Page 82 of Claiming Sarah

“The choice you were faced with…it wasn’t an easy one for someone like you,” he said, taking me back to years ago and our past together. “I was trying to break that softness from you, to do what the army had not yet accomplished.” Quietly, he admitted, “I failed. And it cost me my life.”

“It was a mistake, Rex.” I swallowed hard, keeping my gaze pinned ahead, even as I admitted, “It is my greatest shame.”

“If it makes you feel any better, Deacon, I forgave you years ago,” he said, his tone almost compassionate. “Truth be told,thatis the real reason I haven’t ratted you out to Jac or Sarah or anyone else.”

“I do not understand.”

Rex sighed. “You were not the one who made a mistake that day.Idid, and I do not particularly want that knowledge getting out—”

A frantic shout curdled my blood and grabbed my attention. At the front of our line, conduits. They were everywhere.

CHAPTER 25

Sarah

Conduits. They were everywhere, seemingly out of nowhere.

I ducked a bone knife coming at my face by leaning right and tried to get my own out of my thigh holster, but another conduit, standing in the water next to the catwalk, stabbed my calf with her knife.

I screamed from the excruciating pain—it was unlike anything I had ever experienced—and kicked the leg, trying to dislodge the knife. But she yanked it out to stab me again.

Pulling it out hurt as much as when it went in, and the intensity of the pain nearly blinded me for a flash. When I looked again, Omen had thrust her knife into my assailant’s arm. My attacker disappeared beneath the catwalk.

Omen dashed past me to fight another conduit. I was angry to be taken out of the fight so fast, but more than that, I was scared shitless. Rex’s men battled as hard as any of us, butno one was as fast as Jac. He was a ruthless blade, stabbing efficiently, dancing between his enemies like he had been born to fight. Deacon, with his longer reach, was able to stab those who did not see it coming.

Two conduits wrenched free of my friends long enough to pursue me through the crowd. Their eyes burned on me, as though they knew this was all my fault.

They’re not wrong.

I turned and tried to run, tried to climb through a mess of scattered limbs and ivory flashes in the moonslight, but I was trapped against the railing of the catwalk.

Fuck this.I climbed between the rails and dropped into the water, out of sight. Swampy and smelly, the water came up to my shoulders. I hoped nothing in it would eat me or stab me again—I didn’t know where my first attacker had gone, but once I was in the water, I couldn’t see her. For that matter, I couldn’t see much beneath the catwalk—the moonslight didn’t reach beneath it. I hid under the slimy wooden planks, hoping to be forgotten.

My pursuers dropped into the water on either side of me, and terror gripped me. I held as still as I could, hoping they could not see me in the darkness. Then a bone knife stuck out of the head of the one on my left, before she collapsed into the water. A moment later, the one on my right met the same fate.

Then Rex slid into the water, his eyes on me. “You’re hurt.”

I nodded, trying not to whimper from the pain.

His eyes darkened tempestuously. “They’re not going to stop coming after you. You’re the one they want to kill.”

Almost to illustrate his point, another jumped into the water on my left. They slashed my shoulder open, before he could zip around and take them out, fast and efficiently. Stifling a scream, I clenched my right hand around my wound, trying to stop the bleeding. The searing agony was brutal, making me feel dizzy and faint.

“You don’t have any fighting skills,” he said, and sadly it was the truth. Fighting and killing were not my forte. “We are far outnumbered. Can you call your jem’hora here?”

“It hurts too much,” I whispered, tears burning my eyes from the stinging, burning pain from my lacerations. “I can’t focus enough to—”

“Then let me possess you, so I can defend you.”

My eyes widened at his suggestion, and what it meant. Mostly, breaking the promise I’d made to Deacon. “No.”

Another conduit splashed into the water beside me, and before they could plunge their weapon into my chest, Rex quickly eliminated them before I could even move.

I swallowed back a sob of pure fear, hating my own weakness and inability to protect myself. I’d never felt so scared and vulnerable in my entire life.

“Let me help you, Sarah,” Rex insisted, his eyes intense as the battle continued to rage around us and up on the plank above us. “I’ll keep you safe. You know I will. And I’ll leave when you tell me to. I swear it.”

I realized I had no other options, other than to die, because without Rex’s help I was doomed. I had no choice but to trust him. “What do I do?”

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