Ursula whirled, gripping her sword and scanning the room for Abrax. The incubus stood near the balcony, gripping the king’s halberd. Blood dripped from his fingers—Kester must have bitten him before lunging into the crowd.
Kester’s lip curled back from his teeth, and his deep growl resonated through her bones. Abrax swung the halberd in a tight figure eight, his eyes locked on the hound. The incubus’s blade began to glow, charging with some kind of magic. When he slashed it, a bolt of blue light shot straight at the hound. But Kester had already leapt away. Snarling, he charged the incubus. Abrax dodged, moving like a cloud of curling black smoke and reappearing a few feet away. Kester skidded to a stop, just missing him.
Just as Abrax swung the halberd’s blade, Ursula heard footfalls behind her. Sword ready, she whirled to find one of the king’s guards remaining, his platinum hair swirling around his head like a living thing. “The king will enjoy playing with you once I subdue you.” His pale eyes flashed, and he slashed his blade, but the battle fury already burned through Ursula, and she parried.
That sense of precision filled her muscles, warming her like a desert wind. They think I’m an animal. He was fast, but she was faster. They want to slaughter me like a pig. Their swords clanged as she attacked and he parried. She backed him against the bar until he faltered. Kill. She drove her sword through his chest.
As she watched blood bubble from his mouth, horror hit her. She’d just killed someone. But there wasn’t time to think about what she’d done—not with Kester’s growl filling the hall. She spun to find his jaws locked on Abrax’s arm, snapping the incubus’s bones.
Her hands shaking, Ursula stared down at her crimson blade. What kind of killer was F.U.?
The incubus’s roar called her attention back to the fight, and she watched as his halberd skittered across the floor. Her heart sped up—they were too close to the edge.
Kester leapt for the incubus’s throat, but he curled away in a cloud of black smoke, appearing again at the platform’s edge. Kester pounced, and Ursula’s world tilted as she watched them both plummet over the edge.
“Kester!” she screamed, running to the ledge. Her blood roaring in her ears, she peered into the abyss. Desperately, she hoped to see Kester clinging by his fingertips to one of the tree roots, but there was no sign of him. Far below she could see the orbs swirling, and the music thumped in the distance. Panic stole her breath, and for just a moment, the steep drop into oblivion called to her, like a magnetic pull.
But oblivion did not await her at the other end of death. Eternal hellfire awaited her.
All the blood rushed from her head, and she fell to her knees. He’d survived the neck snapping, but surely even magic couldn’t save a body from a fall like that. Her chest welled with an aching sadness, before pure terror overcame her. There’s no way out. She was stuck in a fae’s subterranean lair with an army of soldiers who wanted to rape and murder her. Even death wasn’t an escape.
There was no air. I can’t breathe.
Please let this be a terrible nightmare—there was no fight, no fae, no incubus. Kester didn’t fall to his death. In a few moments she’d wake up in her East London flat, ready to drink tea on the couch while Katie regaled her with details of all the guys she’d kissed the night before.
Ursula closed her eyes, taking a deep breath. The floor of the hall was still a thousand feet below her, the abyss oddly inviting in her desperation.
She turned back to the balcony. Apart from the crumpled body of the guard she’d slaughtered, it was empty. Blood stained the wood, and the sweet, metallic smell was overwhelming. She scanned the floor for her wyrm-skin purse, but she couldn’t see it anywhere. It must have gotten knocked off the ledge in the fight. Her heart hammered against her ribs. My white stone. She had nothing now.
She glanced down again at her bloodied hands. She’d killed someone tonight, with a great degree of skill. What the hell kind of monster had F.U. been? A trained killer? An assassin? And what had happened to Kester?
A hollow opened in the pit of her stomach. Kester’s fall would have landed him right in a crowd of fae who wanted him dead. And what did that mean for his soul? He hadn’t paid off his debt yet, even after four hundred years. Tears stung her eyes, but she clenched her jaw, marshaling her resolve. This was not the time to cry.
Distantly she could hear the beat of the music. Thump. Thump. She couldn’t tell where her pounding heart ended and the music began.
The fae king wanted her dead, and at any moment he and his guards could return to finish the job. Even if she was some sort of master swordsman, she couldn’t fend them off forever. But with the dais gone, there was no way out. Thump. Thump.