Sandy Williams - The Sharpest Blade

He looks at me.

“What iss thiss?” His words slur. He stumbles.

I leap forward, grabbing his arm so he doesn’t fall back into the main hall.

“It’s a tranquilizer,” I say, half-carrying him into the darkness of the servants’ corridor. He teeters too far forward for me to keep him balanced. I shoulder him into the wall, and he slides down it.

I lower him to his back. There’s just enough light for me to see his silver eyes blink up at me. He tries to say something, but it’s just a jumble of syllables. His eyes close, then his body goes slack.

Reaching blindly behind me, I grab a syringe from my pocket. I have half a mind not to give Lorn the antidote. He had no right to interfere, and he’s at least partly to blame for our problems with the remnants and the false-blood. But I don’t want to kill anyone, and he did save my life, so I take off the syringe’s protective plastic cover, then jab the needle into his arm.

Seconds later, I’ve recovered the needle, shoved the emptied syringe into my backpack, and reloaded the dart gun. Lorn said the meeting with the high nobles has ended. Hison could be on his way back, or he could linger, talking to the others. If I’m really lucky, he’ll head home to his estate, but I can’t count on that. I might have only minutes to find and free Aren.

My gut knows it’s not enough time, but I won’t give up. I can’t. If I don’t get Aren out of here now, he’s dead.

I pull up my hood, then peek out into the main hall. It’s clear except for one guard standing in front of the closed door to Hison’s reception room. None of the other high nobles had guards on their doors. Aren has to still be here.

From the cover of the servants’ corridor, I take aim. I’m much farther away from the guard than I was from Lorn, and I have zero experience shooting at a target that’s more than ten feet from me, but I line up the sight of the gun and the end of the barrel with a spot on the fae’s neck—the easiest area to hit that’s not protected by jaedric —and squeeze the trigger.

The dart hits low, and the fae reacts so quickly, reaching up to slap at his neck, that I don’t know if the needle actually sunk in.

Shit.

I take out another dart from the inside pocket of my cloak and reload as the fae stares down at the one in his hand.

I raise my gun, but he moves, taking a step away from the door. Damn it, my aim isn’t good enough to hit a moving target.

I’m already running, sprinting up the hallway toward the fae. He sees me immediately, tosses the dart aside to grab his sword. He doesn’t get it halfway out before his knees buckle.

Thank God.

He face plants before I reach him. I don’t stop to watch him pass out; I throw open the door behind him and burst inside with my gun held up and ready in front of me.

There’s movement in my peripheral vision. I swing the barrel that direction. The fae has her sword out. She moves forward. I wait half a second until I’m sure I won’t miss, then I fire.

The dart sinks in just above her collarbone. It doesn’t slow her down. Reloading my gun, I backpedal. Just as the dart slides into place, she grabs my left wrist.

“Who are you?” she demands in Fae.

I keep my head tilted down so she can’t see under my hood, then I raise my right hand, the hand holding my dart gun and fire it not at her, but at a second fae who’s rising from behind a desk to my right.

“Drop that!” the woman who’s bruising my wrist orders. Why the hell isn’t she unconscious? I try jerking my arm free, but her grip doesn’t loosen.

She brings her sword around and stops with the edge of the blade just touching the black sleeve covering my wrist. Her sword is sharp—she could easily sever my hand—but, finally , her eyes glaze, and she lurches forward. I pull my arm free, but not before the weight of her sword causes it to cut through my sleeve and into my skin.

I bite out a curse. The cut isn’t deep—it’s more like an extreme paper cut—but it stings like hell.

I shake it off, confirm that the fae behind the desk is going down, too, then go back to the hallway and drag in the first guard. Not an easy task. He’s freaking heavy, but I get him inside, then close and lock the door. For good measure, I drag the desk in front of the door, then lean against it.

My breaths come out quick and shallow, as if I’ve just gone through half a day of training with Kyol even though I didn’t even lift a sword. I force myself to slow down my breathing, then I take the antidote case out of my backpack and inject the three unconscious fae. Eight syringes left, one still in my pants pocket.

The woman saw my tranq gun. The fae behind the desk might have as well, but Lee told me there’s a chance they won’t remember what happened a few seconds before they lost consciousness. I hope like hell he’s right.

The door the woman stood in front of isn’t locked. It opens into a short hallway with four closed doors, two on each side. With my reloaded dart gun held ready, I try the first one on the right.

The knob turns. The room is dark and silent as the door swings inward, and I’m about to move on when I hear a familiar chirp-squeak .

I push the door all the way open and step inside. Sitting in the back corner of the room, hands bound to a pipe behind him, is Aren. Sosch is there, snuggled up in Aren’s lap. His blue eyes are bright in the darkness. His whiskers twitch as he chirps again. This time, the sound seems sad, as if the kimki knows something bad is about to happen.

My gaze rises to Aren’s face as I take another step inside. His eyes are shut, his head is tilted to the side and leaning against the pipe he’s bound to. I set my backpack on the ground as I go to my knees in front of him.

“Aren,” I whisper just before I press my lips against his.

His body jerks as he wakes up. I grab the back of his head and deepen the kiss. He gives a little grunt, then leans into me. The knots in my chest unwind as lightning brightens my skin. The edarratae make my mouth tingle, and when Aren nips at my lower lip, I moan. I feel alive again, electric. Now that I’ve had Aren, my body is attuned to him. It responds to him, and all I want is to be with him again. To be with him forever.

Only the fear of that forever being cut short makes me ease away from him.

“We don’t have much time,” I whisper.

His forehead creases. Then he looks around the room. When his eyes once again settle on me, he curses.

“This isn’t a dream,” he says.

“No, it’s not.” My mouth tilts into a smile as I unzip the big pocket of my backpack.

“ Sidhe , McKenzie.” His shackles clatter against the metal pipe when he tries to move. “Where’s Taltrayn?”

“He’s unconscious,” I say as I take out a pair of bolt cutters that just barely fit in the bag. Lee knows how to prepare for a jailbreak, I have to give him that.

“Unconscious?” Aren echoes. Then his gaze locks on the bolt cutters. “McKenzie.”

I ignore him, open the bolt cutters, and close them over the thick, silver chain. Not pure silver. It’s friggin’ hard to break. I put all my muscle into squeezing the twin handles together. Finally, the chain snaps, falling to the floor.

“Come on,” I say, holding out my hand to help him up. Edarratae leap down my wrist when he wraps his hand around mine, but he doesn’t stand. He pulls me down, slamming my mouth into his.

This time, Sosch protests my presence, probably because I half fall on top of him. He scurries out of Aren’s lap, and I drop the bolt cutters to run the fingers of my free hand into Aren’s disheveled hair. He drinks in the lightning my body freely offers. I feel it building under my skin, and I shiver as the memory of our bodies wrapped in our chaos lusters strikes through me.