Her smallest thing.
Her hopeless thing.
She squeezed her eyes shut and held on with a death-grip, knowing the inevitable was coming, that it was only moments now until the true desecration began.
A loud crash exploded at the door of her shop.
Magdalena and soldier jerked their heads up and stared in shock as a man in an unmarked tunic with a gleaming sword exploded into the room, flashing steel.
The soldier released her with a curse. Magdalena tripped backward in astonishment. It was the knight from the docks. The one who’d kissed her like a whore, who may or may not be a lord, who’d stolen a pouch of buttons to please her.
How had he found her? And why?
The second soldier thundered out of the kitchen, drawing his sword as he came.
She backed up to the wall as the knight slashed his way into the shop, sword flashing steel. A vicious sweep knocked the sword out of the nearest man’s hand with a clang of reverberating steel. Skittering backward, the man fell, his arms wheeling.
The other soldier lunged, but the dark-eyed stranger whirled completely around, crashing his sword into the thrust, blocking the blow, at the same moment he kicked back at the man trying to get up off the floor.
Boot connected with head. The man went back down like a rock in a pond.
Her stranger swung his blade up again in time to meet the next sword blow of the burly soldier, the one who’d gutted her pillows. Steel crashed on steel, and the men moved across the front of her shop, boots scraping.
A clatter on the back stairs made her heart stop. She turned to see the soldier who’d gone upstairs coming back down, the sound of his advance muffled by the grunts and gritty boot steps of the fight.
She stared in horror, paralyzed with fear as he crept past her, advancing on the knight, whose back was turned. She threw a frantic, terror-fueled glance at the back door. She could run now; no one would see her.
Her body shook so hard her teeth clattered. Either Magdalena did something, right now, or all the ridiculous, reckless hope that had welled up when the stranger burst in to save her—again—would be extinguished.
As would he.
She forced herself out of the shadows, and crept up behind the creeping soldier, mimicking his careful steps. As he straightened behind the stranger-knight, his sword up for a fatal blow, she lifted her mother’s chest in both hands and brought it down hard on the back of his head. It made a loud crack.
He gave a surprised grunt and stumbled forward. She smashed again, harder this time, then again, and again. He tripped as he tried to turn, sword out.
She jumped out of the way and struck him again, on the side of the head this time. He swayed like a drunkard, one boot kicked out, trying to follow her movement, and finally saw who it was who was beating him on the head, repeatedly, with a hard wooden box.
For a second he sta
red in bleary-eyed amazement, then his eyes rolled back in his head and he crumpled to the floor.
She stared in open-mouthed shock at her success and…triumph.
Never had she done something so intemperate as to triumph.
Her mysterious savior threw one startled look over his shoulder, at Magdalena gripping the chest over head, the soldier crumpled at her feet, then he spun back to finish off the pillow-murdering brute, a task he dispatched with grim efficiency.
He backed the man up faster and faster, driving him off-balance, and when the brute stumbled the smallest bit, the knight lifted a boot, planted it in the man’s belly, and shoved.
The soldier flew backward, hit the wall and slithered to the ground, sprawled amid bolts of fabric and bright silk thread. Cold and tall, the knight strode to him and lifted his boot again and brought it down hard on his knee.
Howling in pain, the soldier writhed on the ground, clutching his leg. The stranger half-knelt beside him and, grasping sword hilt in two hands, he bashed the butt of it against the side of the soldier’s skull. His body jerked then went still as a log.
Dead silence fell.
The knight straightened and turned, his sword out, searching for any more marauders who might need to be sliced open like apples.
Magdalena looked around too, the chest still held high in the air over her head. She was breathing fast, excited beyond measure or reason.