened in alarm and a flash of pain. But she didn’t even cry out. As if fire was no match for her. She easily maneuvered away, and as soon as she was free, she wrenched open the balcony doors and slipped outside.
Fordham flung himself after her. But in the span of a few heartbeats, the girl had already scaled the far wall and disappeared out the back.
He came back inside, cursing vividly. “Who the hell was that?”
“Lyam’s killer,” Kerrigan croaked as she tried to get to her feet.
Then, the memory of all her pain came crashing back down around her and she fell back in a heap on the floor once more.
“Gods, you’re injured,” he said, crouching before her.
“She stabbed me… in the shoulder,” Kerrigan said, pulling back her cloak to reveal the wound beyond.
Fordham inspected it, thoroughly and efficiently with little compassion. She winced through the entire thing.
“How’d you do that?”
“What?”
“That black smoke… it’s what you used to get into the tournament.”
“Family secret,” he said through gritted teeth. “You need to see a healer. This is beyond basic battlefield healing.”
“Battlefield healing?” she asked, her vision swimming again.
“Never mind.” Fordham stood and rummaged through the closet, pulling out an old bedsheet. He tore it precisely into strips. Then, he carefully wrapped her shoulder to try to stanch the bleeding and secured a makeshift sling for her arm. “There. Can you stand?”
“Um…”
Fordham put his arm around her shoulders and lifted her to her feet. Kerrigan groaned at the pain, even with the bandages and sling.