Page 204 of Bride of the Midnight Prince

Kat uses the distraction to surge to her feet and dart to the four bound captives. Her fingers flying, she works the knot tying Oliver’s hands behind his back. She mouths something to him I cannot read.

“Or,” Lady Nothril’s voice rings out against the cavern’s walls. “If you wish to redeem yourself, Pavi, then you may perform the Ivy Mask’s execution yourself.”

At once, all eyes turn to where Kat should have been, then swivel to where she is. Pelarusa is across the room in a second, grabbing Kat by the arm and yanking her to the center of the room again. My blood turns to a lethal simmer. Still, I restrain myself. If I can just delay a few more minutes, I will have what I need to get Kat, Pavi, and her friends out of here alive.

“If everyone is too soft to kill the Ivy Mask, then I will!” Pelarusa throws Kat to the ground and lifts her sword. Kat desperately tries to scramble backward, throwing up her hands.

Everything inside me turns to ice. There is no time left.

I lunge.

Pelarusa freezes, choking.

I yank my sword out of her back. Her hand goes to the gaping wound in her chest, the blood streaming down her gown. Lord and Lady Nothril shoot to their feet as their daughter falls to the ground.

Dead.

“I said I would raze this Court if anyone laid a finger on my wife,” I snarl.

I grab Kat and fling her behind me in the spare second of shock before all hell breaks loose. Then I hurl myself at the guards. They surge toward me as one—men I know, men who have been my comrades.

I cut them down with one thought: if they come for Kat, they die. Lord and Lady Nothril wanted me to be cold, cruel, unfeeling. They honed me into a lethal weapon. So that is what I become. It is my Nothril blood that makes my swords hit true. With Pelarusa dead, and my future as heir forever destroyed, Pavi is the only remaining heir. Lord and Lady Nothril will hesitate before slaughtering her as I slaughter their men.

A burst of light comes searing toward me. I barely manage to dodge Lord Nothril’s death blow. It throws my balance off, just enough that the guard I fight slashes his blade across my chest. My breastplate shields me from most of the blow, but a gash cuts across my collar bone and into my arm. I throw myself forward, cutting under his guard to slide my blade beneath his armor, into his soft stomach.

A scream makes me whirl.

Kat throws herself at a guard, who raises his sword at Becky. The guard tosses the young girl aside and latches onto Kat. She manages to dodge one blow of the blade that comes for her heart—using one of the techniques I taught her. But she twists her feet in the process, falling onto her back. The guard pins her with his boot. Another runs to help him finish the job.

“Kat!” I scream. I drop one sword, throwing up my hand to shoot a bolt of pure magic at the guard. It destroys him, but the remaining guards have shifted their focus from me to Kat. In a single moment, she is surrounded.“Kat!”

A roar splits through the cacophony. Then, the walls of the cavern’s entrance suddenly cave in. Stone flies in every direction as though from an explosion. We all turn as one to see a massive, rocky body smash through the wall with a club.

“Ymer the Indefatigable will eat any who hurt nice small elf!” bellows Ymer. And with that, he snatches up the surprised guards around Kat and smashes them into the stone wall with obliterative force. “No one hurts small elf!”

I cannot help my grin.Therehe is. Barely on time.

It did not take me long to put the pieces together that thenice small elfwho brought Ymer food was Kat. It took me precious time after she was captured by Pelarusa to find him again in Caphryl Wood, and he took so long to come I hurried on ahead—onlyhopinghe would arrive in time to make a difference.

It was not hard to convince Ymer that the nice small elf was in danger and if he wanted to thank her for the food, he should come protect her. Trolls are, after all, fastidiously loyal.

I don’t see where Kat’s four friends disappeared to, but I am just in time to watch her open some small servants’ door and disappear through it. My breath comes easier as Ymer and I take down the rest of the guards.

“Stop this at once!” demands Lady Nothril.

“Rahk!”

It is the second voice—Pavi’s high-pitched squeal—that stops me. I whirl. My breath catches. Lord Nothril has Pavi pinned against his chest, a ball of pure magic held just next to her head. Ready to destroy her in a flash.

“I am giving you a choice, Rahk,” Lord Nothril seethes as Pavi whimpers. He pays no heed to Ymer tromping out of the throne room to either leave or go smash more of his palace. All the guards are dead by now. “You surrender now. Or I kill your beloved sister.”

I shoot a glance toward Lady Nothril, who stands only a few paces away from him. Her jaw is tight, her eyes a roaring furnace as she regards me. Pavi cries softly, helplessly.

If I surrender, they will make me hunt Kat again. They will make me kill her.

I am not surrendering.

But neither will I let them kill my sister.

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