The Sharpest Blade (25 page)

She brings her sword around and stops with the edge of the blade just touching the black sleeve covering my wrist. Her sword is sharp—she could easily sever my hand—but,
finally
, her eyes glaze, and she lurches forward. I pull my arm free, but not before the weight of her sword causes it to cut through my sleeve and into my skin.

I bite out a curse. The cut isn’t deep—it’s more like an extreme paper cut—but it stings like hell.

I shake it off, confirm that the fae behind the desk is going down, too, then go back to the hallway and drag in the first guard. Not an easy task. He’s freaking heavy, but I get him inside, then close and lock the door. For good measure, I drag the desk in front of the door, then lean against it.

My breaths come out quick and shallow, as if I’ve just gone through half a day of training with Kyol even though I didn’t even lift a sword. I force myself to slow down my breathing, then I take the antidote case out of my backpack and inject the three unconscious fae. Eight syringes left, one still in my pants pocket.

The woman saw my tranq gun. The fae behind the desk might have as well, but Lee told me there’s a chance they won’t remember what happened a few seconds before they lost consciousness. I hope like hell he’s right.

The door the woman stood in front of isn’t locked. It opens into a short hallway with four closed doors, two on each side. With my reloaded dart gun held ready, I try the first one on the right.

The knob turns. The room is dark and silent as the door swings inward, and I’m about to move on when I hear a familiar
chirp-squeak
.

I push the door all the way open and step inside. Sitting in the back corner of the room, hands bound to a pipe behind him, is Aren. Sosch is there, snuggled up in Aren’s lap. His blue eyes are bright in the darkness. His whiskers twitch as he chirps again. This time, the sound seems sad, as if the
kimki
knows something bad is about to happen.

My gaze rises to Aren’s face as I take another step inside. His eyes are shut, his head is tilted to the side and leaning against the pipe he’s bound to. I set my backpack on the ground as I go to my knees in front of him.

“Aren,” I whisper just before I press my lips against his.

His body jerks as he wakes up. I grab the back of his head and deepen the kiss. He gives a little grunt, then leans into me. The knots in my chest unwind as lightning brightens my skin. The
edarratae
make my mouth tingle, and when Aren nips at my lower lip, I moan. I feel alive again, electric. Now that I’ve had Aren, my body is attuned to him. It responds to him, and all I want is to be with him again. To be with him forever.

Only the fear of that forever being cut short makes me ease away from him.

“We don’t have much time,” I whisper.

His forehead creases. Then he looks around the room. When his eyes once again settle on me, he curses.

“This isn’t a dream,” he says.

“No, it’s not.” My mouth tilts into a smile as I unzip the big pocket of my backpack.

“
Sidhe
, McKenzie.” His shackles clatter against the metal pipe when he tries to move. “Where’s Taltrayn?”

“He’s unconscious,” I say as I take out a pair of bolt cutters that just barely fit in the bag. Lee knows how to prepare for a jailbreak, I have to give him that.

“Unconscious?” Aren echoes. Then his gaze locks on the bolt cutters. “McKenzie.”

I ignore him, open the bolt cutters, and close them over the thick, silver chain. Not pure silver. It’s friggin’ hard to break. I put all my muscle into squeezing the twin handles together. Finally, the chain snaps, falling to the floor.

“Come on,” I say, holding out my hand to help him up.
Edarratae
leap down my wrist when he wraps his hand around mine, but he doesn’t stand. He pulls me down, slamming my mouth into his.

This time, Sosch protests my presence, probably because I half fall on top of him. He scurries out of Aren’s lap, and I drop the bolt cutters to run the fingers of my free hand into Aren’s disheveled hair. He drinks in the lightning my body freely offers. I feel it building under my skin, and I shiver as the memory of our bodies wrapped in our chaos lusters strikes through me.

He ends the kiss, tilting his head down slightly so only our foreheads touch.

