Page 59 of Wicked Enemy

Ice spread through my veins as the worst possible sound drifted through the air. The sound of the front door opening.

“Check every building!” someone yelled from outside. “He can’t have gotten far.”

A pair of footsteps echoed from downstairs.

I knew that I should be doing something. That I should be finding a better hiding spot or getting ready to attack or defend myself. But I couldn’t make my muscles obey me anymore.

The white boot must have left the front door open, because through it, or maybe through the windows, I could hear people checking the other houses and then yelling, “All clear!”

If I’d had even an ounce of energy left, I would have been furious at myself and the world. But I was too exhausted to be angry. So I just lay there slumped against the wall and listened to the footsteps run up the stairs. The other doors were opened and closed quickly. Then the footsteps reached my door.

My whole body was pulsing with pain and exhaustion as I watched the door open and a figure in white leather armor appear.

Brown eyes locked directly on me.

I blinked, the only gesture of surprise that my uncooperative body would allow me.

Eve, on the other hand, didn’t look surprised at all. She just stood there, watching me from the door as if she had known all along that I would be here.

That’s when I remembered the melted metal on the ground outside the door. If anyone could recognize it for what it was, it was her.

In a way, it was fitting. That in the end, she would be the one to bring me in. Full circle, and all that.

“Sterling?” a man called from what sounded like the front door downstairs.

For a second, Eve and I just looked at each other. Since I had no energy left to speak, I said nothing while I waited for her to answer that she had found me.

With her eyes still locked on mine, she opened her mouth and called, “All clear!”

Shock rippled through my tired soul.

Eve’s perceptive brown eyes flicked over my injuries while worry blew across her face. Then determination bled into her eyes instead.

But all she did was to give me one last once-over.

Then she closed the door and walked away.

Chapter24

Icouldn’t get that image out of my mind. The image of Levi lying slumped on the floor in that deserted house. Blood trickling down his face. Bruises covering his skin. Exhaustion pulsing from his entire being. Levi Arden, the most powerful dark mage in the entire city, had been so beaten down that he hadn’t even been able to speak when I opened the door, let alone defend himself. Seeing him like that had almost shattered my soul.

It shouldn’t have been a surprise, though. He was being attacked relentlessly from all sides. Attacked by a worldwalker, who just on his own would have been a massive threat. But then he was also being attacked by three other Houses at the same time. And then of course also by us. By the entire constable force of Malgrave.

And as if all that wasn’t enough, Levi was also alone, because practically all of his battle mages were now our prisoners.

I shook my head as I walked down the hall and towards the next one. If it had been anyone else, anyone but Levi, they would have been dead long ago. But even in the face of all that, the King of Metal was still standing.

However, he was cutting it closer and closer. It was just sheer dumb luck that I had spotted the melted metal outside the door before anyone else picked that building to search. Sooner or later, his luck was going to run out.

A mass of footsteps sounded from the corridor up ahead. I kept moving towards it, my mind still swirling with conflicting emotions.

“Is that smoke?” someone said from up ahead.

“Oh fuck,” another one growled. “There’s a fire! Wait here!”

Picking up the pace, I sprinted the final distance to the next corridor. My heart fluttered nervously in my chest as I rounded the corner.

And ran right into all of Levi’s people.

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