Page 83 of Shadow Warrior
“Is that why you killed a bunch of cadets?” My lip curled in a sneer.
He stared blankly at me, and then panic colored his features. “Not us. Never us. We must go. Move aside.”
My mate chose that moment to hit the ground on his knees. Oh, shit. Even if we wanted to run, we couldn’t, not with Brady in this state. Panic fisted my heart and squeezed my throat. We needed an advantage, we needed my shadows. I called to them now, willing them to come to me. There was a ripple over my skin, a tingle in my fingertips, but it was as if there was an obstruction. Something blocking my connection. Not the mist. They’d come to me in the mist before. It had to be something to do with this green shit.
“Justice?” Lloyd swung his blade as a deterrent as the fomorians closed in. “I assume they won’t take no for an answer.”
“They want Brady.” My words were clipped. My gaze fixed on violet eyes.
He was in charge. He was the leader. I needed to keep him in my sights.
“Like hell,” Carlo said. He stepped forward, daggers whirling so fast they were silver blurs. “You want him? You’re going to have to go through us.”
Violet eyes sighed and closed his eyes. Was that acquiescence? Was he backing down?
The green lashed out from behind violet eyes and hit Carlo in the face. There was a sharp crack.
A sound I knew.
A sound I’d heard before.
My scream reverberated inside my head, trapped, ineffectual as my friend fell to the ground.
He lay still, neck at an odd angle, daggers still clutched in his hands.
Dead.
There was no healing from a severed spinal cord. Not even for a nightblood.
Carlo was dead.
The guys’ exclamations, their bellows of rage surrounded me, fueling my rage, hot and red and lethal.
A scream tore from my throat as I raised my blade, ready to attack.
“No!” Brady’s command was like an invisible tether that rooted my boots to the ground and tugged on the spot below my weave tether.
“Brady …” I couldn’t turn to look at him. Couldn’t take my eyes off the enemy.
“I’ll go with you,” Brady said. “Don’t harm the others. Please.”
“No.” I did look at Brady now. “What are you doing?”
“Fuck this,” Devon spat. “Fucking fight us like men, not with your green fog.”
“No,” Brady said again. “Stop. All of you.” He looked at Carlo’s still body. “No more death.”
“Brady, you don’t have to do this,” Lloyd said. But there was defeat in his tone.
Anger licked at my chest. “No way.”
Brady’s jaw was clenched. His eyes were red-rimmed and puffy from the effects of the mist, but his lips curled in a wry smile.
“A good knight knows when to retreat to live to fight another day.” His gaze was penetrating as he slowly brought himself to his feet. His massive frame swayed with the effort of staying upright. He fixed his attention on violet eyes. “Your word you won’t harm them.”
Violet eyes nodded.
My insides quivered, and my arms ached from holding the blade aloft, from being frozen as my mate, the man I loved, walked toward me. This was happening, and no matter how I turned it over, there was no other way.
