I shouted over my shoulder, “Stop pushing! There’s bayonets!”
The mob was screaming “Clovian scum!” and “Get out of Albia!”
The Clovian soldiers were barking orders I didn’t understand, and Finn and I were inching closer to them. Any minute now, I’d be stabbed.
“We’ve got to get out of here, Finn.” I started throwing elbows again, trying to clear a way out.
“Clovian scum! Clovian scum!” The mob chanted.
My attempts to flee the crowd achieved only two things: losing track of Finn, and my shoes.
The crowd was like a living thing that had consumed Finn, that would eat us both up and spit us out.
The first gunshot rang out, and my stomach sank. I was nearly certain it had come from one of the Clovian soldiers, although in all the chaos it was impossible to tell.
The crowd started screaming louder, incoherent. But they weren’t dispersing. It was like a sea of rage rising around me, unstoppable. And still, as much as I fought, I couldn’t fight my way back out of it. Someone’s elbow slammed into my cheek.
I had a dagger on me, but what was I going to do? Murder everyone?
More gunshots cracked, sending my heart racing. My ears rang, and the scent of gunpowder filled the air.
At last, the crowd started to flee, screaming, away from the gunfire. I looked around wildly for Finn. I caught a glimpse of my suitcase, trampled in the street, all the delicate clothes crushed into dirt and mud. The perfume bottle smashed.
Between the fleeing people, I saw the bodies of three dead Dovreners, too. Shot by the soldiers, blood pooling between the cobbles.
“Finn!” I shouted.
I took a few shaky steps, then I felt it—the count’s dark magic thrumming over my skin. The hair rose on my nape.
When I turned, I found him looming over me, his cowl raised. All I could see were those pale, penetrating eyes. “You’re late.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” I blurted.
I watched him sheathe his gory sword. Every other part of him was completely still. “Enter through the Lion’s Gate. Give your name. They’ll be waiting for you.”
I glanced at the castle, at the crowd of Dovreners swarming around the moat, some of them falling into the water, shrieking. Many Dovreners couldn’t swim. And I was supposed to walk through this chaos to my first day at my new job, working for the man we all hated.
He turned, walking toward the crowd, and I stared. They’d tear him to pieces. Didn’t he know that?
Already they were surrounding him, hurling death threats, every obscenity in the book. A large man in a leather apron tried to swing a plank of wood at the count.
The angel hardly turned his head. He just lifted his forearm, and the wood shattered against him. The man looked stunned, then terrified as the count pivoted. Saklas grabbed the man’s forearm, then wrenched it behind his back with an audible snap, clearly breaking it. The attacker fell to the ground.
The crowd pressed in closer around the count, too tight for him to draw his sword. I thought I saw the flash of a dagger as another man lunged for him, then the count’s gloved hands gripped the man’s head. He twisted sharply, snapping the man’s neck. The sound of breaking bone horrified me.
I followed after him at a safe distance, wanting to see what I could learn about how he moved, how he fought. He managed to draw his sword, and the frantic mob began hurling rocks, bricks, anything they had. They wanted to bring him down, to bash his head into the stones.
What followed was like nothing I’d ever seen. His sword carved into them with a ferocity that seemed straight from Hell. He moved like a storm wind, a maelstrom of whirling steel, blood arcing around him. Each movement was precise, slashing through two people’s heads at once, the speed of his sword unparalleled.
He was a masterpiece of death. A swift strike of the blade across someone’s throat, then a pivot to slash another person’s jugular. He turned destruction into a work of art, terrible and mesmerizing at the same time.
I clutched my stomach, wanting to throw up.
I was learning something, and so was everyone around me: the count was nearly impossible to kill, and you’d be an idiot to try.
When eight dead bodies lay at his feet, the crowd parted before him like the sea. His sword dripping with gore, he stalked forward.
I suspected he’d wanted them to see that display of carnage. He wanted them to know they were powerless against him.
My make-the-best-of-a-bad-situation spirit was starting to falter a bit at this point. There were bad situations like “sharing a bed with your drunk mum,” and then there were bad situations like “locked in a castle with a literal death monster.” This was, unfortunately, the latter.
I mentally ran through the consequences of simply turning and running. Presumably, the count would demand his money back, and quite possibly hunt me down and kill me. Mum and I would be out of money to pay the Rough Boys, so if the count didn’t kill me, they would hunt us forever.
Best get on with it, then. Get in there and be lovely as fuck, just as Ernald said.
I started shoving my way through the crowd, getting jostled on all sides. When a new barrage of gunfire rang out, the crowd started running again—this time, away from the fortress, slamming into me, nearly knocking me on my arse.
Someone caught my arm, and when I looked up, I saw Finn’s blue eyes on me. I read pure panic in them. “Lila. Come with me. You should leave.”
I’d already made up my mind. I jerked my hand out of his grasp. “I can’t, Finn. There’s no way out of this. Write to me. In pictures.”
I was about to be trampled into the stones like Zahra’s lacy underwear. The sky had opened up now, rain still slamming down harder than ever, the earth slick.
When a firm hand grabbed me by the shoulder, I turned to stare up at the shadowed face of Count Saklas. With his enormous body, he was blocking the fleeing crowd from crushing me.
Then he turned, marching into the crowd once more, while they parted around him like he was a dark god on earth.
I followed behind him, primal fear stealing my breath.
11
Lila
Drenched, I hugged myself. Rain slid down my skin, and I kept my eyes on Saklas’s cloak.
The path curved around the castle moat, to the right. Chaos reigned around us, and the count slipped farther away from me as we got closer to the gatehouse. But as I neared the portcullis, the crowd started to thin at last. I turned to look at the wreckage behind me. A few people lay injured, trampled by the crowd. And past them, eight bodies bled onto the stones.
Disturbed, I turned back to the gatehouse. A line of Clovian soldiers stood before a locked iron door, bayonets pointed at me. Nervousness fluttered in my belly. Seemed the count had already disappeared inside.
I looked up at the gatehouse. Two stone towers flanked the door, piercing the clouds. Marble lion heads jutted from the stone on either side of the arches. And between the lion’s teeth—a man’s actual head, dripping blood. Grimacing, I took a step back.
The count had been busy, hadn’t he?
I looked down at the guards again, steadying my voice. “I’m Zahra Dace. Count Saklas is expecting me.”
One of them nodded, and the soldiers slowly parted. The portcullis groaned up behind them. On the other side of it, a bridge that spanned the moat. My heart was a wild beast as I crossed through the arches of the gatehouse, taking care to avoid the dripping blood.