A Vow So Bold and Deadly (The Cursebreaker Series Book 3)

I don’t think. I leap. The boy is wearing armor, but I know Lilith’s talents, and those blades will go right into his neck. I slam into him and we roll. A knife hits my armor and bounces away, but fate never goes easy on me, so the other slices across my neck and jaw. I cry out. Tycho’s dagger goes skittering across the marble floor.

But he’s alive. He’s panting underneath me, staring up at me in surprise.

“Are you all right?” I say.

He nods quickly. “You’re bleeding.”

I slap a hand to my face, and it comes away slick with blood.

Somewhere outside the window, a creature screams in the darkness. Lilith picks up the dagger. She drags the blade across her fingertip, and blood wells up. “I know what this is.” She looks at Grey and some of the wind quiets, but the force still pushes against us. “Where did you find it?”

He seems to be having more luck than the rest of us, because he’s still on his feet, facing her, bracing against her power. His eyes are dark and furious, his hands gripped tight on his weapons—but he can’t move forward. “I know where I’m going to put it.”

She laughs. “Look at you. You can’t even touch me,” she says. Her gaze shifts to me. “Rhen, would you like to watch me carve her heart out of her chest this time?”

“Go ahead and try,” says Harper, and her voice is fierce—but weak. I saw her hit the wall. Blood glistens in her hair.

“As always, you are all too weak. Rhen, I have offered you many chances. Your people destroyed my people. You used me and turned me away. Your kingdom will fall.”

“Grey brought an army,” I snap. “My kingdom was going to fall anyway. And so will you, when they come for him. You can kill us, but you can’t kill them all.”

“An army?” She laughs again. “Grey brought a handful of soldiers.”

My eyes snap to his, but Grey hasn’t looked away from her. “You brought no army?” I say.

“I came to kill her,” he says. “Not to take your throne.”

Lilith claps her hands in delight. “You’re such a fool, Rhen! This is why you are always destined to fall. You yielded to a man who didn’t even arrive with a battalion of soldiers. You yielded to a man who came with a broken girl and a boy who was likely weaned from his mother’s breast a week ago.”

She takes a step forward, toward Grey, completely unaffected by the wind. It’s beginning to flay the skin from Grey’s cheeks, but it barely ruffles her skirts. “And you. Your loyalty was once a point of pride, and now you sit up and beg for scraps from your enemy. I was once friendly with Karis Luran. I imagine I can be so with her daughter.”

Grey speaks through clenched teeth. His hands have turned red and raw from the wind, his knuckles bleeding. “You will—stay away—from—Lia Mara.”

“No,” she says. “I won’t.”

The window shatters inward, exploding with glass and a large black shape that lands and rolls. Wings unfurl, and I suck in a breath, swearing, shoving myself backward, dragging Tycho with me.

But the boy doesn’t seem panicked. His eyes light up. “Iisak!” he says in surprise.

The creature doesn’t even acknowledge him. It launches itself at Lilith with outstretched claws, just as freezing wind blasts through the open window and ice crystals form on the walls. The room is suddenly bitter cold, and it’s harder to move, as if my limbs have begun to freeze in place.

For the first time, I see Lilith falter and fall back. Her eyes no longer appear victorious, they are instead wide with shock. “Nakiis?” she says, and I don’t know the word, I don’t know what it means.

“Not Nakiis,” the creature hisses. “His father.” And then those claws slice into her, shredding the dress, shredding her flesh. Blood blooms along the satin fabric. The creature growls, and there’s enough menace in the sound that I shiver. Lilith makes a choked sound. For an instant, I think this will be it, that she’ll finally meet her end right here in front of me.

But Lilith still has that dagger in her hand.

I know what this is, she said.

She drives it right into the side of the creature’s rib cage. Then she pulls it free and does it again.

And again.

Again.

The wind in the room dies. The ice melts from the walls.

“No!” Tycho is screaming. He’s scrambling away from me, trying to get to the creature. Grey is able to stride forward, a blade in his hand, aiming for Lilith. The creature begins to fall away from the enchantress, and she makes a gurgling, choked sound, but she lifts that blade one more time.

Instead of aiming for the creature, she’s aiming for Grey.

There’s no wind, no resistance. I move without thought. I tackle Lilith around the midsection. There’s so much blood. She was already injured, so she all but collapses under my weight.

I don’t realize she still has a dagger in her hand until it stabs down into my shoulder, right where my armor ends. It’s like an iron poker. Pain ricochets through my body without end. Someone is shouting. Someone is screaming. Someone is sobbing.

Lilith is panting, her face, blood-speckled, above mine.

“You’re such a fool,” she hisses.

I don’t think anything can hurt more, but she yanks that dagger free of my shoulder, and puts the point right against my chin, pressing upward until I feel the skin split and I can barely breathe.

I can’t see anything. Just Lilith’s terrible face.

“Let him go,” says Grey. His sword point appears at Lilith’s neck.

“I can kill him before you kill me,” she says. “Grey, you were once willing to swear an oath to me. Are you still?”

“No.” My breath is shaking. “Let her kill me. Just let her kill me.”

“No,” says Harper. “No. Grey. Please. Grey.”

Lilith’s eyes bore into mine. “She always begs for you, Rhen.”

“Do it!” I snap at Grey, then choke on a gasp as she presses with the dagger. “Do it, Grey. Now it’s my turn to bleed so you do not.”

That blade at her neck doesn’t move. I can hear Grey’s breathing, quick and panicked.

“Do it,” I choke out. “Don’t make the mistake I once made.”

“Do something!” Harper cries. “Grey, use your magic!”

Lilith grins down at me, and her voice drops to a conspiratorial whisper. “Do you realize that he’s just as afraid as you are?”

“Use your magic,” says Tycho, and his voice is thick, and it’s then that I realize he is the one who was sobbing. “You’re stronger than she is.”

“He’s not,” snaps Lilith. “And he’ll yield right now, or I will kill Prince Rhen.”

“Curse me,” says Harper. Her voice is thick with tears, too. “Or change me. Make me the monster, Grey. Make me the monster.”

“No,” I whisper.

Something flickers in Lilith’s eyes. The wind in the room picks up. “I will not wait for your oath, Prince Grey.”

“Do it!” shouts Harper. “Grey, do it! Let me kill her!”

“No,” I say again. Dread is choking me. I know what my monster did. “Grey. No.”

Lilith leans down. “Remember when you tried to kill me?” she says to Grey. “Let me show you how to make a death last.”

The dagger pierces my skin. “Curse me!” I cry, and my voice is nearly lost in the wind. I dig my nails into the floor, trying to lift my head. “Grey, curse me. Whatever I have, it’s yours. Bind me with magic, make me something that will—”

My voice is swallowed up. The room gets smaller. The wind dies. Lilith shrieks.

And then I lose all sense of myself and become the monster once more.