Page 15 of Deadly Maiden

More fucks would be in order, but I’m too stunned. I own a fortress? My parents are the most evil of the Chained King’s allies? They feature in history lessons. Hell, no. I am angry, andI stand, tipping over my chair with a bang. The raven flies off the armchair and arrives on my head. Its claws are scratchy but, thankfully, it stays where it landed.

“Ouch.” I reach up, gingerly.

Then it leans over and twists itself almost upside down to stare into my face, its beak an inch from my nose.

This is when the staircase leading up here clatters with the feet of intruders. The window is shadowed as someone vaults inside—an armed and armored man, in black and silver, bearing the crest of an enforcer on his tunic. He rolls to his feet then rips a sword and dagger from belt sheaths.

“Surrender, Wyntre Diamond. We are the King’s Enforcers, and you are under arrest for?—”

The door on the other side of the living room is smashed open, slams back into the wall. A portrait falls, and glass shatters. The raven makes a strangled squawk then departs through the window, dodging a sword slash. Four more men spill into our house through the doorway. Three unsheathe their swords.

“You’re under arrest on suspicion of necromancy,” the frontmost one declares. His fine breastplate and the gemstone on his sword hilt speak of wealth, his sneer of a nasty disposition. “Both of you will come with us.”

“Not yet,” snaps another enforcer, a larger man whose flamboyant head of hair licks the beams of our ceiling.

Pausing less than a heartbeat, Father unfolds to face the man who rudely came in the window. He takes a step and stabs him in the leg then twists the steel, using a poniard pulled from some secret place. Blood squirts over the floor. The man crumples on the leg.

Father’s swift kick to his head renders him unconscious. “The window! I’ll hold them!”

He cannot do this. He cannot. My eyes are ready to pop.

I pause, hesitating in all the wrong ways at the wrongest time.

The sword the unconscious enforcer dropped is a stride away, and I sidestep to scoop it up, turning in time to see three swords sweep aside my father’s short weapon. He intercepts and parries one, slits the man’s arm partway to his elbow. In the same moment, two blades slide into him at shoulder and arm. A steel point exits, red, a sharp spine bursting out his back.

The sight staggers me, wrenches the world into a flurry of impossibilities.

Have they killed him? He can’t be dead.

Father slumps to one knee, gasping. After they extract their blades and look to me, his palm slaps the floor. He’s still upright though he sways, and a grimace distorts his face.

A squeak leaves my lungs; my scream is soundless.

There is so much blood. Red is everywhere. This is my fault.

He gasps twice more, then mouths,I’m okay. I can read his lips easily, but his eyes are desperate. One of the intruders punches him with a sword pommel, and he collapses.

“How dare you!” I take a wobbly step toward these awful men. I wipe spit from my mouth and show my teeth.Bastards.

I want to strangle them, every one of them, stab them, stab them. I crush my fears beneath this venomous anger.

Will they kill me? I think it even as the blood drips from Father onto the caramel-colored rug he bought to brighten the room only a week ago. He’s still mouthing words at me.Run! Go. Run.

How can I just leave?

“You’re all fools.”

Who said that?

I snap up my head, focusing on the flame-haired, taller one—the one who has not yet drawn a weapon. My own sword, I havestupidly allowed the point to fall. I jerk it higher, grief contorting my face, tears tracking down my cheeks.

Go!They’ll kill you!I shake my head at Father’s silent instructions.

He yells aloud, “Go! I don’t want to dig your grave!” One of the men stomps on his shoulder, and he slumps.

He wants me to desert him, and what purpose do I have here? I cannot defeat these men.

Despairing, I retreat toward the window, my sword point now raised as I try to indicate a lethalness I do not feel.

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