Page 22 of A Crown of Tears and Treason (The Curse of Silver Secrets and Cruel Shadows #1)

Chapter

Twenty-Two

EVIE

A s the dagger’s tip glinted toward my neck, metal hissed through the air.

Zandyr’s sword flew straight into the blade, sending it flying to the ground. His own weapon impaled the wall behind, just as I swiveled out of the way.

Adara kicked the attacker straight in the chest, sending him flying back as my eyes jumped to Zandyr.

He stared at me with a murderous look on his face. How had he found and protected me amongst a sea of hundreds, I didn’t know. He raised his steady hand–the blood in the sword’s hilt churned as it flew back to its master.

Zandyr caught it and arched his arm, taking down another attacker without breaking eye contact with me.

“Run,” he mouthed.

When I hesitated, Adara grabbed my shoulder. “Get out of here and protect them. You’ll only be a distraction. For me and him.”

I cast a furtive glance toward Zandyr. He sliced through five Serpent fighters with one swipe of his blade, the little old woman cowering safely behind him with a group of children.

Heart in my throat, I nodded solemnly at Adara, who positioned herself at the lip of the narrow street leading to the docks, to stop the attackers advancing into the city. Suffocating my dread as soon as it dared to spring up inside me, I hurried the rest of our little team back down the crowded street, shouts and metal clanks resounding behind us.

The smell.

The acrid stench of fear threatened to choke me.

Flashes of my wedding bombarded my mind.

But I was responsible for four souls right now, and they were all here because of me.

“Stick together,” I said between harsh breaths, as my feet begged to run faster.

But while Leesa and Goose could keep up, Kaya was having a hard time running and navigating the crowd. Vexa wouldn’t leave her side, holding onto Kaya’s elbow like they’d been glued together.

I let out a curse that would’ve made my parents blush, desperate eyes searching.

The main street was pure chaos. The oxen roared, trying to shake off the harnesses from the abandoned carts. Their horns swished around wildly, in tune with the manic bells from the temple.

We couldn’t go that way, unless we wanted to get impaled.

“Think, think, think,” I chanted, Leesa and Goose huddled together at my side.

As Kaya tripped in my arms, Adara’s voice hissed in my ear.

Protect them .

“Hide, we need to hide,” I muttered, searching for any cover that could protect us until Zandyr, Adara, and the Blood Brotherhood Elite dealt with the attackers.

“The temple! We should hide there!” Goose screamed over the ruckus.

“No!” A large, open, glistening building that announced its position so loudly? We might as well have been fish in a barrel.

With my eyes only seeing chaos, I used my other senses–and I smelled the stench that could save us. “Here.”

I rushed toward another building, crammed in a dank alleyway, with a store front that opened right into the main street. Fish guts smeared the porch in the back of the shop, but it had a good, stony base and small windows. I kicked the door. It shook, but didn’t fall. I kicked it again, the impact rattling my skull.

“Come on, come on!”

Vexa came up behind. With a quick nod, we kicked the door open together. The potent smell made my eyes water.

“It reeks.” Kaya coughed into her sleeve as Vexa escorted her inside.

“Exactly,” I said, shoving Goose after them; I’d apologize later, when we both still had air in our lungs. “When those Serpents will be running down the street to gut people, they’ll instinctually avoid this place.”

“But the others went to the temple,” Leesa said when I grabbed her elbow.

My insides twisted as I saw people shoving each other on the temple stairs, called by the bells. There were already so many of them. Some clung to the columns to keep from being shoved down the main platform.

Where prey flocked, predators followed.

Those children that had been running after the ball cowered in a corner, hugging their knees.

Their eyes. They were so afraid.

I looked at Vexa, a harrowing understanding flowing between us. She threw one of her biggest knives toward me.

I caught it and turned. “Stay hidden.”

“Where are you going?” Kaya screamed after me as Vexa bolted the door and I ran as fast as my feet could carry me.

I yanked off my billowing cape. Great for hiding, but a liability that could get me caught in jagged things and knives.

My feet pummeled the streets. I had to warn those civilians to get away from there. Too many, too crowded. They were the perfect target and no gods could protect them now.

I wasn’t fast enough.

Just as I passed the alley leading to the port, where Adara, Zandyr, and his warriors cut through the sea of attackers so quickly their swords flashed, five of the Serpents rushed the steps of the temple, their green knife pummels glinting menacingly.

