Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
CHAPTER NINETEEN "i should have killed you a long time ago..."
NIKOLAI LANTSOV KNEW WAR, he knew the futility of battle and the ache of endless fighting.
He'd fought by the side of the First Army, uniformed and trained. And then he'd fought by his father's men as they committed atrocities in the name of his crown. Round and round he went, fighting other people's battles and winning other people's wars.
But never, not in his life's worth of the battlefield, had he ever fought anything like this.
The plague that befall the Grand Palace ( because plague was the only word that came close to the horror ) swarmed from the skies like locusts. Shadow monsters with rows of razor fangs and talons that could shred bones like butter dove and rose only to dive and rise again, to more screams and more death and more chaos.
The blood roaring in his ears did little to silence the screams of his cousins, nephews and nieces as they died. The thin material of his shirt did little to staunch the blood that dripped from them to his sword, to his fingertips, to the floor.
Nikolai carved through the crowds of The Darkling's grisha as they swarmed the Grand Palace with a sheer number that might have made him wave a white flag then and there - if he wasn't in possession of a rather particular kind of audacity.
They went after his mother first, then his father, then his useless shit of a brother. Time after time Nikolai cut them down. Tidemakers, Inferni, Squallers. They all died the same. They all bled from the stumps of their hands and slumped to the floor, his sword embedded deep in their torsos.
Somewhere in the fray, Nikolai saw Aarav, his lithe figure turning through the air like he'd never known the weight of gravity. He watched Alina craft the sunlight into a knife that cleaved the darkness in two. Mal, shotgun in hand, was barely a step behind, covering his Saint and his assassin with a steely grit that almost made Nikolai forget how colossally annoying he was when they first met.
Yet no Mercy. His Pirate hadn't revealed herself to him in the carnage and whether that be for fighting reasons or very, very dead reasons, Nikolai would rather not dwell on either.
She'd slipped away from his side the moment those windows had shattered. torn a sword from the corpse of one of his guard and vaulted into the fray. Nikolai could only watch the chaos unfold, hoping against all hope that the next body he stumbled over wasn't one that wore her face.
With every sword stroke, every jab and every slice, The Prince would pray for a sight of those familiar brown eyes.
Mercy. Mercy. Mercy.
She wouldn't die today.
══════
MERCY FAHEY KNEW BLOODSHED, she could kill a man with her eyes closed - and that was saying little about what she could do with them open. But the nichevo'ya were not men. They didn't die like men. They tore through the air with unparalleled ferocity, they could splinter into shadows before you could land a blow and then reappear, unharmed and ready to gut you.
