Page 162 of Dance of Thorns

And again.

And again.

My face is a mask, devoid of the screaming rage behind it as I slam the knife into her stomach, her hips, her thighs. Blood explodes from her leg, and I know I’ve hit her aorta.

I also know I’ve got nothing left.

My eyes flutter shut.

The blade clatters to the floor just as Melinda hits the tiles with a shriek and a thud. She keeps screaming, flailing for help.

I manage to open my eyes for just one more second.

I don’t waste it on her. I look at him.

He looks back.

Melinda stops kicking and goes still.

I’m going to bleed out soon.I’m going to die.

So I look at him and remind myself how lucky I was that I got to fall in love with him.

Twice.

45

BANE

Get up.

Get the fuck UP, motherfucker.

Fire flickers to life somewhere inside the darkness I’m drowning in.

GET. UP!

My eyes snap open. I choke, pain exploding through my back and my side.

Blood covers my front and pools stickily around me. I shift, then cry out as fresh pain lances through my back.

I think maybe I’ve been stabbed.

It’s not the first time. I was also stabbed in a dumb bar fight at Knightsblood University, when Nero said something psychotic to some guy, and the guy’s buddies tried to throw down.

But the knife in question was a fuckingpocketknife, and it barely got me.

Something tells me this is much worse.

My vision starts to sharpen. I wince, looking past my blood on the floor, past the gun I dropped…

Melinda lies clearly dead on the ground, a knife sticking out of her blood-soaked thigh and alotof blood spreading across the tiles around her.

Lark must have gotten her aorta.

Good girl.

Wait.