Page 101 of Blood Oath
And once I stab the amulet with the nightshade root powder that nulls its powers, I’ll end him and be done with it.
Inside the office, I hear the faint sound of a door opening and closing.
They’re relying on you. Don’t fail. You were literally made for this.
Carrying out this hit is a stepping stone to fulfilling my blood oath. There’s no backing down, now or ever.
I breathe deeply, clearing my head of anything that could distract me from the next few fraught minutes. Placing my right palm against the wall behind me, I silently release the holds on the dark magic that is stored inside my veins. It seeps out of me slowly, corrupting the existing spells, wilting all existing wards so gradually that it won’t tip off Hearst until it’s too late.
At least, it’s not supposed to. But I tense when I hear him shout inside the room.
My throat tightens, and I stop breathing, waiting for him to throw open the balcony doors and unleash hell on me. But there’s just a tiny garbled sound that I can’t understand, and it goes completely silent again. An odd feeling sinks into my gut—a feeling I’m very used to.
Death. Someone just died nearby.
My curiosity mounts until I quickly slip in through the balcony doors since this room has no more magical protection. I’m silent as I slide out of the drapes and step into the large, ornate office, but the scene in front of me makes me freeze.
Headmaster Hearst is supine on the floor, dead, with his eyes unfocused on the ceiling. Blood is quickly pooling around his head, which has a gaping hole in it somewhere. The amulet hanging from his neck is shattered, seeping a dark red liquid.
The unkillable mage is dead.
But I didn’t do it.
What the fuck?
Before it can sink in that someone else just killed my target, my ears pick up on the soft whoosh of something at me, and I dodge on instinct. A gnarly-looking sword embeds itself into the headmaster’s desk, and I whirl to face?—
Surprise hits me square in the gut.
“What are you doing?” I whisper.
The lion shifter makes no sound as she withdraws another sword from her back. She’s dressed similarly to me, a cloak half-obscuring her face—but it’s definitely Kenzie’s face.
Which makes no sense.
Her expression is unlike anything I’ve ever seen on her normally cheery face, dark with undivided focus tracking my every movement. She moves toward me smoothly, but something about it is off.
This entire situation feels off.
But I don’t waste time with more questions since she’s clearly about to try to kill me.
When the sword swings toward me, I roll to the side and withdraw two plain knives from their hiding places. “I don’t have to hurt you. I’ll leave. Just tell me why you did that.”
I nod toward the dead mage, but she ignores him and lunges toward me. I’ve seen Kenzie fight before in combat practices. This is entirely different.
It’s brutal.
Momentarily taken off guard by the way she knocks aside one of my knives and simultaneously lands a kick to my upper thigh, I stumble back. It buys her time to take a swipe at me, and I hiss when the sword glides smoothly through the flesh of my stomach. An alarming amount of blood gushes from the long injury at once.
Kenzie tries to capitalize on my pain, leaping forward again.
She doesn’t move like Kenzie.
The feeling that something is off magnifies as I cartwheel away from the attack, my stomach on fire. My eyes snap to her face again just as her hood moves slightly. And that’s when I get a clearer look at her eyes.
Oh.
This isn’t Kenzie at all. It’s a changeling.
