Mercurial Naomi Hughes (suggested reading txt) 📖

a moment. He wasn’t nearly as self-assured in violence as this young woman had been, but being a man of medicine, he did know the best places to strike to ensure she never rose again. He moved the blade up to hover above her neck and then drew it back for the killing blow.

Something gray and white and ferocious barreled into him, snarling, and latched its jaws on the hand that was holding the dagger. Albinus yelled in shock as much as in pain. The dagger fell, its hilt glancing off Nyx’s shoulder as the creature—a dog?—bore Albinus to the ground. He beat at the beast, mostly ineffectually, with his other hand. He scrambled for the dagger. The dog’s teeth were ripping through the tendons in his wrist now, grinding against bone. Some other sharp thing was scraping against his leg.

He spotted the dagger lying on the ground a few inches from his face. He grabbed for it.

A hand closed around his arm and bore it to the ground, where it was then pinned by a knee. The dagger was plucked neatly from his grip. “Back, Maluk,” said a calm female voice.

The jaws around Albinus’s wrist released. He turned his head to see a girl leaning over him. She was hefty and curvy, with brown skin and long, curly black hair and a face made for smiling. She wasn’t smiling now, though. In fact, she looked very angry indeed.

He licked his lips. He could talk his way out of this. After all, judging from her clothes she seemed to be a mere peasant, and what peasant would dare kill the Lord of Copper? “My dear girl—” he started, but felt suddenly faint and oddly queasy.

“I imagine that would be the poison taking effect,” the girl said conversationally, and nodded to the ground next to Albinus’s shin, where a purple-stained arrowhead lay dripping with blood both silver and copper.

Dread hardened in Albinus’s gut. The thing that had poked him in the leg earlier—that was what it had been. “You…you could save me if…” he started, trying frantically to remember if this particular poison had an antidote, but the girl merely looked at him.

“You have just held a dagger above my girlfriend with the intent to murder her. Before that, you helped formulate the poison that sickened her every day for two years. I would let Maluk rip your throat out if you weren’t already dying. I’m sure I’ll feel terrible later for not saving your life, but I’ll have to settle for saying a prayer for your soul in penitence.”

His vision wavered. He tried to call up his magic to save himself, but his concentration was too erratic to direct it. His head drifted toward the ground. The world went silent and the Lord of Copper closed his eyes, never to open them again.

“Good riddance,” Helenia said softly to Albinus’s corpse. Maluk growled softly in apparent agreement.

“I’m not sure if I’m impressed or intimidated,” said a weak voice from beside her. Helenia twisted around quickly to see Nyx pushing herself up to sitting. Helenia checked her over—not bleeding, breathing seemed normal, a little shaky but none the worse for wear.

“Be intimidated,” she answered sharply when she was sure Nyx was okay. “Then perhaps you’ll give it a bit more thought next time you consider leaving me drugged in the woods while you run off alone to face the Destroyer.”

A change came over Nyx then, her face going grim. She picked up the dagger and turned her head until she spotted the Destroyer—who was still unconscious, but twitching slightly as if she would wake at any moment—on the opposite end of the stage. Nyx started trying to stand.

“Stop being stupid,” Helenia snapped.

“I am obligated to do no such thing.”

“Sit down this second or I swear, I’ll turn down your proposal.”

Nyx stopped. She looked at Helenia. “What proposal?”

“The proposal where you get down on your knees and beg me to marry you even though—I repeat—you left me drugged in the woods while you ran off to face the Destroyer.”

Nyx blinked a few times, then sat back down. After a moment she managed to reply, “Is this the same proposal where you break down crying with happiness and kiss me senseless right after you agree to be my wife?”

Helenia’s lips twitched. “It might be,” she allowed, “if you can manage to keep yourself from murdering anyone for the next twenty minutes while I get this mess straightened out.”

Nyx considered this. “Ten minutes,” she negotiated.

Helenia let out a noise that was part laugh and part exasperated huff, and then leaned across the space between them and kissed her foolish, feral, beautiful fiancé senseless.

Nyx broke away after a moment, her eyes widening. “Tal,” she gasped, and scrambled to her feet again, searching for her brother.

Helenia put out a hand to keep Nyx from falling back down, as she was still disoriented from whatever had caused the magical blast a few minutes ago. “He’s okay,” she said quickly. “I saw him as I was coming to stop Albinus from killing you. He’s breathing. He’ll likely wake up any moment.”

“It worked?” Nyx rubbed a hand across her head and then collapsed back to sitting. “I think I might believe in God now,” she said shakily. “How did you get here? What did you…” Nyx trailed off, probably because she’d finally regained enough of her senses to look around and see the flood of Saints who were currently flowing around them, securing the exits to the garden and marching toward the palace gates.

When Helenia had woken up back in the temple clearing, she’d quickly put the clues together to realize what had happened and the danger that Nyx was almost certainly going to throw herself into. She’d travelled past the city and straight onward to the Saints’ mountain base, but rather than merely evacuating them, she’d gathered them into a makeshift army, promising that there was going to be a prime opportunity to strike the