Page 234 of A Touch of Poison
A distraction to allow Sura to reach the queen? I scowled and increased my pace.
When I reached the lodestone’s corridor, I sucked in a breath and ducked back around the corner. Ascendants guarded the entrance.
“More on their way, ser,” one panted as though he’d run here.
“Good. We’ll be able to hold this position as instructed.” He scoffed, eyeing the messenger. “You do look ridiculous. But, I suppose, needs must.” He raked a hand through his hair, and several of them glanced at each other, chuckling.
What could that mean? I waited but they said nothing more, and I didn’t have time to waste.
I couldn’t fight all of them, especially not in such a wide corridor. If I had Kat or someone else with a bow to cover me, then perhaps.
But she might be lying dead somewhere.
She isn’t. A flash of a corridor from my other side.We haven’t found her yet, but we will. Focus on our task.
I took a deep breath and pushed away my other side’s view and thoughts. We would find Kat safe and well. Wewould. She had her poison: she could look after herself.
Dagger in one hand, sword in the other, I stretched my neck side to side.
I didn’t need to fight them all—I just needed to get past them.
I sent my shadows creeping ahead—down by their feet where they wouldn’t notice. Then, at the door leading to the lodestone, I let them coalesce into a figure.
One cried out in wordless shock as my shadow form loomed over them. As the alarm spread through their group, they turned.
Steel flashed as they sliced at my shadows, which split apart and reformed. My shadow-self dissolved and slithered between one man’s legs before rising behind him.
Round eyes stared this way and that, unsure where the shadows would appear next.
“What is it?”
“Whois it?”
“An unseelie demon.”
While they tried to fight darkness itself, their backs to me, I sprinted down the corridor.
One huffed as my dagger drove into her back. The next one was similarly unaware until my sword bit into their side, spilling blood and guts. They managed an agonised groan as they slumped to the floor.
Their companions turned.
I ducked one blade, dodged the next. One man stood gaping between the shadow figure and me. I shouldered into him, blocking another strike with my dagger, filling the corridor with the ring of steel upon steel.
Two left between me and the door. Eight more behind.
I sent slender tendrils of shadow backwards. I couldn’t spare a glance over my shoulder, but I could make the floor treacherous with dark tripwires.
The main bulk of my shadows took form behind one of the attackers ahead.
The other pointed, eyes wide. “Behind you!”
Before he could turn, shadows circled his neck.
Pain seared my shoulder blade, but, grunting, I twisted away from the worst of the strike. At least, I hoped I did.
“Reinforcements are here!”
No time to assess damage. My sword opened up the remaining attacker’s guard as she raised her weapon to catch it, and I lunged, shoulder crying out as I stabbed her in the armpit.
