Page 68 of A Queen This Fierce and Deadly

“We go together. I’m not leaving you here, powerless.” Not after watching him die so recently.

“You make me insane.”

“I love you too.”

His lips twitched. Then I was in his arms, his mouth crashing down on mine. Within a moment, we were fighting back-to-back once more, the brief reprieve over.

I launched toward the soldier aiming for Lorian’s back, a feral snarl leaving my throat.

And then Marth screamed Rythos’s name.

11

Lorian

“To your right!”a voice roared, echoing through my head until I spun.

A voice that made my heart leap into my throat.

A voice I’d thought I would never hear again.

I searched for him frantically, my gaze snagging on Rythos, who fought with brutal ferocity against two of Regner’s soldiers, his teeth bared, eyes alight with challenge.

But a third was approaching from behind. Next to him, Marth kicked out at one of the terrovians, burying his sword in another’s eye.

One of them crouched, preparing to launch at him, but he was already moving, slicing his way toward Rythos.

Ducking beneath a soldier who wielded both a mace and a shield, I slammed my foot into the side of his knee and slipped around him, slashing out again and again.

Time slowed to the barest crawl.

Rythos whirled. His arm was already coming up, too slow to parry the attack from behind.

Marth was instantly there. He swung his sword. But the terrovian hit him from the side, pushing him off-balance.

My own sword was already whistling through the air, and the terrovian’s head dropped to the stone, separated from its body. But Marth was too slow to meet the knife still aimed toward Rythos with his own blade.

So he met it with his body.

Rythos made a sound caught somewhere between a roar, a howl, and a sob. It echoed across the wall, until it seemed the fighting paused for the barest moment. He moved faster than I’d ever seen him move before, his dagger whipping out to slash the soldier in the throat.

Marth’s hand had already reached for the hilt of the knife buried in his chest.

“Don’t touch the knife!” Prisca screamed. She ducked around a soldier and crouched, slicing his hamstrings. He bent, already falling, and she ruthlessly kicked him in the ass, sending him careening off the wall.

My gaze met Marth’s. He was still alive. But the fae iron so close to his heart…

Rythos clamped down on Marth’s hand, preventing him from pulling the blade free—and bleeding out right here. “You know better,” he growled.

Marth slumped. Rythos easily hauled him up, cradling him to his chest. “They’ve overrun the city,” he said. “It’s time to fall back.”

I slashed my sword through the throat of a soldier who came too close and surveyed the city below us. Rythos was right. While we’d been guarding this part of the wall, Regner’s army had merely attacked the weaker points.

Siege ladders were clustered along the north and west walls. Even as I watched Rekja’s soldiers use what little power they had left in an attempt to bring them down…

It was far too late.

The soldiers had poured over the walls and were rampaging through the city. The screams carried over the clashing swords surrounding us.

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