Page 159 of The Golden Rose Of Valenul

Hope blossomed in his chest like the dawn breaking across the horizon. Light shattered the endless stretch of night, and he nodded again and again. He could do that. He could do anything for her.

Perhaps everything would be alright after all. If he and Ariadne could find a way, then anything was possible. He would find a mage healer for his brother. They would all return to Eastwood together, and he would do everything in his power to right every wrong in his life.

Azriel sat back in the seat, a weight lifting from his shoulders as he did so. Beside him, Ariadne did the same, edging closer so she could lay her head on his arm. He closed his eyes again with a contented sigh.

The coachman pounded on the carriage twice. Then twice again as they slowed to a sudden halt.

No.

No.

Ariadne sat up with a frown. “What is it?”

Every fiber of his being lit up with adrenaline. Azriel looked at his wife with wide eyes. She stared back with a slow understanding of what that knock meant.

Then the screams started.

“Stay in here.” He locked one carriage door, pulled a knife from his boot, and pressed it into her hand. “Kill anyone who comes through that door.”

“Azriel—what—“

Foregoing everything else he’d just promised, he kissed her hard. “I love you.”

Then he launched through the unlocked door, slamming it closed behind him. The two coachmen lay on the road in twin pools of blood, with their innards spilling onto the gravel. Five dhemons stalked out from the darkness, one licking his blade with a wicked grin.

He scrambled for the telepathic link between him and Razer. They needed help. Anything. Anyone, be it Kall or Whelan or any number of their friends still connected through the links. He couldn’t fight them all alone.

No one answered.

Azriel pulled his sword out for the second time that night, steeling himself against Ariadne’s cries behind him, and leveled the blade at the handful of dhemons. He recognized two from his time in Auhrl—Lhev and Mikhal. The rest were new recruits and therefore not likely trained.

“Run back to your master,” Azriel growled in the dhemon tongue. “Or I’ll send you back in pieces.”

Lhev and Mikhal chuckled. They had been part of the group to lock him away. Mikhal had wielded the whip used to remind him of his helplessness. Likely, they’d been a part of Ariadne’s torture as well.

They deserved to be ripped apart.

So when Lhev moved forward with a great swing of his ax, Azriel slid below the arc and slammed his elbow up into the dhemon’s diaphragm. He choked on the air and stumbled back, leaving Azriel open for another dhemon he didn’t know to move in with a sword. Azriel blocked the downward strike and twisted away. Though his strength didn’t compare to the larger males, his smaller form made it easier to evade them.

Azriel doubled back before Lhev could catch his breath. He side-stepped a jab from a third dhemon and turned his sword to point behind him. As he cracked his fist against the attacking dhemon’s jaw, he thrust the blade backward and into Lhev’s chest.

Ripping the sword back out, he caught the second dhemon’s wrist in his hand and, yanking him to the side, swept a foot back to hook his leg. The dhemon landed on his back hard, and Azriel kicked him in the head before shoving his sword through his neck.

Two down.

He hopped back in time for the tip of the third dhemon’s blade to slide across his cheekbone, just under his eye. With a hiss of pain, Azriel jerked his head back.

Then a too-familiar scream ripped through the air from the carriage. He whipped around, taking a blow to the side—right where the bolt hit him the night before—and his knees buckled beneath him.

Ehrun stood at the open door of the carriage, the picture of perfect calm as Ariadne writhed in his grasp. His fingers wrapped around the back of her neck, and he hissed something in her ear. She stilled in an instant, face paling.

“What a good girl,” Ehrun said in the dhemon tongue, stroking his fingers down her face. “So obedient. I’ve missed her.”

“Don’t fucking touch her,” Azriel snarled and lurched forward. The sharp edge of a sword dug into his neck, and he froze, glaring up at the third unnamed dhemon, then Ehrun.

The last time Azriel had seen the bastard, he’d put a sword through the Crowe’s chest. The blow had been meant for him. His father’s death, like everything else, lived forever on the list of his failures.

“You brought this on yourself,” Ehrun said in the common tongue so Ariadne could understand.

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