“Taltrayn was supposed to keep you away,” he says.

“No, he was supposed to free you.”

“McKenzie—”

“You’re an idiot if you thought I’d just sit back and let you die.”

I shove the bolt cutters into my backpack and stand. This time, Aren stands, too.

“We have to hurry. Hison might be on his way back.”

Aren doesn’t budge.

“We have to go
now
,” I tell him. I’m trying to be patient, trying not to get pissed off because we don’t have time to fight right now.

“You haven’t thought this through.”

“I’ve thought it through to the point where you’re
executed
, Aren.”

He shakes his head. “No, listen.” He grabs my hand. “Lena is just a few votes short of becoming the permanent queen. Hison hates me—that’s why he won’t vote for her—but when I’m gone, he will. Others will follow his lead.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do,” he says. “He gave me his oath. We signed an agreement. Kelia’s father, Lord Raen, witnessed it. My written confession and cooperation will clear her way to the throne. But it’s not just that. I’ve done . . .” He drops my hand to run his fingers through his hair. “You know I’ve done things I’m not proud of. I’m the reason Caelar is still fighting. He’ll stop when I’m dead.”

“Oh, God, Aren. Caelar is weak.”

“He’s working with the false-blood.”

“You don’t know that!” I scream the words this time. I have to do something to get through to him.

He doesn’t retreat. He steps closer, glaring down at me. “If you don’t care about the Realm or Lena’s future, then think about yourself. Think about yourself for once!”

“I’m thinking about all of us! Lena knows nothing of this plan. Once we get out of here, you’ll disappear for a while. We’ll find—”

“Hison won’t believe she had nothing to do with this.”

“We’ll find a good illusionist,” I continue through gritted teeth. “We’ll fake your death. Hison will be happy then.”

“It won’t work, McKenzie.”

“It
will
,” I say. It has to.

“
Sidhe
, you’re . . . you.” He grabs my shoulders. “McKenzie, I love you. I love you more than I ever thought it was possible to love. I
want
to go with you. I want to spend the rest of our lives together, but my death will solve so many problems and . . . And Taltrayn loves you. You can be happy.” His Adam’s apple bobs when he swallows, then he turns his back on me.

I’m going to kill him. I’m going to fucking kill him. “I chose
you
, Aren. I chose you because I love you, and I have
never
regretted that decision. I’ve
never
wavered. You’re the one who keeps . . .”

He keeps pushing me away. My heart drops out of my chest.

“This is why you’ve kept your distance from me. You . . . You planned to sacrifice yourself from the beginning.” My laugh borders on hysteria. “So what was last night? You sleep with me, then decide you have to run off and kill yourself?”

“No.” He turns back toward me, shaking his head. “No, McKenzie. I didn’t plan this.” He closes his eyes briefly. “I mean, this was my backup plan. I’ve been trying to find a way to break your life-bond. I’ve read every word written about them, I’ve chased every hint of a rumor across the Realm, and I . . . I haven’t found a way, and I ran out of time. Hison was going to arrest Lena. I couldn’t let that happen.”

“I can’t let this happen,” I tell him.

He takes my hand, pulling me closer to him. “Please.” His voice cracks, and he lowers his head until his forehead is pressed against mine again. I don’t know what to do. He’s angry and desperate and hurting, but so am I, and I refuse to lose him.

“McKenzie, please let me do this.”

“Please let you commit suicide?” I swipe the back of my hand across my face, smearing tears I didn’t know I cried. “No.”

“Suicide.” He lets out a bitter laugh. “You’re well acquainted with that, aren’t you?”

“What?”

“I heard what happened at the
veligh
. You put yourself between the fire-wielder and Taltrayn. You claim you chose me? You chose him when you sacrificed yourself.”

“I was saving the palace! I was saving you and Lena and the whole fucking Realm!”

“And I’m saving you and Taltrayn and Lena’s whole fucking Court, but my actions make me suicidal while yours make you a martyr.”

