Page 70 of Smoke & Ashes
Turning slowly, Yelena gave me a vindictive smile. “And where would be the fun in that.”
I started running some scenarios in my head. Thinking about it, I was sure she wasn’t here with Sebastian. It was still only a theory but I was almost certain that he wanted Elaine alive, and he’d have known that Yelena would tear out her heart without blinking. Which meant she was going rogue on this one. “How’d you find this place?” I asked, hoping that she’d still have her monologuing instinct.
“The King of Shadows showed me.” I couldn’t decide whether her happiness in answering questions meant that she was letting her guard down or that she legitimately didn’t feel threatened. Probably a bit of both.
“Finally realised Sebastian was playing you, huh?”
That landed. She glared at me with a mixture of fury and problematic sexuality. “Nobody plays me. Nobody plays the King of Shadows. I have always beenhisally, nobody else’s.”
“Yeah, that’s what people say when they’ve been played.”
By my side, Tara—back in the shape of a wolf now we were inside and at risk of attack—gave a low growl. It hadn’t escaped my notice that Yelena was still wearing the actual skin of her actual friend, but I felt we should probably make sure we’d got as much as we could out of her before we began with the violence.
“Katharine …” Patrick’s voice was doing that thing that you get in movies where a set of unrelated injuries somehow make you incapable of putting words together at the normal rate. “You must … protect … Elaine.”
Ignoring his ex for a moment, I turned to him. “She’s not with you?”
“She evaded us.” Yelena’s voice was laced with malice and resentment. “I told Patrick that I would keep him alive until he had seen me rip out his lovers’ hearts one by one.” She flicked her attention from me to Sofia, and back to me again. Okay, this was looking like it was about to get fightey.
Also what did she mean “us”?
Fuck.
I moved to put myself in front of Sofia just in time to intercept Yelena’s sudden assault, all claws and darkness and stolen power. Tara joined in which very briefly gave us a two-to-one advantage until something moved in the shadows and I learned exactly who “us” was. Apparently in this context it meant “Yelena and also some full-on faerie knights from the Court of the King of Shadows.”
I fucking hated faerie knights. These three were pale-skinned and dark-haired like their master, wearing black armour and trailing what might have been cloaks or might have been pure darkness. Two of them struck at me and one at Tara—the room was a bit too small for their swords to be practical as weapons, but it was amazing how little comfort that was when a magic shadow elf was swinging three feet of sharp metal at you.
My absolute number one priority was to stop anything hitting the people who didn’t have a nigh-supernatural resilience to physical injury. I grabbed one of the faery knights with my good arm and tried to pin his sword where it couldn’t do any damage, but the jolt of pain that ran through me when his body collided with my still very broken limb completely ruined that plan. All in all, now would have been a very good time for Sofia to go full light-of-noonday.
She went full light-of-noonday.
Yelena and her minions backed off, but it was very much more acautiousthing than anoh no it burns it burnsthing. I wondered how long it would take for them to do the calculation that while sunlight could stop the dark power of the vampire and the insidious touch of the King of Shadows, it didn’t do jack against cold steel and Sofia was still basically a mortal girl made out of meat and hope. Probably not long, was my thinking.
Now would have been a great time for a brilliant plan. I did not have a brilliant plan. “Okay.” I gave it one more go. “What if we all stand down, and Patrick goes back to you?” I didn’t have a brilliant plan, but I had a spur-of-the-moment, hastily improvised, probably extraordinarily stupid plan. And I’d take what I could get.
“I would never—” Patrick began. I hoped I wasn’t going to have to kick the iron maiden shut on him.
“Oh comeon,” I replied. “Big personal sacrifice so your girlfriend can go free? Youlivefor this shit. Unlive for it. Whatever.”
To my flat astonishment, Yelena seemed to be seriously considering it. “She would never give him up.”
“No. She’d probably track you down and try to get him back. And then you can trap her and rip out her still-beating heart or whatever.”
“Kate!” Now it was apparently Sofia’s turn to object. I couldn’t tell if the interruptions were undermining my case or making it for me. Probably Yelena would buy the idea more if she thought at least some of her enemies weren’t up for it. At least I hoped she would.
“Just being realistic.” I put my one good hand up in adon’t shoot the messengerkind of a way. “I want to end this without anybody getting hurt right now. We can think about laterlater.”
Yelena sashayed over to where Patrick was still pinioned inside a sodding great metal cabinet. “What do you say, lover? Will you be mine again if it buys your friends a little freedom?”
Come on, Patrick, say yes. It means absolutely nothing.I nudged Tara’s flank with my knee which I hoped she took as a signal to get ready when shit started to go down again.
Weakly, perhaps from reluctance, perhaps because he must have lost a huge amount of blood even without a heartbeat pumping it out of his body, Patrick nodded. Hooking her hands underneath his arms, Yelena lifted him triumphantly down and lowered him to the floor at her feet. If she was anything like him, and she wasexactlylike him or this wouldn’t have worked, we had about a three second window while she was wrapped up in obsession-haze.
I rushed the nearest knight, going straight for his sword hand and hoping to have him disarmed before he realised what was happening. The sunlight was still holding them back a little, but only a little, and I needed the strength and grace of the Deepwild to have any hope of pulling this off.
“Sofia,” I called out with my last coherent breath before it all went into hunter’s instinct and adrenaline. “Run.”
Partly I didn’t want the responsibility of looking after her. Partly I wasn’t convinced the sunlight would be enough to protect her if it kicked off again. Mostly, I wanted Patrick off the bench.
