Page 100 of Tell No Tales
Klaus
If Coryn thought she could wiggle her little finger at Klaus and make him follow her, she was so …
Right.
Fuck. He stumbled as his legs moved of their own accord, pulling him along behind her. Another step, and he felt the cord between him and Vadim snap like a wire that had been tightened beyond its tensile strength.
"What are you doing?" Vadim shouted the question, his face twisted in anguish from their broken link.
"Taking back what's mine." Coryn smirked. "You have healing now. You should know how to use it."
"Moving someone against their will goes against everything in the healer's code, and you know it," Yvette said.
Not again, gods damn it all. Klaus refused to be Coryn's pawn. He had full control of his mental faculties, at least, even if he couldn't stop his body's march across the room to the wall beside the courtyard door. She motioned for him to stand next to Gultan, the earth weaver with his hair pulled back too tight.
As soon as Klaus had control of his body again, he crouched down and confirmed Trin was all right. Unconscious, sure, and she would probably have one hell of a headache, but she was alive. Right now, Klaus needed a tick mark in the win column, because nothing had gone right since they'd entered the throne room.
On the opposite side of the throne, the death weaver still had an arm around Hugo's chest and a dagger to his throat. She'd even placed a suppression amulet around his neck, and every one of Coryn's people wore an amulet just like it. Klaus wanted to sail to Brinstock himself and slice Slimy Lou's throat in his sleep.
Where had that thought come from? Klaus wasn't violent by nature. If given the chance, he would rather smother someone with a pillow than shed blood.
He met Vadim's gaze and couldn't help the smile of recognition that spread across his face. Vadim was as surprised as he was. They still had a link. Something had snapped between them, but it didn't keep them from sharing thoughts. He unleashed his core power, showing Vadim the number of guards outside the door. Twelve, unless there were more wearing activated amulets.
Klaus shivered as he recognized a different sensation along the edges of his awareness. Outside the wall to his back, the courtyard was filled with thirty undead. Fewer than he'd killed in the library basement, but Coryn could have stashed more beyond his detection. Klaus shivered.
Coryn walked over to Martiz again to inspect his wounds.
"Attack the undead,"Vadim said.
Klaus grinned. The command had come through loud and clear. Klaus saw beyond it, to the complicated game Vadim played with Coryn. He was using Klaus to provoke Coryn to attack. For once, Klaus didn't mind being used. He didn't know Emperor Hugo well, but the rest of them had become his friends over the last few days. He didn't want to lose anyone to Coryn. If his actions provoked an attack Vadim could counter with a killing blow, he would gladly attack for the empire itself.
Klaus didn't take his hands from the iron cuffs, since they didn't hinder his seeking ability. He used his power to find the core of each unnatural creature in the courtyard. A part of their very souls had been twisted around their cores, reanimating them and binding them to a life they never asked for. Klaus held onto his anger, letting it build into a righteous fire at his center. He'd never felt anything close to elemental power, but he wondered if air weavers seethed like the rage of injustice in his gut.
As Klaus prepared to release his energy into the undead, Coryn turned to him with a look of curiosity. "What are you doing?" she asked. "I've never felt anything like that before."
Martiz started laughing. "It worked. It worked! You see, Coryn? You can be stopped."
Klaus didn't need to hear Vadim's frenzied shouting in his head to know he didn't have time to answer her. He felt her scratching around the edges of his awareness with her telepathy, looking for a way inside. Vadim shielded for him the same way he could shield from Yvette, covering Klaus's core with a thick blanket so he maintained control of his newfound power.
Klaus released his fury toward each of the creatures in the courtyard, and Coryn screeched. The purple light raced out of him, sinking through the wall and finding the shortest paths to each final destination. One by one, he felt the creatures' cores combust and disappear until he could no longer sense any undead in the courtyard.
Coryn screamed as her creatures fell lifeless one by one. "How dare you!"
Klaus had never seen her move so fast. Her combination of elements made her limbs move quicker than humanly possible. She grabbed him by the throat, and his vision blurred for a moment. Then, she tried to force her death magic into him.
Vadim had never prepared him for the sensation. It was too similar to an air weaver stealing his breath. He felt his stamina slipping away. The edges of his vision danced black, the way it always did, and the world seemed to narrow. He latched onto a single ray of light. He stared into it, studied it, until the world seemed to widen a bit.
Vadim. He was staring at Vadim. Somehow, he stayed on his feet, and the surrounding air became easier to breathe.
Their link was still there and holding strong. Vadim's gaze bolstered him on his feet, and he stood against Coryn's onslaught.
She growled at him when she noticed his eyes weren't closing, and then he was breathing in clay, until he couldn't breathe at all. His lungs and eyes burned when he tried to take a breath.
Vadim had his hands up, and he was saying something Klaus couldn't hear.
The world faded to black around him.
Chapter 25