“It’s completely different!”

“It’s not!” he roars.

I flinch back, and I can’t scrape up any more words. It’s strange how emotional distress can cause physical pain. My stomach hurts as if someone’s twisting a knife in my gut. If I look down, I’m almost certain I’ll see my shirt stained red. This feels like a betrayal. Aren isn’t fighting for me like he promised; he’s giving up.

“This is why I didn’t want to see you,” Aren says, and another knife pierces my stomach. “I don’t want our last words to be angry.”

“Me neither,” I say. My voice sounds hollow. I feel empty. If Kyol was conscious, he wouldn’t sense a thing from me.

Aren’s arms encircle my waist. I’m stiff when he pulls me against his chest. I don’t want to make this easy for him. I want him to realize how much he’s hurting me and just how big a fool he is. I want him to know—

“Nalkin-shom,”
he whispers in my ear. “Please.”

I break. The stiffness whooshes out of me all at once, and I’m malleable as potters clay. My body fits inside the shelter of his arms just the way it should, and when he tilts my chin up for a last kiss, I can’t refuse him. I can only close my eyes and hold him tight as my lightning sears his lips. He trembles, and my heart shatters, not just because he’s set on leaving me but because there’s a trace of fear in his kiss. He’s scheduled to
die
in a few hours. He’s been sitting here thinking about that, about the end of his life and his body rotting in the sun. Beneath his strong veneer, he’s afraid.

I reach up and clench my fingers into his mussed-up hair, pulling him closer and making the kiss fierce. Bruising. My body flushes with the heat of passion instead of anger, and there’s an audible
crackle
when lightning skips from me to him. Aren groans, dropping his hands to my hips. He moves forward, and I stumble back until I hit the wall, then his hands are under my shirt. His palms leave a trail of delicious heat as they skate over my ribs.

Taking my lips off his is like ripping the
edarratae
from my skin, but I put my hands on his chest, fisting his shirt as I put half an inch of space between us. He cradles my face between his palms. His chest rises and falls over and over again in quick succession as my chaos lusters flash across his hands and up his arms. I sense the electricity moving through him. It’s building in his blood. He needs to funnel it somewhere as much as I do, but just before I’m certain he’s going to brand me with something too powerful to be called a kiss, he backs away, clenching his fists by his sides.

“You have a plan to get out of here?” he asks softly.

I swallow down a sob.

“The window,” I say, my voice tight. Hison’s office backs up directly to the rocky foothills of the Corrist Mountains.

Aren’s laugh is short and quiet, and it makes the pieces of my heart fall into my stomach. My words haven’t swayed him. He’s choosing to stay here.

He picks up my backpack and hands it to me, then he clucks to Sosch. The
kimki
jumps onto his shoulder without further prompting.

“Come on.” He places his palm on the small of my back and guides me out of the storage room. When we reach the main reception area, he stops suddenly. His gaze takes in the three unconscious fae lying on the floor.

“This was all you?” he asks.

Clenching my teeth, I nod. Then I unzip the big pocket of my backpack.

Aren grins. “I’m impressed.”

I love his smile, the sexy, sideways tilt of it.

“You have a rope?” he asks as he goes to the window, unlatching and swinging it open.

I pull it out of the backpack, hand it to him, then reach for my dart gun. My hand clenches around it as he ties the rope off to a second desk in the room. This is my Plan B, but it isn’t any plan at all. I can’t carry Aren unconscious to the gate. I’ll be lucky if I can lower him safely to the ground.

But I haven’t given up this fight yet.

I aim the gun at Aren’s back just as a yell erupts from outside the room.

S
OSCH LEAPS OFF
Aren’s shoulders as he and I both spin toward the door. The handle jiggles.

“Unlock it!”
Hison orders from the other side. His men will have a key. Shit. I have no time.

