AllFreeNovel
Share Us
But she’d chosen vengeance instead.
Ren held her own letter up. Vega swooped down. It was too perfect to not have the livestone bird deliver this final letter to her enemy. She wanted him to know that his gambit with Warden Carrowynd had failed. The great lord of House Brood would never admit to backpedaling, but Ren knew she had him in the exact corner she wanted him in. It would look as if she’d waited all this time to leverage her position for the best possible payout.
“Happy hunting, Vega.”
The bird swept through the open window with the letter clutched in its talons. Ren did not have any time to waste. There was a candle burning in the corner of the room. The wax had dripped down to the golden plate beneath. She knew the only way she could travel without the Brood scouts following her was by waxway. It was possible they had ways of tracking her movements, magically determining which direction she’d traveled, so they could follow her whenever she surfaced elsewhere in the city. Fortunately, she had just one more place to visit. Ren reached out and snuffed the flame between her fingers.
There was a whisper in the dark—and then she was elsewhere.
31 DAHVID TIN’VORI
Darling was no longer playing games.
His fourth champion walked out through the gates. The man did not smile. He did not wave to the crowd. Dahvid knew him on sight. He had seen the man at Darling’s parties, even watched him fight in some of the marquee showdowns. Everyone in Ravinia knew the Whisperman.
The man’s name was born from his habit of leaning down and speaking with the dead after killing them in the arena. They said corpses from his fights would mutter aloud in the morgue, supposedly repeating his final words in a garbled tongue.
Dahvid didn’t care about any of that shit.
His mind trimmed away the rumors and focused on facts. All the notes Nevelyn had made. Her research on the Whisperman had been thorough, because she’d imagined him as Darling’s most obvious choice against Dahvid. They used to make bets on who the fifth gladiator would be in his imagined gauntlet. She’d been off by one. He’d have to remember to make Nevelyn pay up the next time he saw her. Just the thought of that had him smiling.
Across the sand, the Whisperman settled into his stance. Dahvid could not help admiring the sword he unsheathed. He was a fine duelist who’d been made into something more by an absolutely legendary blade. One that had been crafted by Maxim himself. It was a manipulation sword. Dahvid had witnessed its effect on a number of gladiators. The way they’d stumble the wrong way or swing at nothing but air—all because their opponent’s blade was casting an illusion. That was the trick of it. Sometimes, the real Whisperman was rushing forward to cut them in two. Other times, it was an illusion of him that veiled the real attack. No one could truly know the difference.
Unless their sister had studied the patterns. Learned every possible combination. It helped, too, if the opponent had magic that matched the Whisperman’s skills. As Dahvid did.
The warlord gave his signal. Dahvid reached for his twins tattoo. The two imps that Cath had etched on his body. This was still his favorite spell. Cold air gasped out from him. A great exhalation. He always imagined it sounded like a first breath.
Dahvid stepped to his left. A mirrored version of him matched that movement, stepping out to the right. His twin hefted the same sword, took up the same stance. They both smiled at their opponent. A perfect replica. Dahvid knew no one in that arena could tell them apart.
The Whisperman hesitated for only a moment, assessing them both, and then he began striding purposefully forward. His first attack was for the real Dahvid. A lunging strike that would have caught his upper chest. Dahvid battered the sword aside with a quick parry.
The first one is always real.
Whisperman spun away from him, preparing to swing at the conjured twin. But Dahvid knew the pattern. Real, fake, fake, real. Sure enough, the actual Whisperman blinked back to life in front of him, his swing already halfway to Dahvid’s neck. Any other person would have been cut in two. It was impossible to match that speed—unless you knew it was coming.
Dahvid turned the blow away and then parried a second. He was pressed just enough that he had to backpedal a few steps. The Whisperman used his retreat to swing his attention back to Dahvid’s twin. Or at least it appeared that way.
But that’s fake too.
Dahvid made a gut call. He swung his sword where the Whisperman had been a moment before. And he very nearly took off the man’s head. His opponent ducked at the last second, forced into a backpedal by the unexpected strike. Dahvid took advantage, pressing him in return, aiming blow after blow after blow. The shock on his opponent’s face was utterly satisfying.
I know you, friend. I know every combination you will try. All thanks to Nev.
His twin joined the fray from behind. Together they forced the Whisperman into a frantic retreat. His illusions would not serve him now. The fight was coming too fast and from both angles. He was lucky to avoid their blades as he danced and backpedaled, danced and backpedaled.
Nevelyn’s notes continued to guide his attack: Agatha Marchment disarmed him, because she kept him on his heels the entire time. His sword works best when he’s on the offensive, so remember to keep pushing him.
Dahvid and his twin had never trained together—but they didn’t need to. The twin was Dahvid. They fought the same, thought the same, killed the same. His twin scored the first blow. A slit on the Whisperman’s upper bicep. Dahvid landed the second, a gash that bit through the armor on their opponent’s upper leg. A sequence of combinations drove the man back, step after step, toward the puzzle section of the arena. By now most of the stones had fallen away, leaving only a few platforms on which to stand. It had created several pits at the edge of the central circle. With each swing, they backed him closer and closer to those waiting, shadowed jaws.
Dahvid could feel the end coming. Sweat ran down the Whisperman’s normally blank face. This was a man who knew he was about to die. In a final desperate move, he battered both their swords aside. It gave him just enough room to turn, building a few steps of momentum. He shocked Dahvid by leaping through empty air. The gaping hole was the length of a man. A difficult jump. Dahvid got caught watching the impossible attempt. How he glided through the air. The way the Whisperman’s feet scraped that distant edge. His arms pinwheeling to keep him from falling back into the pit…
… and then there was a blade in his gut.
The real Whisperman was beside him. He’d never jumped at all. That had been the illusion. Thin fingers tightened their grip on Dahvid’s shoulder. His voice was as quiet as a dream.
“Found the real one, didn’t I?”
He’d never been in so much pain. Nothing so awful in all his life. The Whisperman held him tight to the sword, and he could feel the world starting to slip through his fingers. Until his twin beheaded the man.
