Page 139 of Royal Rebel

The captain backhanded Jon, the harsh clap ringing down the street.

Jon’s eyes blazed, but he didn’t strike back.

The captain grinned. “It seems you’ve learned to hold your tongue. Good. You might live to see another dawn.”

The first golden light touched the world, warming Grayson’s back. He straightened from his low crouch and threw the first dagger.

The blade sank into the captain’s back, piercing a lung.

The soldiers shouted and whipped around, but the rising sun was at Grayson’s back, blinding them. While they squinted, he threw the next dagger.

The crowd scattered. Screams broke out, a child’s wail rising shrilly. Grayson saw Jon leap for his children as a soldier turned his sword on them.

That soldier was Grayson’s next target.

“On the roof!” one of the soldiers yelled. “He’s on the roof!”

With only one more blade and six soldiers on the ground, Grayson chose the man closest to Timothy. When he fell, Timothy snatched up his fallen sword.

The remaining five soldiers were moving. Two ran to the tethered horses, presumably to get the crossbows Grayson had noticed earlier. The other three men ran inside the inn—probably to find their way onto the roof.

Grayson ran across the roof, feeling the dull throb of each footfall in his jaw. But it wasn’t pain so much as discomfort, and he wasn’t going to let it stop him. He reached the end of the roof and leaped onto the thick branch of a nearby towering oak. He dropped and swung, his palms sparking with mild pain that he shoved aside. His boots hit the ground hard, but he was already drawing the Syalla blades as he tore after the two guards running for the horses.

The movements of this fight were so practiced, they were fluid. He felt the stretching of his burned, scabbed skin, but it was a relief to move without agony.

The poison-coated blades made this fight end even faster; the soldiers dropped their guard with pained cries as the Syalla entered their blood, and he killed them quickly.

The remaining three soldiers poured out of the inn, longswords drawn.

Their captain was lying near the steps, his body shaking, that blade still buried in his back. “Get him,” he hissed.

Grayson sheathed the poisoned daggers and tugged his longsword from its sheath. It came out with a long hiss, and Grayson spun it once as he started forward. “You can run,” he told the three uniformed men.

The soldiers chose to attack.

Grayson dodged, parried, and twisted around their three blades. They were locked in a dance that all of them had practiced, but Grayson may as well have invented. He used their moves against them; turned their ingrained motions into openings he could exploit.

He was aware of their audience, watching as the blades whirled. Most of the villagers had fled indoors, but some remained in the street. Jon stood in front of his boys at the corner of the inn, all four of them staring with rounded eyes.

Grayson made the soldiers’ deaths as painless as possible. He regretted taking any life, but he’d chosen to protect the people of Edgewood who had unwittingly sheltered him and Mia. He couldn’t afford to leave any of the soldiers alive.

He jerked his blade out of the last soldier and surveyed the street. A total of eight men were now dead, felled by his hand. The captain was still breathing, though raggedly. He had one elbow on the lowest step of the inn, and he was looking at Grayson with unmistakable horror.

Grayson didn’t drop the captain’s gaze as he slid his longsword across the uniform of one of the dead men, cleaning both sides of the blade before he shoved it back into its sheath. Then he stepped toward the captain, his approach slow and measured.

“They’ll find you,” the captain rasped, his wide eyes fastened on Grayson. “The king will find you.”

Grayson crouched before the man and grasped the handle of the small blade embedded in his back.

The captain tensed with a pained gasp.

“You shouldn’t have killed the physician,” Grayson said. “He might have been able to help you.” He jerked the knife free and the captain cried out, crumpling against the steps. His face was carved with pain, his breaths ragged and shallow. He paled as Grayson leaned in. “Answer my questions, and I’ll make your death faster. Where are the patrols searching?”

“E-Everywhere,” the captain said, his voice hitching painfully. “They’re searching everywhere for you. Prince Tyrell leads the effort.”

It wasn’t an unexpected revelation, considering the fact Tyrell thought himself in love with Mia, but Grayson still didn’t like it. “Where do they think I’m headed?” he asked.

“Vyken,” the captain rasped. “They think you’ll—take a ship to Mortise.”

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