Page 82 of Realm of Thieves

Despite her telling me to stay put, I silently stand up and start moving past the table.

“Zolar,” a man’s voice says faintly from outside. I don’t know who Zolar is or what he normally sounds like, but there’s something off about it.

Warning bells go off in my head, my chest tightening.

No. Don’t open it.

“It’s early, Zolar,” Ellestra says with a sigh.

“Wait!” I yell, running into the room just to see her slide open the door.

A man dressed completely in black, including a face mask, is on the other side.

A sword in his hand.

Ellestra looks from me back to the man.

Just as he raises the sword and slams it right into Ellestra’s chest.

Lemi barks and Ellestra screams, trying to rip the sword out of her heart, the blood spilling everywhere, and I’m running at the man, looking for the closest object to use as a weapon.

The man at the door is joined by three more, weapons drawn and advancing toward me.

Chapter 23

Brynla

I wake up to myaunt’s scream, the razor-sharp sound slicing through my dreams and right into the marrow of me. I hurl myself out of bed, no time to think, only time to act. In the fading light of a flickering torch I throw on a gauzy tunic to cover my nudity, grab my closest ash-glass sword, and then I’m racing out of the room.

And into complete chaos.

Lemi’s barks fill the air, but he’s nowhere to be seen. Instead I see my aunt on the ground, a sword sticking straight out of her chest, her screams dying to a gurgling sound that I know will haunt my nightmares for the rest of my life. I run to her in a panic, to the foreign man in black trying to pull the sword out of her chest. Andor has picked up a stool and is racing toward three other men who are bursting in through the door. In a blur of movement, Andor snaps the legs off the stool with his bare hands, then grasps them like jagged spears, ducking as the assailants lunge at him.

Lemi appears suddenly behind one of the men, jumping up at his back and knocking him to the ground, his jaws snapping at the man’s head. I look back down at my aunt, at the blood pouring out of herchest as the man grasps the sword. Hysteria overwhelms me, and before I can think, I quickly raise my sword, stabbing it through the back of the man’s neck just as he looks up. The blade pierces through the skin and bone with a sickening stab that vibrates up my arms, and the man falls down dead next to me.

The first man I’ve ever killed.

There is no time to feel anything.

“Brynla!” Andor yells, and I look to see him stab someone with the stool leg while one of the other men comes at me, two knives drawn and glinting in the torchlight.

Lemi disappears and then reappears right in front of me, his heavy body between me and my attacker. I scream for Lemi to move as the knives slash toward him and he disappears, the action creating enough of a distraction for the man to lose his focus. I take the opportunity to brandish my sword and with a scream I swing it through the air with all my might until it slices across the man’s throat, nearly severing his head clean off.

He slumps to the ground beside the other dead man and then Lemi reappears beside Andor, helping him take down the last remaining assailant. I should get up and help him, but I feel like I’m moving through water now. At least Andor now has the upper hand as Lemi causes the man to drop his weapon and Andor has him pressed against the wall, blade at the man’s temple.

“Who do you work for?” Andor growls, a vein throbbing at his temple. “Who sent you?”

He pulls the man’s mask down and the man grins at him. Pale skin, yellow hair. I’ve never seen him before and I don’t have time to care.

I look back to my aunt and feel my world start to fall apart, like the thin threads of reality that were holding me together are starting to disintegrate. I collapse on the ground beside her and pull her into my arms, taking the edge of my tunic and pressing it against the wound where blood rushes out like a crimson river.

“You’re going to be okay,” I tell her, my voice shaking. She stares up at me with glassy eyes, an emptiness inside them that seems to be spreading. “We’re going to make sure you’re okay.”

I look over at Andor, who is still threatening the man, hoping he can save my aunt.

He has to.

I saw him bring Lemi back to life; I know that’s what happened. He took my pain away. He was young when he couldn’t save his own mother, and maybe her illness was too much, but my aunt is strong and it’s just a wound, it can heal, she can be saved.

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