Page 78 of Knight's End
Chapter Nineteen
We ran. But we couldn’t outrun smoke.
My heart felt like a house of cards that had toppled. Pure panic pumped through my veins and kept my feet moving.
The purple hazy smoke invaded my lungs as Blue and I darted naked through the halls, shoving frozen courtiers out of our way. I started to cough, and tears streamed from my eyes as the colored smoke darted back and forth. Blue screamed in my thoughts,Quinn! There’s an attack!
Djinn solidified all around us in the hallway and the smoke dissipated. Eight soldiers, wearing loose pants and armored black chest pieces emblazoned with a ring for Raj’s house walked forward. Their arms were uncovered, heavily tattooed and muscled just like Blue. Throwing stars, knives, and scimitars glinted on their waistbands as they closed in on us.
Shite! Raj knows I’m alive,I thought, as I skidded around a corner.
That probably meant he knew the capital wasn’t destroyed either. Everyone was in danger.
“Donaloo!” I screeched.
I shot a stream of peace behind me. The green light hit two of their soldiers, who stopped dead, dazed and blinking, temporarily uninterested in the fight.
We turned and ran in that direction, shoving the stunned half-djinn aside.
Blue pushed me ahead of him, so he could block any attacks from behind. He read their thoughts, grabbing my shoulders and making us both dodge left as a throwing star buzzed through the air to our right.
He shoved me down to the ground when a wish whizzed overhead, a golden jet of light that smashed into the wall and disintegrated it.
Oh shite. Thank the gods that hadn’t hit us, I thought.
Though I could hear a panicked edge to his thoughts, Blue mentally said,Remember, these are half-djinn. They’ll use wishes when their commander orders it. They won’t have a choice. But, whenever one of them grants a wish, he has to pay a price. It typically disables them. Makes them easy targets to kill—
The ground beneath our feet rumbled. Sinkholes appeared behind me.
I screeched and shot forward, scrambling as stones disappeared beneath my feet.
What the hell is happening?I asked Blue. Is that a wish?
He didn’t answer. Just shoved me forward.
Vines shot out of the holes in the floor and latched onto several of Cheryn’s soldiers. The vines dragged the soldiers down out of sight, to the floor below.
Their screams rang in my ears but were cut off.
I gulped. I didn’t look back. I didn’t want to know why they’d stopped screaming.
One of the soldiers unsheathed a gleaming scimitar from his waist and ran up onto a wall, kicking off to avoid a sinkhole. As he ran at us, he said, "I'm disappointed, Abbas. I thought you'd be faster."
Blue ignored him even though I glanced behind at the blade.
Blue’s thoughts filled with the picture of an older soldier who floated in midair behind us, legs still not materialized, next to the man wielding the sword. "Captain?" Blue asked.
I recognized the man from Blue’s memories; he was the same man who’d greeted Blue the first day the prince had arrived as a soldier.
The captain shook his head. "You know the consequences." His voice was harsh.
But as the captain said that, his eyes darted sideways toward the man holding the curved sword.
Blue nodded. "I understand." But in his mind, he said,Bloss, he's gonna create an opening for us.
The captain gave a signal and one of the part-djinn soldiers at the back started to mutter a wish. Blue whispered rapidly, “I wish I was faster than the wind."
Another soldier in the back mouthed, “Granted,” to his compatriot, but Blue had finished speaking first. Blue’s wish had been uttered before the other man’s. So, as the soldier who granted the wish collapsed with boils erupting on his skin, it wasn’t the other djinn’s wish that came true. It was Blue’s.
