Page 179 of A Crown of Tears and Treason
But they’d have to kill me right here and spill my blood, because I was not going down without a fight. I might die, but I wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of succeeding in their vicious plan.
The blood in the vials of my armor began to swivel frantically.
A second later, a dark blur slashed through the shadows, and I knew I was saved.
Zandyr had found me.
Chapter
Fifty-Seven
EVIE
Zandyr was a force of nature. He’d left the prince back in Phoenix Peak. The Dragon had come to battle.
No mortal being could move that fast.
Faster than my watery eyes could track him.
Faster than my attackers could react.
Faster than the wind howled against me and the water splashed from the wretched creature snapping and tearing bits and pieces of a body.
All I saw was the glint of Zandyr’s sword as he sliced through the attackers with the fury of a thousand fighters. As fast as his blade slashed, they turned to ash.
His long hair billowed in the moonlight daring to creep in these foul parts. I only got a flash of his face.
Pure fury. Unrelenting, unflinching fury.
And his eyes. His eyes were pools of black. No sign of the blue or the human behind them.
Three of the shadows foolishly tried to attack Zandyr.
He whirled around and skewered two of them on his sword. The third wasn’t as lucky.
Zandyr grabbed his throat and raised him up and up, until his legs dangled and twitched. He knew death was close.
“Youdaredharm her,” Zandyr roared, the sound monstrous. Unhinged. Feral. “You dared take her away from me.”
A crunching sound later, the shadow no longer had a throat. He disintegrated along with his hideous brethren.
Then Zandyr was upon the rest. A few of them, the ones who’d been the farthest and had seen what awaited them, rushed to the trees, crying for salvation.
There was none. None for the masked killers. Zandyr made sure of that, tearing through them with his might.
I swayed on the spot. I wanted to cry out to spare some of them. At least one.
Not for their wretched souls, those were damned, it was obvious.
Whatever they’d done to themselves was clearly killing them from the inside. But we needed information.
But when I opened my mouth, I tasted my blood, ash, and the rest of this hideous night, and bile rose once more.
It took all of me, all that remained of my energy, to not crumple to the ground.
In the river, the creature kept thrashing, as if delighting in its kill. I didn’t look too hard at the massive neck that rose from the water. Or the teeth that snapped, big enough to swallow my entire carriage whole.
Animals didn’t grow so large on their own. Magic. Dark magic.
