Page 107 of The Traitor Queen (The Bridge Kingdom 2)

“There’s no sport in this,” her father snapped, then spun away as she counter-attacked, her motion slow and sluggish.

“Then finish it.”

His foot snaked out, hooking her ankle. Lara leaned back on her injured leg, crying out as it buckled beneath her.

Desperate, she rolled, pulling her sword up in time to block a downstroke that would have sliced her in two.

Their weapons locked, her father leaning his weight downward before recoiling as she swiped at him with a knife, her boot heel grazing his knee and causing him to stumble.

Crawling to her feet, Lara pressed the attack, slicing and stabbing and searching for an opening. The ship pitched sideways, both of them falling, sailors scrambling for handholds until the ship righted herself.

“It’s loose! It’s loose!”

It felt like a fist closed around Lara’s heart as her father’s face filled with triumph. “Attack!”

But his soldiers hesitated, weighing the chances of survival between trying to capture the cavern or staying aboard the ship.

“We need to set sail, Your Grace!” the captain shouted from where he clung to a rail. “The storm is going to tear us apart. We need to leave now!”

“No!” Her father dodged as Lara regained her feet and swung at his neck. “Any man who flees will be labeled a coward. A traitor! Any man who leaves will find his head spiked on Vencia’s gates!”

But from the corner of her eye, Lara could see ships were retreating. Raising their sails and flying ahead of the storm that was about to descend with wicked vengeance. Yet that didn’t mean Eranahl was safe. Not when the hundreds of men in longboats would now be fighting their way into the cavern, knowing that her father would never allow them to retreat to the ship.

She needed to give them another option, and she needed to give it to them now.

There had never been a chance of her surviving this anyway.

Catching her balance against the railing, Lara attacked, raining blow after blow upon her father.

She pretended to stumble. Saw the triumph in his eyes as his sword sliced along her ribs.

And the shock that blossomed on his face as she sank her knife into his chest.

The ship rocked, and they fell away from each other. Lara landed hard on her back while her father sank to his knees, fingers tugging futilely at the hilt of her knife.

“You are a traitor,” he hissed. “To your family. And to your people.”

“No, Father,” she whispered. “That’s what they’ll say about you.”

He glared at her with inhuman fury, then the light faded from his azure eyes, and he slumped to the deck.

Her father was dead.

Lara stared at the corpse of the man who’d made her what she was, barely noticing as the soldiers called for retreat, the longboats coming alongside only to be abandoned as men climbed up ladders and ropes, the deck around her filling with them.

“Full sail!” the captain ordered. “Anyone not aboard gets left behind!”

Sailors ran to obey, but as sails caught the wind, the ship shuddered and jerked. The masts groaned, and the sharp shriek of metal against rock filled Lara’s ears.

“Cut the ropes, you idiots!” the captain screamed. “Cut us loose.”

Whether anyone complied, Lara couldn’t have said, because members of her father’s cadre were approaching, murder in their eyes.

Fighting back pain, Lara climbed to her feet, blood gushing down her side to soak her shirt with each breath she took. Leaning against the rail, she stared them down, these men who’d supported and protected her father through all his villainy. If she’d had the strength, she’d have killed them all.

They lifted their weapons.

Lara leaned backward.

---