Sandy Williams - The Sharpest Blade

“Come on.” He places his palm on the small of my back and guides me out of the storage room. When we reach the main reception area, he stops suddenly. His gaze takes in the three unconscious fae lying on the floor.

“This was all you?” he asks.

Clenching my teeth, I nod. Then I unzip the big pocket of my backpack.

Aren grins. “I’m impressed.”

I love his smile, the sexy, sideways tilt of it.

“You have a rope?” he asks as he goes to the window, unlatching and swinging it open.

I pull it out of the backpack, hand it to him, then reach for my dart gun. My hand clenches around it as he ties the rope off to a second desk in the room. This is my Plan B, but it isn’t any plan at all. I can’t carry Aren unconscious to the gate. I’ll be lucky if I can lower him safely to the ground.

But I haven’t given up this fight yet.

I aim the gun at Aren’s back just as a yell erupts from outside the room.

SOSCH LEAPS OFF Aren’s shoulders as he and I both spin toward the door. The handle jiggles.

“Unlock it!” Hison orders from the other side. His men will have a key. Shit. I have no time.

I click off the safety on my dart gun and reaim at Aren, but he’s already moving, dodging left and grabbing my wrist.

“McKenzie,” he grates out, jerking the gun out of my hand. His eyes search mine, undoubtedly trying to see if I was going to tranq him. My glare tells him hell yes I was.

Aren curses, shoving the dart gun into my backpack.

“Hison can’t see you with this.” He throws the backpack out the window just as the door unlocks. More shouts come from the hallway as the fae try to shove their way in.

I face Aren down. “I’m not leaving!”

“You are!” he yells. Then he grabs my elbow. “Listen, I’m—”

The desk flies across the floor, hitting one of the unconscious guards, as the door slams open. Magically shoved, I’m sure.

Aren grabs my arms as I grab his, determined to get him out of here. But he’s stronger and faster than I am. As Hison and his cohorts surge into the room, Aren all but flings me out the window. He slaps the rope into my hands as he turns, and I have no choice but to hold on or fall fifty feet to the rocky ground.

“Jorreb!” Hison yells.

The rope slips through my hands. I wrap my left arm around it, manage to stop my descent. I grunt as the weight of my body tightens it, cutting off my circulation. My feet scrape against the side of the palace, trying to find a ledge.

“Aren!” I growl through clenched teeth. It’s not a plea for help—it’s a pissed-off promise that I’m going to kick his ass.

I’m a good six feet below the window. I hear scuffling, shouting, and a bam! that sounds like someone’s hitting a wall or door.

“Shit,” I hiss out. I look down, not at the rocky death trap below but at the rope hanging between my legs. If this were Mission: Impossible , Tom Cruise would be wrapping a leg around it. I try that, and lo and behold, it helps. It doesn’t exactly solve the problem of me hanging out a window, though.

I curse again, then I funnel all my strength into my upper body. My left hand grabs the rope just above my right, and I pull myself up half a foot. Hison hasn’t hauled Aren back to the closet yet—I can hear them both in the reception room. They’re having a whole freaking conversation with me dangling out the window.

I pull myself up another half foot, then another. Something’s still slamming against the wall up there. I have no clue what it is. And there are other noises, like muffled clanks and grunts, that don’t make sense.

My biceps tremble, and I’m only rising inches at a time now. Damn it, I’m almost there. If I can hold on with one hand, I’m almost certain I can reach up and touch the window’s edge.

Ignoring the angry red marks already on my left arm, I wrap it in the rope again, grit my teeth, and strain, trying to stretch my right hand up toward the building.

“McKenzie!” Aren suddenly pops out of the window. I slip a few inches.

“Aren,” I grind out.

His eyes lock on me and he laughs. The bastard actually laughs.

“ Sidhe , I love you.” He reaches down, grabs my arm, and pulls me up as if I don’t weigh 130 pounds. But my next protest dies on my lips when he crushes them beneath his. He, quite literally, kisses my breath away. That’s not completely due to his skills, though the way he pulls my lower lip between his teeth does send a bolt of lightning through me, but I just climbed my way up the side of the palace. I need a second to catch my—

Aren’s tongue brushes against mine, and anything else I might need vanishes from my mind.

“Jorreb!” Hison barks.

With a grin, Aren peels himself away from me. I frown past him, taking in the high noble, his guards, and the fact that the main desk is in front of the reception room door again. A fae is there, one hand on the desktop and one on the door, magically holding it shut, I presume.

“What’s going on?” I ask.

“Your oath,” Aren says to Hison. “Now. Or I cut the rope and trap us all here.”

“You have it, tchatalun-min !” He hisses what I’m sure is an unflattering term.

“Aren?”

He faces me fully and takes both of my hands in his. “We have a chance, McKenzie. If we survive this, we have a chance.”

He gives me another brief but powerful kiss, then he accepts the sword Lord Hison hands him.

“Go,” Aren orders, and Hison is the first out the window.

“What the hell is happening?” I demand, the knots in my stomach twisting and untwisting. I don’t know whether to be relieved or terrified or both.

“The false-blood is here,” he says. “He’s invaded the palace, fissured into the King’s Hall with a dozen men. Lena wasn’t there. She’d be dead if she was.”

“I’m letting it go,” Hison’s last fae says from the door. He must be the one who used his magic to blast it open, too. He’s keeping it shut now despite the fae ramming it from the other side.

Aren nods, acknowledging his words without taking his gaze away from me. “I have to find Lena. I want you to go with Hison, make sure no illusionists get close to him.”

“Go with Hison?” My mind reels. A minute ago, Aren tossed me away because he was set on sacrificing himself. He expected me to accept his decision and move on, and now, he wants to make another decision for me? He wants me to, again, leave him here to die?

“It’ll be safer for you,” he says, as Hison’s last fae runs past us. “You know what the false-blood and his elari will do if they catch you.”

“God, Aren, you . . .” I snap my jaw shut as the door cracks and splinters, then I hurry to the nearest unconscious fae and confiscate her sword and dagger. “I’m staying with you. I care more about Lena than I do about saving Hison’s ass.”

And I’m furious enough to kill anyone in my path.

“I thought you’d say that.” Aren gives me a small smile.

The elari shove the desk aside and rush in. There are two of them. They go directly for Aren. He blocks and sidesteps the first fae’s swing, pivoting around him to engage the second one, too. The first turns his back on me to attack Aren, giving me time and opportunity to swing my sword in a wide arc.

The blade cleaves deep into his side. His knees buckle, and his body makes a wet, sucking sound as I yank my sword free.

Aren spins toward me. He’s already dispatched the second fae—I see his soul-shadow dissipating into nothing—and he lifts his sword to strike the one I injured, the one who’s dropped to all fours.