Page 180 of Crown of Darkness
Another guard notices. “What are you—?”
One of Finn’s arrows suddenly sprouts in his throat. He goes down with a clatter, and every head in the Well turns sharply toward us.
“Well, fuck,” Baylor growls, drawing both of his massive swords.
“Cover me,” Eris yells at Finn, and then she’s leaping over the edge of the stairs and landing in a crowd of unseelie.
“Vi!”
I turn at Thiago’s yell, and he slashes his sword through the ropes that are bound loosely around my wrists. Tugging a dagger free, he tosses it toward me, and then he’s turning, the arc of his sword gleaming as it slices through the throat of an unseelie warrior.
They attack us in droves, and there’s no time to think. Only time to move. I duck the whine of a sword, grabbing the bastard’s arm as he extends and stabbing my dagger into the vulnerable patch under his arm. A wheeze escapes him as I hit the lung, and then I draw it out and whip it across his throat.
Blood splashes my cheeks.
I kick his fallen sword into my hand and leap over his body, bringing both weapons up to block an overhead swing. The vibration jolts up my arms. But all my training has been against warriors both taller and heavier than I am. I deflect the blow to the side and spin low, onto my knees, the bite of my dagger slashing through a hamstring.
The fight is short and brutal, and some part of me relishes the blood.
I drive my sword straight through a guard’s gut.This is for Old Mother Hibbert.
Another one lunges at me.
For all those children who ran in fear….
For me.
For Amaya.
It’s that thought that nearly undoes me.Amaya. I turn for the Hallow once more, and this time I catch a glimpse of her, gaping at us as if she can’t believe her eyes.
Bending low, I smack my palm against the stone floor, feeling the ripple of my blow vibrate through the floor toward her. “Be brave,” I tell her. “We’re coming for you.”
Amaya looks down at her palms, as if she heard me.
The room seems to vanish.
All I can see is her.
A little girl dressed in a pale white smock, her tiny wrists manacled to the middle of the Hallow, where she cowers from the banes that snap at her and the fetches that laugh as she begs.
Fear drains away.
I know what I must do.
“Cover me,” I say, walking toward her.
As much as I yearn to smear blood across the floors, my fight doesn’t begin or end with a sword.
“Vi!” Thiago snaps, but I’m already past his reach.
“Just get me to that Hallow.”
I am going to get my daughter back.
He lunges forward, turning a blade that was meant for me. Another unseelie sprints toward me, but he goes down with an arrow in the throat. And then Eris is there, her sword held low as she guards my right flank.
“Can you hear me?” I call out to the Mother of Night.
