Page 127 of Heart of Iron
Suddenly the world went white-hot, flinging him off his feet.He hit the wall and fell hard, pain slashing through his side.Screams filled the air, the sound of cracking plaster tearing through the hall.Inside the Great Hall, flames licked at the furnishings and smoke billowed through the open doors, turning the hallway into a congested nightmare.
He couldn’t see.Couldn’t smell anything but smoke.
“Lena,” he whispered, shoving desperately to his feet.She had to be here somewhere.
And that was when he heard it.
Faint sounds of the woman he loved, screaming.
***
Colchester shoved her into an antechamber, his sharp bloodletting knife in his fist.Lena stumbled over a chair, tripping on her damned skirts.He’d cut her, the blade slicing through her cheek and flinging fat droplets of blood onto the pale carpets.
The chair splintered beneath her as she fell.Lena pushed herself to her hands and knees and saw the heavy antique leg of the chair beside her.Snatching it up, she scrambled to her feet and turned to face him, brandishing it like a club.
Colchester locked the double doors with a threatening click.Leaning against them, he smiled lazily.“And now, I finally have you alone.”
“Not for long,” she reminded him.“Will won’t be far behind.”
“I doubt it.”He looked up, toward the floor above them.“That explosion should have ripped most of the Great Hall and the hallway apart.‘Neither fire nor iron told against them,’” he said, repeating the famous quote about verwulfen, “but not even he could survive such a thing.I’m afraid you’re on your own.”
On her own.A tremble started, deep within her body.“You knew,” she said.“You knew it was going to happen.”
Colchester’s gaze slid toward her.“You will never prove such a thing.”
“You smiled.Right before Astrid started winding the transformational.And you very strategically placed yourself nearest the door.”
She sidestepped around a small writing table as he stepped toward her.The horror of it shocked her.She’d known that the letters she carried between the Ivory Tower and Mandeville came from someone high within the Echelon, but she had never expected it to behim.
“A happy coincidence.”Colchester picked up the edge of the table and flipped it aside.“Nowhere to hide, my dear.”The small bloodletting blade sliced the air threateningly.Back and forth.
Lena licked dry lips.Where had her courage gone?Her confidence?Where was the surge of invincibility that she’d felt in the yard?She darted behind the sofa into a shaft of sunlight.
Colchester prowled forward, a hunter completely at ease.If she let him, he would kill her, right here, and nobody would ever know who’d done it.
Colchester leaped onto the sofa and over it, his coat flaring around him as he came through the beam of sunlight.She barely had time to think before she swung the chair leg up and smashed him across the face with it.
Dark blood flew, spattering the cream walls.Lena scrambled over the sofa, a surge of excitement running through her veins.Colchester’s screams chased her, and he came to his feet, clutching his ruined face.His entire cheekbone caved in, bone gleaming through the torn flesh.
The sight of it excited her in a way it shouldn’t have.She felt herself trembling, a sweep of severe cold rushing through her veins.“Come,” she said.“I’m not afraid of you anymore.”
As she tilted her face up, he suddenly froze.
“You little whore,” he whispered.“You filthy beast.You let himinfectyou?”
He hadn’t seen her eyes ’til now.Lena hefted the chair leg.“It’s the greatest gift any man’s ever given me.”
The words incited him to a rage she’d never seen before.Ignoring his ruined face, he flipped the sofa up and over, then smashed aside the small reading table.Debris sprayed everywhere as he tore down a bookcase.
Turning on her with a snarl, he held his blade with deadly intent.“I could have given you everything.”
“You threatened to take everything I had away.I hated you.I feared you.I don’t anymore.”Blood was burning in her veins, ice cold.Her heart pounded as she took a step toward him.“You’re the monster, Colchester.Will is a greater man than you could ever hope to be.You’re nothing beside him.Nothing.”
He screamed in rage and launched himself at her.Before, the movement would have been too fast for her to follow, but some part of her had recognized the shifting of his body weight, a precursor to movement.As he leaped, she swung the chair leg, driving it up into his ribs.
The knife scored across her shoulder.It felt like ice, sizzling once, the pain swiftly fading.Colchester curled over the club she wielded, then drove forward, smashing into her body.
Lena hit the floor hard.The breath smashed from her lungs, his body riding hers to the floor in a tangle of skirts.She could feel his cold breath on her face, his hands tightening around her throat.Maddened eyes glared down at her.
