Page 68

Boots pound on the staircase below, muffled, growing louder by the second.

Below the table, my blood trickles down my wrist—

And when it connects with the handcuffs encircling them . . . they begin to sizzle .

Kleora doesn’t recognize it at first due to her shouted obscenities. “You fucking cunt ! What in all that’s Damned is going on out there, Bregsitch?!”

The dumb brute frowns. “I—erm, I don’t know, mistress. I will go check.”

He turns to leave, hand on the doorknob.

I curse myself, realizing I mistimed my action. The sizzling of my shackles is joined by smoke that’s impossible to miss. I almost had Bregsitch out of the room. But those footsteps growing louder, headed upstairs, I had to act now . . .

“What’s this?” Kleora sniffs the sharp tint of smoke.

I leap up from my seat, rattling the shackles at my feet, keeping me in place—

And swing my left arm out. The U-shaped shackle around my right wrist snaps from the burning silver, abruptly freeing the manacle around that hand while keeping the chain apparatus tethered to my left.

The shackle and chain arc toward Kleora as I swing, and she stutters back a step.

I don’t hit her, of course, she’s too far—

But the window isn’t.

With a jolting crash, the circular window shatters into crystal fragments that rain down on the cold stone floor.

Bregsitch spins around, hand going to his belt to grab his sword.

I wobble in place, blood rushing to my inebriated head as I gain my feet for the first time in hours. The sizzling silver from when I first mated with Vallan, I think with a menacing grin. My cycle-blood splattered over his pile of treasure.

Kleora shrieks and bares the talons of her hands. My smile vanishes when I see she’s ready to strike me dead—Overseer Verant getting to do the honors can be damned.

Pages of her chronicle flutter into the air from the sudden gust of wind that streams through the room ten stories in the sky, and my hair blows about.

The footsteps rising from the staircase continue growing louder, like an earthquake in my head.

“Silver shackles? A fair little trick, Hellwhore!” Kleora shouts above the wind.

Choking smoke rises into the room, gusted by the wind, and it’s too thick to be from my bleeding wrist. “I will discover who exchanged your shackles and flay their skin from their bones just as you did with Dimmon Plank.”

Our eyes catch on something together, fluttering between us, lazily floating by.

The moth.

My grin returns.

Kleora’s eyes widen.

“Is this a fair little trick as well?”

The voice is deep, resonant—

Coming from behind Madame Kleora and Bregsitch.

They spin around—

Just in time for Skartovius Ashfen to emerge from her thrall’s shadow spotted by the moth, and draw his saber.

Bregsitch reaches for his sword.

Skar stabs his thin blade into Bregsitch’s chest like a needle, and the monster ignites into a screaming inferno.

Pages of the chronicle burn, soot and ash rain, joining the smoke and wind and glass.

Kleora bares her fangs, leaps over the table at me. I duck, upending the table to try and stop her because I can’t move my legs from their position.

She crashes through the table.

Skartovius is right behind her, rolling.

Kleora stands, ready to rip at me with her talons—

She’s forced to flick her hand over her face in sheer annoyance as the moth manages to flutter in front of her face.

It gives Skartovius all the time he needs to complete his somersault, slashing the irons holding my ankles bound to the floor.

I duck from Kleora’s attack, feeling the hair on my neck split from the closeness of her. She attacks in a fit—

But Madame Kleora is a historian, not a fighter.

Not like me.

I throw a punch into her gut and she gasps, nearly doubling over.

The footsteps are almost here, almost to this room, leaping faster up the stairs.

My hand comes up to Kleora’s face, palm out, and she tries to bat my hand away to defend herself.

She may be a fullblood vampire, but I’m much taller, larger, and faster, even in my half-drunken stupor. Perhaps the stupor helps me, in fact, because it allows me to wobble to the side and spin behind Kleora without pain when I step on glass.

I tighten my forearm over her thin supple neck from behind, lifting the shackle and chain still connected to my left wrist so I can press it against her throat.

Kleora struggles, kicking, hands reaching up to grasp the chain at her neck—

Her skin starts to singe and burn from the silver, and she screeches.

Skartovius cocks back with his own pointed length of silver, ready to plunge his blade into her chest. I’m right behind her though and I’ll be impaled if he isn’t careful.

Bregsitch collapses into a ruined heap of ash and soot that looks much less imposing as a skeleton than he did as a vampire.

The door to the prison room flies open.

“Hold!” I yell at Skar.

He pauses mid-strike, arm reeled back.

Kleora groans and hisses as her flesh slowly burns under the weight of the silver chain I have wrapped around her neck, even with barely any pressure applied.

All three sets of eyes flip to the door, where a tall figure stands in a flowing black cloak.

My heart stammers, my eyes bulge.

The man smiles.

“Hello, little grimmer.”