I click off the safety on my dart gun and reaim at Aren, but he’s already moving, dodging left and grabbing my wrist.

“McKenzie,” he grates out, jerking the gun out of my hand. His eyes search mine, undoubtedly trying to see if I was going to tranq him. My glare tells him hell yes I was.

Aren curses, shoving the dart gun into my backpack.

“Hison can’t see you with this.” He throws the backpack out the window just as the door unlocks. More shouts come from the hallway as the fae try to shove their way in.

I face Aren down. “I’m not leaving!”

“You are!” he yells. Then he grabs my elbow. “Listen, I’m—”

The desk flies across the floor, hitting one of the unconscious guards, as the door slams open. Magically shoved, I’m sure.

Aren grabs my arms as I grab his, determined to get him out of here. But he’s stronger and faster than I am. As Hison and his cohorts surge into the room, Aren all but flings me out the window. He slaps the rope into my hands as he turns, and I have no choice but to hold on or fall fifty feet to the rocky ground.

“Jorreb!” Hison yells.

The rope slips through my hands. I wrap my left arm around it, manage to stop my descent. I grunt as the weight of my body tightens it, cutting off my circulation. My feet scrape against the side of the palace, trying to find a ledge.

“Aren!” I growl through clenched teeth. It’s not a plea for help—it’s a pissed-off promise that I’m going to kick his ass.

I’m a good six feet below the window. I hear scuffling, shouting, and a
bam!
that sounds like someone’s hitting a wall or door.

“Shit,” I hiss out. I look down, not at the rocky death trap below but at the rope hanging between my legs. If this were
Mission: Impossible
, Tom Cruise would be wrapping a leg around it. I try that, and lo and behold, it helps. It doesn’t exactly solve the problem of me hanging out a window, though.

I curse again, then I funnel all my strength into my upper body. My left hand grabs the rope just above my right, and I pull myself up half a foot. Hison hasn’t hauled Aren back to the closet yet—I can hear them both in the reception room. They’re having a whole freaking conversation with me dangling out the window.

I pull myself up another half foot, then another. Something’s still slamming against the wall up there. I have no clue what it is. And there are other noises, like muffled clanks and grunts, that don’t make sense.

My biceps tremble, and I’m only rising inches at a time now. Damn it, I’m almost there. If I can hold on with one hand, I’m almost certain I can reach up and touch the window’s edge.

Ignoring the angry red marks already on my left arm, I wrap it in the rope again, grit my teeth, and strain, trying to stretch my right hand up toward the building.

“McKenzie!” Aren suddenly pops out of the window. I slip a few inches.

“Aren,” I grind out.

His eyes lock on me and he laughs. The bastard actually laughs.

“
Sidhe
, I love you.” He reaches down, grabs my arm, and pulls me up as if I don’t weigh 130 pounds. But my next protest dies on my lips when he crushes them beneath his. He, quite literally, kisses my breath away. That’s not completely due to his skills, though the way he pulls my lower lip between his teeth does send a bolt of lightning through me, but I just climbed my way up the side of the palace. I need a second to catch my—

Aren’s tongue brushes against mine, and anything else I might need vanishes from my mind.

“Jorreb!” Hison barks.

With a grin, Aren peels himself away from me. I frown past him, taking in the high noble, his guards, and the fact that the main desk is in front of the reception room door again. A fae is there, one hand on the desktop and one on the door, magically holding it shut, I presume.

“What’s going on?” I ask.

“Your oath,”
Aren says to Hison.
“Now. Or I cut the rope and trap us all here.”

“You have it,
tchatalun-min
!”
He hisses what I’m sure is an unflattering term.

“Aren?”

He faces me fully and takes both of my hands in his. “We have a chance, McKenzie. If we survive this, we have a chance.”

He gives me another brief but powerful kiss, then he accepts the sword Lord Hison hands him.

“Go,” Aren orders, and Hison is the first out the window.

