The Sharpest Blade

He lets out one last, gut-wrenching chirp-whimper, then goes still.

Fury blinds me. I ignore the fae closing in on me and launch myself at the false-blood.

One of his elari clotheslines me. I barely register my head cracking against the floor. I’m back on my feet, still screaming, still trying to get at the bastard, but someone grabs my legs, pulls them out from under me.

I slam into the floor again. The false-blood stops in front of me. I want to keep screaming, I want to claw his fucking face off, but Kyol shoves his way into my mind.

Steady, his emotions tell me.

I don’t want to be steady. I want to kill the son of a bitch crouching in front of me.

“The Realm will love watching you suffer,” Cardak says.

Steady, Kyol urges again.

“I’m going to kill you,” I whisper, as the elari pulls my arms behind my back.

Cardak smiles. “Sure you will.”

He lifts his index finger, and with a wicked twist to his lip, he touches my forehead. A wave of dizziness passes over me, then . . . nothing.

TWENTY-SIX

LITERALLY NOTHING. IT takes a whole half a second for me to realize Cardak’s magic isn’t working, then, after the briefest oh hell moment, I collapse to the floor, doing my best to fake unconsciousness.

It’s one of the hardest things I’ve done in my life. Sosch is dead, but I can still hear his squeals in my mind. I can still see his body twitching, see it go still. I want to fight and scream and kill the bastard who broke his back, but I can’t give up this one advantage. I’ll lose my chance at revenge if I do.

So I lie still, ignoring every protest of my heart.

“Lock them in the back chamber,” the false-blood says.

Someone grabs my right ankle. I’m facedown on the tile, and it takes everything in me to stay limp as I’m dragged across it. I screw up a few times, tensing when my face slides through something wet and again when my shoulder hits what I assume is the edge of the dais. If the fae paid close attention to me, if they had any idea there might be a chance that Cardak’s magic hadn’t worked on me, then they would have noticed.

My head bangs down the chamber’s first step.

Stay limp! I silently scream.

Another step. My cheekbone cracks.

Stay limp! Stay limp! Stay limp!

The fae sits me up just enough to plant a foot on my chest and shove. I tumble backward, land hard on my spine, and slide the rest of the way down the stairs.

The chamber door slams shut, and I have to fight the instinct to curl into a ball. I’m alive. I’m awake. How is that possible? Surely, the false-blood tested his magic on other humans. On Shane even.

God, Shane. I left him behind in London. He’s upstairs, cut up and half-dead.

I’m shaking with sadness and fury and . . . adrenaline. Kyol’s fighting now. He’s trying to get to the King’s Hall. He’ll never make it. He . . .

He has to be the reason I’m awake. This adrenaline I’m feeling—it’s making my heart pump so much faster than it should be. It’s keeping me conscious, just like my adrenaline helped Kyol regain consciousness.

I push up to all fours and lean my back against the wall, waiting for the dark room to stop spinning. Only a single orb lights the table, the chairs, Lena . . . and Aren.

He’s on his back, unconscious and with blood pooling beneath him, but I can see his chest rise and fall. I crawl to him, gasping when a sharp lance of pain strikes down my back. I ignore it and only stop when I collapse between the two unconscious healers.

That’s when I laugh. It’s the laugh of someone who’s lost it, someone who’s seen too much and can’t take anything more. Despite closing my eyes, tears leak out. I don’t have time to cry. I have to pull myself together. I have to find a way to survive so that Kyol will survive, and I have to get us out of here.

I build a wall as thick and solid as Kyol’s has ever been, and I make myself feel nothing. It’s the only way I can function. I have to stay numb. I can’t think about Sosch. I can’t think about Kyol or Trev or Lorn or Naito and Lee, who are somewhere in the palace. I can’t think about anything but getting out of here.

I open my eyes. My gaze goes to the back wall, the one covered with sketches of the high nobles. The exit tunnel is behind it. It would be convenient if the life-bond gave me at least a tiny amount of magic so that I could touch the trigger that slides open the wall, but no such luck. I need a fae to open it. I need Aren or Lena conscious.

My hand goes to my pocket and wraps around the syringe I have there. It’s filled with the tranq-dart antidote. Lee said it was a mixture of adrenaline and some other medications. Will it wake up the fae? They’ve been put to sleep by magic, not by drugs. What if the antidote does more harm than good?

The false-blood or his men could come back any second. I have no choice except to find out.

My gaze shifts between Aren and Lena. They’re both hurt. Aren’s bleeding from a deep gash in his left leg, and Lena isn’t much better off. my heart drops when I realize I can’t save both of them. I only have one syringe. I have to choose.

The wall I created thins. I drag in a ragged breath then I press my lips against Aren’s, praying that he’ll wake up. One of my chaos lusters strikes across his face, but this isn’t how the fairy tale goes. The prince kisses his princess, not the other way around. Aren doesn’t move.

We have a chance, he told me. If we both survived, we would be together. I’m still pissed at him for choosing to die, to stay behind when I had a plan to get him out of the palace, and I’m pissed that I’m in this situation, that once again, my choices have been taken away.

Slowly, the reality of my situation sinks in. There isn’t a choice here. I know what I have to do. Aren’s pale from blood loss. His leg might not support him.

Another strangled, almost maniacal laugh escapes me. I’m not much different from Aren or from Kyol. I’m making the only choice I can.

I take the protective plastic off the syringe, turn my back on the fae I love, then jab the needle into Lena’s arm.

I pull it out and wait, but she doesn’t move.

Shit.

I place two fingers on the side of her throat, hoping I haven’t killed her. I feel a faint but even heartbeat.

Okay. She’s still alive—that’s a plus—but what do I do now? Slap her?

Before I take my hand away to do that, a chaos luster skips to her cheek. It shatters into five thinner bolts of lightning, and her body jerks.

“Lena?” My voice is hoarse, scratchy from screaming and crying, and she doesn’t open her eyes.

I grab her chin and shake it. “Lena.”

Silver peeks between her dark lashes. Her pupils get slightly bigger, then smaller, then bigger again as she tries to focus.

“We don’t have much time,” I tell her. “I need you to open the tunnel. Do you understand?”

Her body jerks again. Her eyes widen, and she flails as if reaching for a weapon.

“Hey, shh.” I grab her arms. “It’s me. It’s McKenzie. I gave you medicine to wake you up. We have to get out of here right now.”

She still looks startled. She attempts to roll away from me, but I hold her down. The fact that I’m able to do that isn’t a good sign. She should be able to fling me away with ease.