Kanin: Crystal Kingdom Part 28

When Delilah stepped toward him, that was it. He drew his arm backhe was going to kill her, the way he would kill anything that stood in his way. Everything unfolded so quickly, but it felt like slow motionlike the world had stopped and I could see it all but I couldn't move fast enough to change anything.

Linus shouted the word stop, but Ember was already moving, diving at Delilah and pus.h.i.+ng her out of the way. Delilah fell to the floor just as Ja.n.u.s drove his sword straight through Ember, and she hit the floor with a sickening thud.

SEVENTY-TWO.

allt ar mitt I ran at Ja.n.u.s, not caring if he was a Hogdragen or if he truly believed he was justified in what he'd done. For a moment my anger blocked out any rational thought, and I was just moving.

Ja.n.u.s raised his sword, blocking me, but I was moving faster and faster. So each time he blocked me, I would move away and come at him quicker, until I finally found my opening. I drove my blade through his throat, pus.h.i.+ng him back against the wall, until I'd pinned him there like a bug in a gla.s.s case. Blood poured from his throat, staining the dark fabric of his uniform.

I left him that way and turned back to survey the scene. Astrid stood with her back pressed against the wall, looking rightfully terrified. Linus stood off to the side of Ember with tears in his eyes, and Delilah was sitting with Ember, holding her in her arms as she slowly bled out.

I walked over to them and fell to my knees.

"Why did you do that?" Delilah asked through tears, and brushed Ember's hair back from her face. "You shouldn't have done that."

"Of course I should have," Ember said, her voice soft as she stared up into Delilah's eyes. "You're alive, and you're safe, and I love you. There is no greater thing I could do than die to save my true love."

"Ember, I love you," she sobbed. "What will I do without you?"

"Fight." Ember closed her eyes, but her chest was still rising and falling with shallow breaths. "And live. My love will go on with you, so live as long as you can."

"Allt ar mitt, och allt skall tagas frn mig," Delilah said, reciting a Par Lagerkvist poem in Swedish, sounding lyrical and beautiful. "Inom kort skall allting tagas frn mig."

While my Swedish wasn't as good as it should be, I thought what she said translated to, "All is mine, and all shall be taken away from me, / within moments all shall be taken away from me."

Then Ember took her last breath. Delilah leaned over and gently kissed her on the lips, and then she laid her head on Ember's chest and wailed like her heart had just been ripped out of her.

One of my best friends had just died, and I wanted to fall apart the way Delilah was doing, but I knew there wasn't time. Later, I would mourn for Ember the way she deserved. But now I had to finish things so that she wouldn't die in vain. I needed to get Delilah safe.

I stood up and pulled gently on her arm. "Delilah. You need to let Linus get you to safety." I looked back at him. "You do know how to get the refugees out of here, right?"

He nodded, wiping at the tears in his eyes. "Yes. Ember showed me. I know what I need to do."

"Good. I need you to take Delilah out of here and keep her safe." I turned back to Delilah, since she still hadn't gotten up, and I pulled her to her feet. I put my hands on her face, forcing her to look at me. "Listen to me, Delilah. I know this is hard, but Ember died so that you could live. So you need to live. You have to pull yourself together, and follow Linus out of here. Do you understand me?"

She tried to stop her tears and nodded. "Yes."

"Good." I took Ember's sword and handed it to Delilah, since Linus already had his own. "Move quickly and stay safe." I looked from one of them to the other. "Both of you."

"I will," Linus a.s.sured me. "I'll finish what Ember and I started."

He stood up tall, looking more confident than I had ever seen him before, and I hoped I was doing the right thing, leaving him to protect the thing that meant the most in the world to Ember. But I had trust that she'd trained him right and he could do this.

Linus took Delilah's hand and led her out the front door, looking for the quickest escape route to the front gate, where Finn could lead them to. And that meant I was alone with Astrid.

I turned back to face her, and she flinched. She hadn't moved from where she'd been before, with her back pressed against the wall.

"Bryn, I'm sorry. I didn't mean it. I didn't mean any of those things," she said in one hurried sentence, almost as if it were all one word.

I grabbed the sword from Ja.n.u.s's throat, which caused him to fall to the floor, and she cringed. I stalked over to her with slow, deliberate steps and Astrid began to whimper.

"Please, Bryn. I'm sorry. I didn't mean"

Astrid kept right on talking until I pressed the blade to her throat, still warm from Ja.n.u.s's blood. Then her eyes flew open and her mouth flew shut. I didn't break the skinI held the blade just hard enough so she could feel exactly how sharp the edge was.

"I could kill you right now," I growled. "And I should. But I'm not going to." I stepped back from her and took the sword from her throat.

"Thank you, Bryn. Thank you so much. I don't know"

"But I'm not going to save you," I said, cutting her off.

