Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 104842 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 524(@200wpm)___ 419(@250wpm)___ 349(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 104842 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 524(@200wpm)___ 419(@250wpm)___ 349(@300wpm)
I was thrilled that the assassin was stuck in the palace. Outside, in the sprawling city of Valletta, he would have become lost in the local and tourist human population. Inside, he would be easier to catch, though sealing all the exits and going through every nook and cranny could take weeks.
Two years ago, if someone had said to me that vampyrs were real and I would be mated to their prince, I would have told them they were nuts and should probably seek psychiatric help as soon as possible. But vampyrs were real, Varic Maedoc was their crown prince, and I was his consort. None of that was in question. What needed answers was why someone was trying to kill Varic’s father.
The assassin took the stairs up to the second floor, and I was right on his heels, now with others joining the pursuit.
Down the long, wide corridor we went, him using the scary vampyr speed, me behind him, arms pumping, legs eating up the marble under my feet, not closing the distance but not losing any either. It became harder to hold the sustained sprint, to breathe with my lungs on fire and my muscles screaming at me to stop before they cramped up and locked.
I prayed he didn’t veer and take the stairs to either the right or left but would instead race on toward where the hallway dead-ended at a wall of windows. When the white marble became black-veined under my feet, because we were crossing into Varic’s wing of the palace that was now mine as well, I cried out in relief even as my right leg buckled and I flew forward, headfirst toward the marble.
Bracing, throwing my arms in front of my face, there was a jerk, like a parachute opening, the hard jolt before the floating along with a rush of air across the face.
Focusing, I found my hendr, my champion, Zev, holding me under the armpits, setting me gently on the ground.
“Gross,” he muttered, wiping his hands on his pants. I was sweating buckets, after all, and my pits were probably dripping.
I couldn’t even check and see where the assailant was, the muscles in my right leg twisted so hard that I screamed despite myself.
Zev went down on one knee, pulled off my boot and sock, and put a hand under my calf to straighten my leg. He used his other hand to push my toes back, flattening my foot.
The pain remained, and then Dae-Jung was there, leaning me back so I was lying flat on the cold marble as Zev continued to brace my leg.
“The assassin,” I ground out.
Zev tipped his head sideways, and I saw the vampyr sprawled out a few feet from me.
“Is he dead?”
“Did you want him dead?” he asked me in that way he had that was really infuriating. It was sarcastic and indulgent and made me feel like an idiot every single time. I really should have rethought picking him to be my champion, but at the same time, in easily one arc of movement, he’d caught the assassin and saved me from breaking one or both or my arms and possibly all the bones in my face. I certainly would have broken my jaw, and I’d done it once before and did not have fond memories.
I’d seen Zev fight, and it was fluid and graceful, and though I’d never witnessed the blur of speed Hadrian vouched for, I understood there had been instances, at the end of a day of fighting back in medieval times, that the two of them were so soaked in blood that their armor appeared crimson. And while I was glad to have never seen that kind of carnage, I knew Zev was capable of great slaughter. The power in him, in the vampyr he was, both ghastly and beautiful, was surpassed by only a handful of others, and yet, at the moment, he was trying to rub a cramp out of my leg.
“I don’t want him dead,” I stated as Dae-Jung did a weird thing, alternating between pressing and rubbing the divot under my nose. “I—what’re you doing?”
“Just breathe, in and out. Try not to talk until the cramp goes away.”
When Dae-Jung had first come into my service, he had asked permission for practically everything. He didn’t do anything without first finding out if it was all right.
Now, a little over a year later, he disregarded half of what I said on a daily basis, squinted a lot over things I did, grimaced more than any person should, and ordered me around most notably as it pertained to eating, chewing my food, not inhaling it, drinking more water, and breathing. I heard breathe quite a bit.
“I need to know where that guy is from and why he tried to kill the king.”