Page 93 of Veradel
“Got you,” she says sweetly.
My vision begins to grow dark frost around the edges, and I teeter backward, trying to mouth Lucan’s name. He’s barreling toward me from the other end of the hallway, but several blades are sticking from his shoulders and hide, slowing him down. At the same time, a new sound rolls into the hallway from behind us, rattling into my eardrums like a distant storm: stomping and shouting and the clanging of new metal as the citizens catch up to us and join the fray. A safe, familiar face charges into view.
Malcolm.
His eyes widen as he takes in Rosalyn and me, and then he’s roaring just as viciously as Lucan, sweat already gleaming on his face as he swings his own sword toward her.
“Get your hands off my partner, you bitch!”
Rosalyn sucks in a breath, wrenches her blade from my neck, and tries to turn it against him. Through the last of my narrowing vision, I watch the tip of her rapier slice against his leg—
But Malcolm’s already sending his straight into her chest.
I don’t watch Rosalyn fall, but I feel her body thump to my feet, and the soft fingers that belong to Malcolm gripping my face moments before warm, rough hands replace them.
“Saskia.” Lucan shakes my shoulders, human again. “Stay with me, baby.”
“Okay.” It’s all I can think to say as I blink away the fog. Strangely, his face is coming back into focus as my tissue stitches back together like jagged pieces of tile.
Lucan gingerly runs his thumb over the wound when it closes.
“Amazing,” he breathes.
I blink at him, rallying a deep breath and noting the wounds peppering his own body with clinical awareness. “Good thing yours heal just as quickly.” I nod at how each of them is already clotting over. “None of those blades hit anything vital?”
Lucan shakes his head. “Nope. Tough werewolf skin.” He turns to Malcolm with a fond, “Thank you.”
Malcolm nods, panting through clenched teeth. His leg, I notice, is dripping with trails of blood that smell a lot sweeter than Lucan’s, but he just says, “Go. Find the Guardians. We’ll handle the sentries from here.”
With a last glance back as the citizens fight the remaining sentries in a cacophony around us, Lucan shifts back into a werewolf, and we hurry onward.
Where the hell are they?he asks into my mind.
We skid to a halt in the domed antechamber, where two spiral staircases swoop up and around the door to the dining hall. Those paintings of the Twelve Guardians stare down at us from the ceiling, as if watching us get closer and closer.
In answer, I march forward and kick down the door to the dining hall.
Lucan and I step inside, but the place screams of emptiness. Platters of half-eaten food still sit on the table, chairs pushed out haphazardly. No sign of any servants or Chosen Ones. Or Guardians.
This way,I say on a whim, and lead Lucan back out into the antechamber, where the din of the battle between sentries and civilians swells with screams and clangs of metal that make my stomach writhe. The faster we can get rid of the Guardians, the quicker we can stop the fighting behind us, too.Left, then right,I tell Lucan, already sprinting away.This hallway should curl around the dining hall and lead straight to the entrance of—
The north wing. I’d bet anything the Guardians have the pack somewhere in there.
Just like the last time I was here, the massive double doors rise high above my head, made of black and white marble etched in elaborate swirls of gold. In the middle of each door hangs one of those circular, golden knockers.
We don’t waste time knocking or offering our blood, though.
Once again, Lucan uses his brute werewolf strength to slam himself against the doors. Since they’re not wood, they don’t come down immediately, but they do crack right down the middle.
He slams himself into them again. More fractures spiderweb up and down the marble. Again and again, he throws his whole force into it, until the walls themselves are shaking, and the marble comes crumbling down like chunks of black and white snow.
When the dust clears, we have a clear view of the grand hall lined with all those Guardian statues. Immediately, we veer left through the open doors of the throne room—
And stop dead.
Every member of our pack—in human form—is standing rigidly in front of a throne, with a Guardian pressing a blade against each of their throats and several sentries holding rapiers against their backs… preventing them from shifting. They’d be impaled on the spot if they tried. Gabriel’s the only one who stands free, wringing his hands off to the side.
In the center of them all, the Third presses his own knife a little deeper into Vivian’s neck, earning a whimper from her that makes me want to slice off the smirk on his face.