Her hand was on her throat, rubbing where the sword had been. "What are you talking about?"

"There's a war going on, and I just killed your only protection." With my sword, I pointed to the window, where the fight was coming increasingly closer to the doorstep.

I grabbed her wrist and started dragging her outside. She was pleading with me to stop, but it fell on deaf ears. As I pulled her out to the street, a Tralla horse came racing by, its heavy hooves pounding on the snowy cobblestones. With all the fighting, the fence outside the stables must've been broken down, freeing all the horses.

But that was the least of my concerns. I dragged her toward two hobgoblins who were just finis.h.i.+ng taking down an Omte ogre at the edge of the fray. Astrid began to scream as soon as she saw them, since she was unaccustomed to them and frightened by their appearance.

"Bryn! Please! Let me go!" she begged.

"Hey, guys!" I yelled, and the hobgoblins looked over at me, and then I motioned toward Astrid. "She just had a soldier killed that was helping us, and she has close ties to the Kanin Queen."

"Queen Mina will have your head if any of you lay a hand on me!" Astrid shouted, her voice growing shriller.

Since she seemed like she would do just fine digging her own grave, I let go of her and started walking away. The two hobgoblins smiled before they pounced on her. I heard her screaming, but I didn't look back. I didn't need to.

SEVENTY-THREE.

bloodied At first I'd been trying to avoid hurting any of the Hogdragen. But after Ja.n.u.s, I would kill anyone who ran at me with a sword. I'd always known that war wouldn't be so black-and-white, but I'd come to realize that there was a darker shade of gray, where right and wrong came second to simply surviving.

I wanted to make a straight line to the palace and find Ridley, but the fighting made it hard to move quickly. I could make it a few feet, stepping over bodies, before I'd find myself in combat with someone else. My hands and clothing were soaked with blood, and there had to be a quicker way to get to the palace.

Then, almost like a guardian angel, I heard Bloom. I looked back and saw the ma.s.sive Tralla horse running through the streets. His sterling mane flew behind him, and I whistled for him. He reared up on his back legs, braying loudly, and I saw that the fur around his hooves had been stained dark crimson.

He saw me and raced toward me through the crowd, knocking over anyone who got in his way. When he reached me, I sheathed my sword, and I jumped up to grab on to his mane. I tried to hoist myself up, but Bloom was over seven feet tall at his shoulders, so I couldn't exactly just hop up on him.

Then I felt a hand under my feet, pus.h.i.+ng me up, and I finally got high enough so I could swing my leg over. I looked down to see who'd helped me, and Baltsar smiled up at me before taking on a Hogdragen guard.

"Go, Bloom," I commanded, but he didn't need more prompting. Even he knew that a war zone was no place to pause.

He charged ahead, his ma.s.sive size chasing everyone out of the way. People either dove to the side, or he ran them over. I buried my fingers in his mane, leaning into him and urging him to go faster.

After losing Ember, I knew I had to get to Ridley as soon as possible. I couldn't waste any more time killing Omte or helping anyone. I couldn't let him die because I'd been busy somewhere else.

Delilah's last words to Ember, the poetry, pounded in my head like a death knell. I wouldn't let all be taken away from me. Not without a fight to the b.l.o.o.d.y end.

For so long, I had thought of love as a weaknessas something that would only make you distracted and vulnerable. But what I'd come to realize was that love had only made Ember braver than she'd ever been before. Love made Tilda find the strength to carry on. Love made my parents willing to sacrifice everything for each other.

And love made me stronger. I would do anything to save Ridley. I would do everything I needed to do.

The ma.s.sive door to the palace had already been knocked down, but after seeing the way the hobgoblins had handled the wall, I wasn't surprised. The door was over twenty feet tall, so Bloom ran through the opening with ease and straight into the grand front hall.

It was a ma.s.sive stone room with high ceilings that rose several stories high and had iron chandeliers. The only natural light came through stained-gla.s.s windows that faced different directions. Right now the sun shone through the window depicting the Long Winter War, which left everything glowing red.

Other than a few dead bodies scattered around, the front hall appeared empty. The rest of the palace wouldn't be so easy for a horse of Bloom's size to maneuver around, and I really didn't want him getting hurt either. I swung my leg over and hopped to the floor.

"Son of a b.i.t.c.h," Konstantin said, and I looked over to see him coming in from a corridor off to the left of the hall. He looked up at Bloom, shaking his head.

"What?" I looked up to make sure Bloom was okay, but the horse seemed fine.

"I told you that you couldn't come in riding on a horse like a white knight, and so you had to go and prove me wrong." He smirked at me.

I stroked Bloom, telling him he'd done a good job, then I smacked him on the side and told him to get out of here. He did as he was told, racing back out through the doors again, and I turned to Konstantin.

