Page 126 of Thief of Souls
The main cavern is full of a lingering sense of silence.
I know that silence as I slip from shadow to shadow.
One little raven, perching on a rock…. I mark him and move on. Patience isn’t only a virtue for thieves. It’s also the best weapon in an assassin’s arsenal.
Another raven, his spine pressed against the tunnel wall as he watches the cavern.
Two of Ruhle’s seven.
Semirhyn is dead; Rhyvaen is injured, which leaves five. But where are the other three?
And most importantly, where is Ruhle?
I flit across the cavern, knife held low as I stalk the wraith sitting on the rock. Nothing moves. His attention is focused purely on the cave mouth….
I step out of the Sift, grabbing a fistful of his hair and jerking his head back even as my knife finds his throat—
Light sears the cavern. A thousand bats overhead rustle and scream, their voices too high-pitched for fae ears, but perfectly attuned for mine.
I try to Sift, but the light is everywhere.
And then I’m surrounded by a cloud of bats as they flee for the opening of the cave. Tiny bodies whipping past me. Little claws catching in my hair. And through it all, the light burning, burning, burning….
And then it’s all gone.
Seven seconds of misery, all in all, but my knees hit the floor as I try to blink away the afterimage. I can barely even see the shadows…. All I can hear is the soft crunch of footsteps stalking over the gravel floor of the cave toward me.
Ruhle.
He materializes in front of me, just as my eyes finally recover.
Ruhle stares down at me, his teeth bared. “You little slut. You think we weren’t prepared for you?”
A web of finely spun spider silk from the demorari on the Gilded Isles is flung into the air above me. I recognize it from the gilded gleam of that silk; the enormous, bloated spiders weave pure light into a net so tight that nothing can break the strands or escape.
Not even a shadow.
I punch into nothing, but I’m too late.
Thin razor-fine wires of light sink over me—through me—and then I’m gasping on the ground like a beached fish, landing back in my corporeal body with a heavy thud.
It hurts. I can feel those little burning lines all over my skin, but it’s the dull ache in my bones that warns me that the jarring thud hurt me more than I immediately suspect.
A boot drives into my stomach.
The shock of such pain wrenches a gasp from me, but I barely have time to absorb it, because another one replaces it.
“I’ve spent years waiting for this moment,” Ruhle whispers, advancing on me menacingly. He grabs a fistful of my shirt and the net, his knee sinking into my stomach even as he presses the tip of his knife against my throat. “Beg me for mercy.”
Sharp iron trails down my throat, leaving behind the wet slide of blood.
I grab his wrist, but it’s like straining against steel. He’s always been stronger than me.
I can’t escape. I can’t even feel the shadows here. All I can feel is those thin strands of light seeking to sink right through my skin.
The burn of the light. And the kiss of the knife.
“Beg,” he insists, and the knife cuts a little deeper.