“What the hell is happening?” I demand, the knots in my stomach twisting and untwisting. I don’t know whether to be relieved or terrified or both.

“The false-blood is here,” he says. “He’s invaded the palace, fissured into the King’s Hall with a dozen men. Lena wasn’t there. She’d be dead if she was.”

“I’m letting it go,”
Hison’s last fae says from the door. He must be the one who used his magic to blast it open, too. He’s keeping it shut now despite the fae ramming it from the other side.

Aren nods, acknowledging his words without taking his gaze away from me. “I have to find Lena. I want you to go with Hison, make sure no illusionists get close to him.”

“Go with Hison?” My mind reels. A minute ago, Aren tossed me away because he was set on sacrificing himself. He expected me to accept his decision and move on, and now, he wants to make another decision for me? He wants me to, again, leave him here to die?

“It’ll be safer for you,” he says, as Hison’s last fae runs past us. “You know what the false-blood and his
elari
will do if they catch you.”

“God, Aren, you . . .” I snap my jaw shut as the door cracks and splinters, then I hurry to the nearest unconscious fae and confiscate her sword and dagger. “I’m staying with you. I care more about Lena than I do about saving Hison’s ass.”

And I’m furious enough to kill anyone in my path.

“I thought you’d say that.” Aren gives me a small smile.

The
elari
shove the desk aside and rush in. There are two of them. They go directly for Aren. He blocks and sidesteps the first fae’s swing, pivoting around him to engage the second one, too. The first turns his back on me to attack Aren, giving me time and opportunity to swing my sword in a wide arc.

The blade cleaves deep into his side. His knees buckle, and his body makes a wet, sucking sound as I yank my sword free.

Aren spins toward me. He’s already dispatched the second fae—I see his soul-shadow dissipating into nothing—and he lifts his sword to strike the one I injured, the one who’s dropped to all fours.

Aren finishes the job I started, and I watch the fae’s body disappear. I refuse to feel remorse. I refuse to feel nausea. I refuse to feel . . .

Oh, God. “Kyol.”

I don’t feel anything, not even his mental wall, because I had him drugged. He’s lying unconscious and defenseless in his room.

“McKenzie, don’t,” Aren says, but I’m already running for the door. He grabs my arm before I make it to the hall.

“McKenzie,” he says, turning me toward him. His eyes are worried but determined. “I
have
to find Lena.”

“I . . .” I want to scream. Lena’s more important than Kyol. In my head, I know that. In my heart . . . Kyol’s a part of my history, but he’s also a part of
me
. How can I abandon him?

“God.” I press the heel of my free hand against my temple. I’m so sick of having no choices.

“Okay,” I say, hating myself. “Okay. We’ll find Lena.” And maybe Kyol will be safer in his room.

Aren lets out a breath, then he steps into the hallway. It’s not empty. Lena’s fae are at both ends, fighting off the false-blood’s people. If Aren and I join the fight, we’ll even out the numbers, but I’m not anxious to go blade to blade with the
elari
.

“It sure would be nice if I had my tranq gun,” I mutter.

Aren, who decided it would be a great idea to throw my backpack out the window, gives me an apologetic smile. “Didn’t think we’d need it. Anyone heading our way?”

I focus on the
elari
again. One of them has crept past the swinging blades.

“Left wall, ten paces,” I tell Aren, shutting out everything to do my job. He continues forward so casually I’m not sure he heard me, but just when I’m about to shout a warning, he surges forward, closing the distance between him and the fae.

The
elari
intercepts Aren’s attack with ease, but he’s visible now.

And now, he’s dead.

“Beside me, McKenzie,” Aren says. I run to catch up with him, and he takes me into the servants’ corridor. The same corridor I hid in earlier and where I—

“Lorn?” Aren says before I can warn him. He crouches beside the fae, who’s sitting up. The antidote neutralized the tranquilizer quicker than I thought it would. “What happened?”

