Gathering Darkness (Falling Kingdoms 3)

Amara slipped the sphere of aquamarine into her cloak and pointed to three of her guards. “Stay here and kill them all. Burn their bodies. Leave nothing behind to show we were ever here. And you two,” she gestured toward the other guards, “come with me.”

She passed close enough to Magnus that, for a moment, Cleo thought he might reach out and snap her neck, but he didn’t. That, Cleo felt, was unfortunate. His tendency to use violence to solve his problems would have been perfectly acceptable this time.

She turned to look at Nic holding Ashur’s lifeless body in his arms. Nic didn’t move, barely breathed, his frozen expression one of pain and grief.

Cleo’s heart ached for him.

Nic mourned the prince’s death, but he wouldn’t have to for long.

The princess had already given her guards the order to make sure the three of them followed Prince Ashur to the everafter.

CHAPTER 35

MAGNUS

LIMEROS

“All right,” Magnus said as calmly as possible after Amara and two of her guards had left the temple. “It’s time to negotiate. I have every intention of walking out of here with my life, so the only question is: How much gold will that cost me?”

The guard who’d shoved him and called him “boy” stepped closer, inspecting him as if he were a piece of dung he’d found on the bottom of his boot. “Gold?”

“Yes. From what I know of Kraeshians, they enjoy a lavish lifestyle on par with that of the Auranians. My father is king. He has plenty of gold. I can arrange for a great deal of it to find its way into your possession.”

“For all three of you?”

“Amara asked you to kill us and burn our bodies. There are bodies outside that would be sufficient stand-ins for all three of us.”

“Interesting proposition. But it’s not going to happen.”

Magnus’s upper lip thinned. “She just killed her brother and plans to blame it on me. Do you really think she’s going to let any witnesses live?”

“She needs us.”

“She needs no one. Now that she has that crystal, she has everything she came here for. We can’t let her board a ship with it. We can’t let her leave Limeros.”

The attentions of all three guards closed in on Magnus. Out of their eye line, Cleo slowly moved toward Nic and knelt down to pick up Amara’s discarded dagger.

She was not helping matters at all. Cleo might have many hidden skills, but Magnus would be willing to wager that the fine art of weaponry was not one of them.

Suddenly her movement caught the attention of a guard, who grabbed her and knocked the blade from her grip. He struck her hard across her face, causing her to shriek and stagger backward. She fell against the altar, striking her head on its edge.

It took all the willpower Magnus had not to move from his spot. He had to wait for the right moment.

The other two guards turned to look at her, laughing.

Magnus struck. He grabbed one guard’s arms, seizing the moment of his surprise to steal his sword and stab the Kraeshian in his side.

It worked better than he’d expected. At least until another guard’s fist found his jaw, making his head spin and his teeth rattle. He dropped his stolen sword and it clattered to the floor. Magnus ducked in time to miss the swipe of a blade. With the next attempt by the guard to bring his sword down on him, Magnus caught the metal between his hands. It sliced his skin, but he managed to jam the hilt of the sword into the guard’s gut, allowing him to yank the weapon right out of his grip.

Without hesitation, Magnus spun and impaled the guard through his throat.

Then something hit the side of his head and he fell to the floor with his arm at an awkward angle. As he landed on it with his full weight, he heard a sickening crack and an excruciating pain shot through his arm.

He was about to rise up to his feet again, but the guard—the same guard who’d shoved him earlier—loomed over him, pressing the tip of his sword to Magnus’s chest.

“Stay down,” the guard snarled. “And lose the weapon.”

Magnus dropped the bloody sword. “You’ll notice I didn’t kill you first as I previously promised I would,” he said.