Total pages in book: 194
Estimated words: 187021 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 935(@200wpm)___ 748(@250wpm)___ 623(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 187021 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 935(@200wpm)___ 748(@250wpm)___ 623(@300wpm)
“Cease,” the man rumbled. “I’ll take you in however you prefer. Don’t much care.”
All the back and forth between the three of them had been sufficient distraction for Graves to finally have his gloves off. Kierse’s hand was on a knife at her belt. Niamh had taken a step behind them, muttering something under her breath.
“Now,” Niamh gasped.
She and Graves shot to the sides as the table flew forward with the momentum from Niamh’s spell. Kierse kicked the bounty hunter in the knee. It felt like her foot connected with solid rock. He stumbled forward a step, though, colliding with the wreckage of the table and ale that now covered him from head to toe.
The rest of the bar exploded at the commotion. Fights broke out. Ale was sloshed everywhere. Fists were thrown, and goblins tumbled to the ground in a brawl.
Graves was kneeling beside the guy a second later, placing his hand on the first bit of exposed skin. Kierse could see the gold of his magic ignite in the millisecond it took him to infiltrate the man’s mind. The bounty hunter lay on the floor stock still and then turned around, looking confused. Graves winced and removed his hand.
“Come on. Let’s get out of here.”
“What did you do?” she asked with wide eyes.
He didn’t get to answer, because the bounty hunter hadn’t come alone. A handful of his minions crowded at the front door, blocking them in. Kierse glanced behind her to the other exit she’d clocked when they’d first walked in. She didn’t know if they could make it in time, let alone survive another chase through the streets of the market.
It seemed as if the market was set out to kill them. As if it were angry she’d refused to give up her secrets so easily the first time she’d entered its embrace. It had teeth, and she was being consumed. But she would not give up—not even with a group of bounty hunter underlings at her front and room full of brawling goblins at her back.
“I got the two in the middle,” Graves said before diving into the melee.
Kierse cursed as she followed him, engaging with a female goblin wearing spiked shoulder pads on her leather uniform like something out of a video game. She brandished a curved knife like someone who knew how to use it. Fuck, Kierse missed stealth missions.
Luckily, her Fae sense helped her meet the strike with a thrust of her own knife. Her already injured arm nearly buckled under the force. She really should have taken Niamh up on that healing now that she was thinking about it.
The goblin pressed her advantage, angling her long knife closer to Kierse’s face, forcing Kierse to retreat just enough to get leverage to kick her in the stomach. The goblin grunted, falling backward a few steps. Plenty of space for Kierse to grasp one of the overturned chairs and bring it down onto the goblin’s head.
She cried out as she collapsed to the ground. Kierse kicked her swiftly under the chin, and she went fully down. One down, one to go.
Graves and Niamh were lost in the rest of the fight, but she trusted that both of them could hold their own. All she had left to handle was a pair of goblins, one wielding another massive club and the other with a knife in each hand. Fuck.
Kierse glanced around her immediate vicinity, using the mere seconds she had to find an advantage.
“Come on, bitch,” one said.
Time’s up.
She dashed to the left, using a burst of slow motion to freeze her opponents for the moment it took her to jet past them. They gaped at her in shock, but she was already jumping onto a bar stool and careening forward onto the bar itself. From the high ground, she hurled herself forward, grabbing onto the heavy wooden ceiling fan with both hands. The momentum carried her forward into the goblin with the club. She kicked him in the face with both of her feet and let go at the top of her swing. Then she backflipped, landing heavy on her feet to meet her last opponent, who was unfortunately not where he was supposed to be. He’d recovered enough from his shock to reposition, anticipating her trajectory.
A knife slid between her ribs. She gasped in shock as the white-hot pain lanced through her. It was blinding. Everything else evaporated in the wake of that metal sticking out of her side.
She struggled to breathe as her vision went blurry at the edges. Was this it? Was she going to die knifed in a bar fight? After all of this trouble, for her memories? She wanted to know—God, did she want to know what happened to her, who had done it, why it had been done to her. And yes, she deserved to remember her family. To know whether they were dead or not. The world had taken so much. It owed her that, at least. But she didn’t want to die, either.