"He'll kill you," she rasped as he slammed her back into the desk. "Malloryn will not let this stand!"
"He's not going to be a problem for much longer. I was going to wait another week until this was all done, but with Devoncourt flaunting you right in front of me, the opportunity seemed too good to resist." Gripping her chin in one hand, he forced her head back, baring her throat. "Stop struggling, you cursed bitch."
Never.
She strained to see what he was doing.
Dragging his bleeding kit from inside his coat—the little case every blue blood carried to bleed their thralls—he slapped it on the desk and tugged it open. Steel gleamed beneath the gaslight, and Adele kicked furiously.
Not like this.
She'd escaped this life by marrying Malloryn.
Six months of freedom from the worry of being stalked by those like Corvus, who didn't give a damned whether she protested. A tear leaked from her eye as the razor edge of the flechette he held sliced across her vein, and hot blood splashed free.
The press of his body ground her against the desk, and then his dead fish mouth was locked around her throat, taking what did not belong to him. Adele raked her nails down his arms, but she might as well be wrestling with steel cables.
The kit.
Her hand flung out, reaching blindly as she gave a low, whimpering moan. Somehow her hand closed around one of his little knives.
Adele drove it into his eye.
Corvus screamed, rearing back from her with one hand clamped over the wound. Adele jerked away from him, but then his good eye locked on her, and she knew she was in trouble.
He lashed out with his blade, and the knife scored across her upper arm as she flailed backward, smashing into the desk. Slipping on the hem of her skirts, she went down, flat on her back, as Corvus advanced.
"I will kill you," he promised as he leaned over her.
And then there was something moving in the cathedral-like rafters.
A shadow opened dark wings above her, like a fallen angel plummeting from the heavens.
Adele thought she was seeing things, but as Corvus knelt to grab her, she realized it wasn't an angel.
It was Malloryn.
Malloryn.
He landed on the desk, boots slamming onto the timbers as Corvus's knife jerked against her shoulder in surprise. A single kick and Corvus's entire weight was flung back off her. Adele gasped, clutching at her bloodied throat as Malloryn went after him.
"Your Grace?" Byrnes appeared out of nowhere to help her to her feet. Behind him, Ingrid watched the fight with molten eyes.
"I'm fine." Adele dashed a hot tear from her eye, her hands shaking violently. There was blood all down the front of her pretty gown. On her hands. On her breasts.
Her blood.
"Allow me," Byrnes murmured, spitting on his fingers and then smearing his saliva quite liberally across the gash in her throat.
A disgusting gesture, but a kind one. The chemicals in his saliva would coagulate her blood and force the wound to heal.
"Here." Ingrid dragged her leather coat off and draped it around Adele's shoulders as Corvus's breath slammed out of him. "Don't watch."
"I want to."
The violence in the fight shocked her; she'd only ever seen Malloryn reclining in his library chair, or stalking the edges of a ballroom with watchful eyes. Even among the Company of Rogues, he was the one who gave the orders from the comfort of his safe house.
But Corvus was the one with the knife now.
It didn't seem to matter.
Malloryn didn't even bother to draw his own, and still he was beating the daylights out of her attacker. He dodged a lash of the knife, capturing Corvus's wrist and twisting it violently behind his back as he took the knife off the bastard. A fist to the back of the head drove Corvus into the wall, and he coughed teeth. A second blow slammed the lord's head into the stone with a sharp impact.
"He's going to kill him," she whispered.
"Malloryn knows what he's doing," Byrnes said. "He's cool, calm, exceptionally rational…."
He trailed off as Malloryn buried the knife up to the blade in Corvus's throat. The lord gagged, trying to pull it free, but it was driven right into the wall, pinning him there.
"You were saying?" Ingrid asked.
"Not so much fun when they can fight back, is it?" Malloryn tore Corvus's shirt and waistcoat right down the middle, baring his chest.
"I think the duke has been under a little bit of pressure of late," Ingrid said dubiously, hovering on the balls of her feet. "He's going to kill him."
"You want me to stop him?" Byrnes asked incredulously.
Adele closed her eyes. If Malloryn ended Corvus right here and now, she'd never have to look over her shoulder again. But.... "He knows something about Balfour's scheme. He seemed to think Malloryn wouldn't see the week out."
"Damn it. Easy now," Byrnes said, easing forward with slow, carefully placed steps. "Take the knife out of his throat, Your Grace. We don't want to kill him."
"Speak for yourself." Malloryn drove his hand beneath Corvus's ribs, right through his flesh. Corvus screamed, the sound muffled by Malloryn's other hand.
This time Adele looked away.
She found her face buried in Ingrid's shoulder as the other woman clutched her there.
"I have my hand around your heart, you bastard. I can feel it pulsing. I could rip it right out of your chest—"
"But we don't want to do that, because he might have valuable information," Byrnes soothed. "Trust me, Your Grace. I'm as shocked at this moment as you are. Me, being the voice of reason. Let his heart go. You can kill him later."
"Please," Adele whispered. "Please don't kill him just yet."
There was nothing of the Malloryn she knew in her husband's face.
His eyes were given over entirely to the hunger. Obsidian irises seemed to suck in every last vestige of light, until they were nothing more than black pits in the chiseled frame of his face.
"We don't have time, Malloryn," Ingrid said. "Dido could appear at any moment. Herbert's trying to extract Clara. We have to leave."
Malloryn's jaw locked tight.