“He tried to stop me,” I say before Lorn can answer. I fully expect to get an earful anyway, but Lorn accepts the help Aren offers him, and they both rise.

A scream rings out from the main hallway. Lorn frowns in that direction.

“What’s happening?” he asks.

“The
elari
,” Aren says. “They’ve invaded.”

Lorn’s eyes widen. He’s definitely not himself yet, though. His pupils are unnaturally large.

“Lena,” he says, swaying. “Is she okay?”

“We don’t know. We’re looking for her.” Aren’s head whips left as a second scream erupts from farther down our narrow corridor. “McKenzie?”

I move past him, my gaze searching the darkness. “I don’t see anyone.”

“Can you walk?” Aren asks Lorn.

“Barely,” he says acidly, looking at me. I hold his gaze for half a second before I start down the corridor.

“If you could watch our backs,” Aren says, “I’d appreciate it.”

“Lena should be in the Mirrored Hall,” I tell Aren when he catches up with me.

“Yes,” he answers, though I wasn’t asking a question. The Mirrored Hall was where Lena met with the high nobles. If she’s still there or has fled this way, we should come across her. If we don’t . . . If we don’t, it won’t be a good sign.

We’re only a few steps down the corridor when my spine tingles. I feel someone following us, someone besides Lorn. Tightening my grip on my sword, I turn.

Ah, hell.

“No, Sosch,” I say, kneeling down as the
kimki
scurries into my arms. “No. You can’t follow us.”

“Scratching behind his ears isn’t going to get rid of him,” Aren says behind me.

I don’t answer him; I just push Sosch away and tell him, “Go.”

He rolls to his back, belly up.

“Nom Sidhe,”
Lorn curses. “Just get rid of the animal.”

Sosch looks at Lorn, and I swear his next
chirp-squeak
sounds more like a
chirp-hiss
.

I stand, then, more firmly, I say, “Go.”

When he rolls onto my foot, I give him the gentlest shove with my shoe. His whiskers twitch as if I’ve just attempted a field-goal kick with his head.

“Come on,” Aren says, taking my arm, pulling me down the corridor. When Sosch follows us again, Aren turns and, in Fae, growls out,
“No! Go find a fissure!”

The damn
kimki
listens to him, of course. He curls into a ball and blows air out of his mouth, wiggling his whiskers in discontent.

We don’t stumble across any more of the
elari
, but when we step out of the corridor and into the Mirrored Hall, evidence of their presence paints the floor and furniture. Blood streaks across the long wood table like spilled wine, and more than half the chairs are overturned. My foot hits a sword that’s lying in a pool of crimson, and the smell . . . It’s acrid and metallic.

I breathe through my mouth and try not to gag. I try to ignore the scene entirely. I can’t let the violence touch me.

“How do we know if she’s alive?” I ask quietly. The wide, double doors to this room aren’t completely shut. My gaze swings between them and the almost hidden servants’ corridor we exited. It unnerves me that no one is here. Where are the
elari
? Where is the false-blood?

Where the hell is Lena?

Aren doesn’t answer my question. He walks slowly alongside the table, taking care not to step in the blood. Finally, he says, “The false-blood shouldn’t be capable of this. We have guards on the
Sidhe Tol
—all four of them.”

“He wouldn’t have to use a
Sidhe Tol
.”

I glance over my shoulder as Lorn makes his way toward us, using a chair for balance. Even with its aid, he looks like a sailor who hasn’t gained his sea legs yet.

Or, he looks like a man who was knocked out with a tranq gun.

“Do you know something we don’t?” I ask. It’s actually a stupid question. Of course Lorn knows something we don’t. That’s his joy in life. Hell, he probably knows the location of all the
Sidhe Tol
, the extremely rare, special gates that allow fae to fissure to places protected by silver.

“A slaughter like this would be easy to accomplish if your enemies trust the fae they’re fighting with.”