Page 10 of Quicksilver

An irritated flick of his wrist separated three of his men from the phalanx. They stalked forward, shoulders tucked up around their ears, swords at the ready, and the fire that had been simmering away inside of me since I was a child finally boiled over.

I wasn’t going to be restrained. I wasn’t going to be bullied, or pinned down, or told to be quiet by these bastards. Not anymore.

What I did next was pure madness. I reached down into my boot, and I pulled out the blade I kept there. The action couldn’t be undone. There was no taking it back. I had drawn a weapon on the Undying Queen’s guard. In short, I was dead. My body just didn’t know it yet.

“Well, well. We got ourselves a feisty one, boys,” the guardian on the right growled.

“Let’s teach her a lesson, then,” the one in the middle sneered.

I focused on the one on the left. The quiet one. The one who moved like a predator. The one with death in his eyes.Hewas the one I needed to worry about.

He let the mouthy guardian lunge first. I ducked beyond his reach, using the short end of my dagger to deflect his sword as he swung at me wildly. The one in the middle cursed, darting forward, trying to spear me in the chest with his weapon, but I side-stepped avoiding his attack altogether. This put me squarely in the quiet guardian’s path—which I was sure was his plan all along.

He winked at me over the top of his mask. And then he came.

The rebels my mother had helped before her death had done more than hide in our attic. They had trained me. Taught me how to steal. How to survive. How to fight.

And now I fought like hell’s own fury made flesh.

He rained down blows with his blade, calculated and measured. Each of his moves was a question to which I had an answer. I watched his annoyance build as I batted away his sword for the fourth time, using only my short dagger to divert his killing blows.

The middle guardian, the shortest of the three, charged at me, letting out a mighty bellow of rage. I danced back, light on my feet, temporarily dodging beyond the skilled fighter’s reach so that I could twist and bring my dagger down from above, cutting through the air. The angle of the strike was unwieldy, but it was one I had practiced more times than I could count. It was the angle a blade needed to be brought down to find that narrow opening in a guardian’s armor. The slim gap between pauldron and neck brace, where a sliver of metal might find a jugular. I’d never had to use the maneuver in real life before. I did it without thinking. I didn’t even pause to reflect on the arc of bright red arterial blood that jetted up from the guardian’s neck as he dropped to his knees, clutching at his throat.

No guilt.

No mercy.

No time.

I snatched up the guardian’s sword and left him to die in the sand.

The quiet guardian narrowed his eyes at me, as if reassessing the situation. The other guardian wasn’t as smart. He howled, his anger claiming him as he ran at me, ripping his mask away to reveal a mouth full of shattered teeth. “Stupid bitch! You’re gonna pay—” I pivoted, darting back, and flicked out the sword. It was heavier than the wooden practice swords I’d always trained with, but Iwasused to the length. I knew exactly where the sharpened tip of the steel would meet his skin: just below his right wrist. I timed it perfectly. With little more than an adjustment of my sword hand, I cut down, and then the guardian’s hand, still holding his sword, hit the sand with a dull thud.

“My hand! She—she cut off my—hand!”

“I’m coming for your fucking head next,” I seethed.

Rage washed my vision red.

They’d killed my mother.

My friends.

Elroy’s entire family.

They’d caused the deaths of thousands, and now they were threatening Hayden. All of the pent-up rage stored inside my chest came rushing out in an unstoppable torrent. I prowled toward the guardian, dagger in one hand, sword in the other, ready to end his miserable existence…but came face-to-face with the quiet guardian instead.

Again, he didn’t say anything. A spark of amusement flickered in his eyes, though. Slowly, he shook his head, his meaning clear as day.If you’re gonna fight any of us, you’re gonna fightme.

The air came alive with the sound of crashing steel. He was a whirlwind, his movements lithe and graceful. Every time his blade scythed toward my head, I expected the world to go black. But somehow it didn’t. Somehow, I managed to bring the sword I’d taken up in time. Somehow, I held my own.

And just when he was getting comfortable, when this predator thought he’d finally gotten a read on my capabilities as a fighter…I stopped holding back.

His eyes went wide when he saw it happen. When I loosened in my stance and brought the blade up to guard my face. The second when I bared my teeth and came forhim.

He spoke, then, at last. Just one word.“Shit.”

He didn’t retreat an inch. He held his ground. But he knew this wasn’t going to be the kind of fight he’d thought it would be. Our weapons met, edge-to-edge, and we went for it, each knowing what it would cost to lose this fight.