"Malloryn," she whispered, even as she knew her husband wasn't going to be able to save her.
"Unfortunately, your husband is... currently indisposed." The woman slunk forward, white silk skirts swishing around her ankles.
"What do you want?" Adele demanded, though her hands trembled.
"Malloryn's head on a platter. Or yours, if I cannot have his."
One of the debutantes looked around in surprise, even as a knife slid into Jelena's hand, half-hidden by her skirts. The swan headpiece was tossed negligently aside, revealing a gold-embroidered eye patch over the woman's missing eye.
The other two girls remained oblivious, chattering on about some lord and his padded shoulders, but the other girl was frowning, as if she sensed something amiss.
"Get your friends out of here," Adele told the girl, circling a padded velvet chair.
Jelena simply grabbed it and cast it aside. It hit the wall with a smash, pieces of timber tumbling askew.
And Adele had nothing else to hide behind.
All three debutantes screamed.
"Run!" she yelled to the nearest girl.
Could they not see how much danger they were in?
Adele shoved her hand inside her reticule as Jelena stalked toward her. Damn it, where was it?
White drifted into her field of vision, and Adele tried to dart to the side.
A hand locked in the back of her pearl necklace, and she fell backwards as she was drawn to an abrupt halt. She clutched at the necklace, but Jelena twisted her fist, and every single pearl dug into Adele's throat.
Suddenly she couldn't breathe.
"You poor, pathetic little bitch," Jelena taunted, her face coming into Adele's field of reference. "God, what was he thinking? Marrying cattle?" She gave another malicious twist of the necklace, and Adele's eyes popped as the pounding in her temples intensified. "He was given a gift. A near-immortal god, and he casts it all aside to bed down with the filth. I should make this bloody and slow, just for that insult."
So hard... to think. Adele tried to push at Jelena, but the other woman was choking her. Darkness blurred at the edges of her vision, and the pulse pounded in her throat, as if blood was trying to force itself through her starved veins.
The choker of pearls suddenly released as the thin strands broke. Pearls scattered all across the floor and her throat opened as Adele sucked in a rattling half breath.
"Maybe I will make this bloody," Jelena mused.
Adele's lungs pulsed, starved for oxygen, and she thought she'd burst into a coughing fit, but there was no time.
There was suddenly the tip of a knife in her vision, slashing down her cheek. Adele didn't bother screaming; she flicked the silver thorn on her ring out and stabbed it into the other woman's midriff.
Jelena gasped, and then smashed the back of her hand across Adele's face. Thrown onto her stomach in a tangle of skirts, Adele caught sight of her reticule on the floor. Behind her, Jelena made a horrible strangled sound in her throat.
"You fucking... bish...."
Hemlock might not be enough to incapacitate Jelena entirely—its effectiveness was limited by how high a blue blood's craving virus levels were, and a dhampir's CV levels would be stratospheric—but it slowed her down enough for Adele to reach her reticule.
A knee slammed into her back, the knife sliding across her shoulder. Adele screamed as she drove an elbow back into Jelena's ribs. The dhampir assassin was a heavy weight, her body clearly not working properly as she tried to grab a fistful of Adele's hair.
"Adele?" Malloryn's tinny voice in her ear.
He wasn't going to make it in time....
She was going to die. Right here. She'd never see her husband again. Never see Hattie. Never hold her baby in her arms—the one she'd wanted. Little Alex.... Little Alex, oh, God.... Lena.
Never kiss her husband ever again—
"You worthless scrap of nothing...."
Suddenly she was months in the past, as Lord Corvus clasped at his bloodied cheek and looked at her with fury in his eyes. "You little slut—"
And he'd come at her, knife swinging, before she'd darted under his arm and bolted through the gardens, fleeing directly into Malloryn's arms.
Corvus hadn't beaten her then.
And Jelena would not beat her now.
"If Malloryn wants you so badly, then he can have little pieces of you," Jelena whispered, the words barely penetrating the throbbing pulse in Adele's ears.
Like hell.
She was Adele Cavill, the Duchess of Malloryn, and she'd spent years fighting for the right to survive in this cursed world. Blue bloods had cut her and bled her and pinned her down. They had treated her exactly like the cattle Jelena called her. She was not going to be ended here, not like this.
Adele's hand curled around the small glass bottle of perfume. Her bloodied gloves slipped and slid, but she thought she had her fingers around the rubber bulb of the atomizer.
Another slash of pain—through her ear, this time.
A sweep of blinding heat went through her, and blood splashed wetly down her throat as Adele tried to scream.
In the distance, she could hear someone yelling. Fists pounded on the door. But she pumped a full dose of her perfume into Jelena's face, and then squeezed again. The liquid splashed across the dhampir's mouth and cheeks, and rage filled her eye and then—
Jelena jerked, sucking in an enormous mouthful of the perfumed poison.
She reared back, dropping the knife and clutching her throat.
Adele scrambled out of the way as Jelena thrashed on the carpets. Black veins spread across the other woman's cheeks, bloodied spittle spraying from her lips. Adele's ear throbbed, and when she clapped her hand there, she could feel hot blood pumping through her silk-clad fingers.
My ear.
There was a bloody knife on the floor right in front of Adele.
Jelena's knife.
Adele's hand locked around it, and then she threw herself atop the fallen woman and stabbed down. It went right through the other woman's chest, and Jelena's eye widened as black blood sprayed from her lips.
Adele lifted the knife again, seeing red.