Reign of Darkness (The Prince's Assassin #2) - Ariana Nash Page 0,92
second rope when a gun barked and light flashed. A bite of sudden heat tore into his thigh, buckling his leg under him. With a roar, Niko swung for the figure in the carriage doorway. A wall of smoky ice swamped him, poured between his teeth and down his throat, instantly choking off his air.
He gagged, stumbled, reached into the great mass of dark that flooded his vision for something to fight, but his fingers sailed through. Panic slammed his heart against his ribs. Hands gripped him, hauled him from the carriage, and flung him choking facedown in the dirt. He gasped around the choking invasion. A kick to the gut rolled him onto his side. He spluttered, wheezing, and then the suffocating mass withdrew, leaving him gasping into blurred firelight.
Alissand’s rich voice rumbled, “Leila’s son.”
Niko blinked up at his uncle. Darkness swam in the older man’s eyes. Did the flame possess him, or did he possess it? “This would have been so much easier if you’d just taken the flame like the Yazdan you were supposed to be.”
Words wouldn’t have come even if he’d had any. The touch of icy darkness had scorched his throat. It was temporary. He’d felt it before with the fiends, but right now, he needed to breathe, needed to fight. Gasping, he reached for his Yazdan blade, fallen a few feet out of reach beside him, and managed to slip his fingers around its handle.
Alissand pressed his boot onto the blade, pinning the sword and Niko’s hand into the ground.
His uncle peered closer, as though searching for Niko’s soul through his eyes. “You’d have made a fine sorcerer.”
“Fuck…you,” Niko wheezed.
Alissand laughed and straightened. “It’s time you became one of us.” He nodded at his guards. They swooped in, scooping Niko off the ground. His back hit the carriage. Hands pinned him there. Fingers pinched his nose and dug into his cheeks, forcing his jaw apart. He bucked, tried to kick, tried to focus, to breathe, but the assault was too fast, too strong.
A cool, thick, bitter liquid poured over his tongue. Not spice. He knew that much.
His lungs burned, chest heaving. He couldn’t hold out.
Not spice… Blood.
The second he let it in, it would poison him. He’d never be free of it.
“Take it!” Alissand’s fingers dug harder into Niko’s cheeks. “Consume it, let it become you. Become who you’re meant to be!”
His heart pounded in his ears, his body a riot of heat and pain. If he passed out, they’d pour it down his throat.
He knew now why Leila had left. He knew why Vasili hadn’t tried to poison him when he’d had every opportunity. He knew what had happened over seven hundred years ago. The Cavilles bore the flame in their blood, but the Yazdans used it. The sorcerers who stood beside the Caville royals weren’t slaves—they were masters. Cavilles were their victims. Just as Vasili had said.
His body and soul screamed for him to breathe, to drink. To surrender.
Never.
A surge of fury ignited his veins. He tore free of his uncle’s grip and spat the blood into the bastard’s face, hoping to momentarily blind him. A vicious backhanded blow rattled Niko’s skull and flushed the world black for a few heartbeats. Only the guards holding him kept him upright.
Head throbbing and blood in his mouth, he glared at his uncle. “I will… never… be like… you.”
Alissand wiped the blood from his cheek with his sleeve. “Kill him.”
A punch landed in Niko’s gut, buckling him over and stealing what remained of the air in his lungs. The world spun, the firelight suddenly too bright. He crumpled to his knees and dug his fingers into the dirt. It couldn’t end like this… but he had nothing to fight with. No weapons, his body clinging to consciousness. He’d come this far, Vasili was so close, but he hadn’t been able to free him.
Someone laughed. Alissand maybe. Gods, when would this world stop punishing him?
A heavy blow burrowed into his ribs. He coughed blood and rolled onto his side. A great beast made of dark flame and seething red eyes walked through the firelight. Niko blinked. He’d conjured the beast from his dreams, surely.
But then the screams began. Gunfire flashed across the camp, lighting up the gruesome evidence of the beast being real.
Niko buried his face into the dirt and heaved his hands under himself. He swayed on his hands, listening to swords clashing, pistol shots, and smelling blood and spilled bowels in the air.