"Have you found Ridley or Mina?" I asked.

He shook his head. "Not yet. I checked the dungeons for Ridley, but there was no sign of either of them there. I was heading to the throne room."

"You think Mina will be there?" I asked.

"She's obsessed with the crown, so it would make sense," he said. "And if we find her, I'm sure she can tell us where Ridley is."

I nodded. "Then I'm going with you."

The throne room was rarely used, except for coronations and the occasional ceremony. It was at the south end of the palace, straight at the end of a long, narrow corridor that led out from the main hall.

I let Konstantin lead the way, jogging a few steps ahead of me, but we both slowed when we saw someone standing in front of the doors to the throne room, blocking us.

Wearing only a leather vest to reveal the scars and tattoos that covered his thick biceps was Helge Otack. His greasy hair hung around his face, and he grinned at us as we approached, showing off his gold teeth.

"Well, well, well. You thought you could just come waltzing up here"

"I really don't have time for this s.h.i.+t," I muttered, so I took my sword and threw it at Helge like a spear, right at his stupid grinning mouth with his gold caps.

The blade went through, knocking out one of his teeth, and going out the back of his skull. His open mouth tore around the blade, making him look like a mutilated clown, and when I pulled the sword back, the top half of his head fell to the floor.

"Well done," Konstantin said. He kicked Helge's body out of the way, and then he pulled open the door to the throne room.

It was a small square room, with white velvet drapes hanging over the stone walls, from the ceiling down to where they pooled on the floor. Two thrones sat at the back of the room, and Viktor Dlig sat in the larger of the two, looking like he owned the place. But that wasn't what really caught my attention.

Hanging from the center of the room was a large metal cage. A black-bearded vulture sat perched on top of it, squawking at us, and Ridley was inside it, lying on the bottom with his clothes torn, looking badly beaten.

He lifted his head when the door opened, and I could see dried blood had crusted along his temple. He knelt at the bottom of the cage, looking down at me with fear in his dark eyes, and he clenched the metal bars.

"Bryn, get out," Ridley warned me frantically. "It's a trap!"

SEVENTY-FOUR.

ensnared The white velvet drapes along the wall began to move, rippling like waves, and men dressed in black stepped out. There had been just enough s.p.a.ce between the fabric and the cold stone to conceal them, and a dozen of Viktor's soldiers filled the small room.

Behind Konstantin and me, the doors slammed shut, and that's when Viktor threw back his head and began to laugh. His long, black hair swayed as he did. The dull red of his scar ran from just above his left eye down to his right cheek, a present from Ridley's father before Viktor had killed him.

"The prodigal son returns," Viktor said, grinning broadly at Konstantin.

"I was never your son," Konstantin spat at him.

I had my sword at the ready, waiting for the soldiers to attack, but Konstantin stood with his weapon at his side, his eyes fixed on Viktor.

Viktor's smile finally fell away. "I told you what would happen if you betrayed us. And I knew that eventually you would return to collect your punishment."

"No." Konstantin shook his head and pointed his sword at Viktor. "I told you that I would return to give you yours."

"Enough of this," Viktor growled. "Capture them. The Queen wants to torture them herself."

The soldiers started coming toward us, and Konstantin and I moved so we were back to back. Our only advantage was that it was a small s.p.a.ce, so we could rely on each other. That, and Konstantin was the best swordsman I'd ever met.

I pushed down my fear, my worry for Ridley, my anger toward Viktor and Mina. I blocked out everything, leaving my mind blank, so when a solider struck out at me, I reacted only on instinct. I let my body move the way it had been trained to, blocking every attack, and lunging when I saw an opening.

From the corner of my eye, I kept trying to look for a way to free Ridley as Konstantin and I pivoted around the room, fighting off the soldiers as quickly as they came at us. The cage hung from the ceiling by a long chain, and I finally saw where it attached to the wall, in a small gap between the drapes.

Viktor sat on the throne in the center of the room, watching it all as if we were putting on a performance solely for his entertainment, and then I realized sourly that we were. He had staged this all with the expectation of trapping Konstantin or me here, and he'd lucked out by getting both of us.

Above, I heard the cage rattle, and I glanced up to see the bird had taken flight, as Ridley started swinging the cage. He used his body weight to rock it, and I could see the anchor straining in the brick wall.

The cage had been meant to hold doves, which Mina released during special ceremonies. It hadn't been built to withstand the kind of tension Ridley was putting on it.

"Bryn!" Konstantin shouted, trying to direct my attention back to the fight.

I turned to see a soldier charging at me. I kicked him in the stomach, sending him flying back into the wall, and he dropped his sword to the floor. I ran at him and before he could get to his feet, and I stabbed him through.