The crowd roared with fright, pushing farther inside the temple. Those with enough strength and good joints took their chances with gravity and jumped off the temple platform; I spied the loud-mouth with the scar on his shoulder among them. Coward.

Those who couldn’t jump, the old and the young, swarmed closer to the altar, where the priest’s voice thundered with chants. But these attackers weren’t phantoms that could be prayed away. They were real and they were armed.

Zandyr and the others wouldn’t get here in time to save them all.

But I could. The Serpents hadn’t seen me yet. With the bells blaring, they wouldn’t hear me, either.

The bells .

I impaled Vexa’s knife into one of the columns, using it as leverage. A pillar, no matter how intricately carved, was just a fancier tree. At least that’s what I told myself as I climbed, higher and higher, easing myself through the eaves and the roof, into the webbing of beams above. Praise the gods that weren’t listening right now; the bells’ mechanism was the same as in the churches I’d had to visit as a child.

An apprentice pulled on the bell strings with all his might, tears streaming down his face.

“Get away from there,” I whisper-hissed, feet gliding over the beams.

He startled, almost losing his footing, but didn’t let go of the rope. “It’s forbidden to touch the sacred bells.”

“Would you rather have innocents killed inside the temple?”

He shook his head and let go. With the momentum, the bells still swayed. Good. The sudden stillness would have attracted the attackers’ attention. They prowled toward the group, eyes hungry for blood. The children had been herded in front of the altar, surrounded by a barrier made up of elders. They could barely stand up, but one of them held his cane in front of him like a sword. Even the priest gripped his sacred book poised to throw it at the Serpents.

Pages and canes wouldn’t protect them.

I scurried up the beams, right above the largest bell. My fingers struggled to hold on to the vibrating wood.

I straddled the frame, clicking the bracelet on my thigh as I went. My switchblade dug into the small grooves of the screws holding the bell to the headstock. Hands shaking, my blade screeched against the metal. But the screws twisted and the bell dipped abruptly.

Not enough.

“Damn it,” I cursed and wiggled down onto the massive bell, embracing it.

My legs roared from the pain of holding on and my right palm, slick with sweat, slipped on the beam, just as my switchblade loosened the left screw. Then the right. Good thing it had been encased in the bracelet; my fingers were slick with sweat, I would have dropped it.

The bell’s vibration turned chaotic as it swung my body as it pleased. I had to act fast. I attacked the middle screw with all my might, teeth gnashing.

One of the Serpents looked up. “Watch out!”

Too late.

The heavy bell collapsed, bringing down the middle beam as it fell. I rolled my body away from it. But my palms were too sweaty, the other beams too shaky to hold on.

The bell cracked the floor and bones alike as it plummeted into the platform. I fell into the cloud of dust. But learning to climb meant I learned how to fall, too.

Wrapping my knees to my chest, I rolled in the air. I spun as my feet collided with the ground, landing in a crouch. Everything hurt, but adrenaline kept me going.

Three of the Serpents lay mangled underneath the bell. Two of them had ducked away just in time.

Their daggers were already tainted with blood. I had a switchblade and an entire frightened group behind me.

“You have to pass through me,” I said, with a courage that came from deep within. A deep and vicious shiver raced through my veins.

I didn’t feel like myself.

I felt powerful.

Like the true Protectorate leader I’d been born to be.

A spark flowed through me, overriding all logic.

“Our pleasure,” one of the Serpents sneered and pounced.

All those terrified breaths at my back, the whimpers, their erratic hearts.

I could hear them all.

They unlocked something inside me.

My chest burned .

Time slowed down, just like it had when the snake attacked.

My body hummed with power.

Blue tendrils blasted from me, harsh and unforgiving. The light was too glaring.

I couldn’t see anything, but the smell of charred flesh scorched my nose, and the desperate roars of death howled in my ears.

I kept on blinking, but everything was a blue haze.

Slowly, the floor came into focus, cracked and covered with a light coat of dust.

I was on my knees, tears streaming down my face.

I couldn’t feel my hands. I was curled on the ground.

“The good news is that nobody will ever call you a helpless lamb again,” Adara’s voice rumbled from somewhere nearby. I could barely hear her from the blaring in my ears.

A gentle hand touched my shoulder. I flinched back, only to see Zandyr crouching beside me.

Blood dripped from his sword.

The blood inside the hilt whirled around.

But neither looked as menacing as his darkening gaze.