Page 137 of The Mask Falling

Run!

I willed him to hear me again, but all he did was stare out his fellow Rephaim. His executioners.

“You spineless piece of shit,” I wheezed at Thuban. “Can’t even fight one Ranthen on your own.”

“This is what is known as a trap, fleshmonger. And you just led your lapdog directly into it,” Thuban sneered.

He bore down on me again and hauled me up by my hair. My boots squeaked on the marble. Arcturus started forward, eyes ablaze.

“Concubine,” Thuban called to him, “perhaps you would like to choose which part of her I cut off first.” He angled the blade across my abdomen. Even through my clothes, I could feel how keen that edge was, how effortlessly it would rip skin and muscle. One wrong move, and my viscera would be on the floor. “You know her parts far better than I do, after all.”

Unfortunately for Thuban, he had forced me into a position that let me reach my combat knife. In one movement, I drew it and rammed it into his neck, right under his jaw.

Thuban let out an ear-piercing note of Gloss. The instant his grip loosened, I forced his elbow up and twisted myself under it. The iridescent blade caught my skin at an angle, leaving a trail of searing cold pain, like an ice burn. A cry of shock tore from my throat. I regained my footing and sped to Arcturus, who swept me behind him and lifted his sword.

“Are you hurt?” he asked roughly.

Blood seeped beneath my undershirt. I rucked it up to see a shallow cut from navel to hip.

“It’s not deep,” I rasped. Across the hall, Thuban pulled the knife free and spattered the floor with luminous blood. “I need his keys. Jax locked himself in.”

Arcturus widened his stance. “I will see to it.” The other Rephaim kept coming. “Stand back.”

Before I could, Situla rushed us. Arcturus flung me out of the way of her blade before he blocked it with bone-shattering force, the movement so fast I almost missed it. He disarmed his next challenger and slashed his back clean down the middle, drawing enough ectoplasm to cast them all in queasy light. Now he wielded a sword in each hand. On cue, music struck up again —this time, the infernal gallop fromOrpheus in the Underworld. Spirits came swarming from all over, drawn to a clash between Rephaim.

Situla sent her blade shivering toward Arcturus. It glanced off one of his swords, and his next swing came close to cutting her in half—but the others were already on top of him, attacking like a pack of wolves.

Thuban let out an appalling not-laugh. The fight took them to the middle of the hall. I watched Situla crack Arcturus in the jaw— hard enough to dislocate it on a human – before she hurled a spool at him. He swept it aside and locked one of his swords with hers, fending off more blows with the other.

Fuck this. Stiletto in hand, I ran straight for the Rephaim, charging the æther with pressure as I went, and launched myself at Situla. She tried to shake me off, but I impaled her hand with the blade. I dropped from her back, ducked her sword—its gleaming flat passed over my head, so close my scalp turned cold—and stabbed again, right through her boot and into her heel. Though I evaded her next blow, she caught me by the back of my oilskin, and before I knew it, she had latched onto my aura like a tapeworm.

Blood ran from my eyes. I kicked wildly at her. The æther was sucked away from me as Situla wrung my connection to it. Her eyes turned a terrible red. Arcturus saw and threw one of his swords at her back, forcing her to release me to avoid it. I hit the floor. When her blade seared up again, I was still too shaken to move.

She hesitated.

Her sword hung over me, an inch from splitting my skull. I stared at her, disconcerted. Her face was drawn, eyebrows knitted tight, knuckles straining against her glove.

Then Arcturus attacked his cousin, bringing the fight with him. He was sure-footed, his bladework assured and formidable, fluent in violence. Situla fended him off with one sword. With her free hand, she lifted me, and—with what felt like all her inhuman might—lobbed me toward the doors. I slammed into the floor a third time and groaned.

“Paige!”

Arcturus tossed something after me. The ring of keys. One of the other Rephaim went for them just as I did. I snatched them by my fingertips and kicked her as hard as I could in the nose.

Arcturus could hold his own here. He had been charged with protecting the god-sent family—defensive fights were in his bones. My presence would distract him. I rolled to my feet and barreled out of the gallery.

“Stop her,” Thuban bellowed over the music. “Mirzam, Heze, bring the dreamwalker to me!”

Back across the checkered floor. The two Rephaim tried to come after me, but Arcturus blocked the doorway in my wake. I sprinted like I never had through the royal apartments, my heart in my throat, wrist still pounding, and almost crashed headlong into the locked white doors.

The keys were sticky with blood. One after the other, I tried them, unable to still my trembling. The knell of blades continued in the distance. While I could hear it, Arcturus was alive.

A key with a flower-shaped bow fitted the lock. I turned it and pushed both doors open.

Once you reach the city, you are to take one action, and one only. You are to assassinate the official in charge of it.

The Hall of Mirrors stretched before me. Ahead, gilded sculptures held salvers of buttery candles, offering them up to a baroque ceiling. To my right, mirror after mirror captured their glow, divided by pilasters, facing a line of arched windows. Chandeliers flickered and sparkled overhead, laden with cut-glass embellishments, not yet illuminated for the night. Ménard must have replaced the ones the perdues had looted.

The music stopped. Each footstep echoed. As I crossed the floor, my reflection walked beside me, stiletto in hand. The woman in the glass was filthy and haunted, copper hair tangled from the journey through the carrières, more urchin than an assassin.

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