Page 43 of Wicked Enemy

Yet again, she looked as if I had slapped her across the face.

So I repeated it, even slower this time, just to really drive it home. “Because you were making me look weak. White took you and tried to trade you because he thought that you meant something to me. It doesn’t matter that he was dead wrong about that. He stillthoughtthat he was right. That he had been able to just waltz in and kidnap someone who mattered to me. And that would’ve ruined my reputation. I didn’t give a shit if he killed you or not. I cared about how it would makemelook. Don’t you get it? You were a liability.”

Her chest had been heaving with anger before. Now, it was completely still. As if she wasn’t breathing at all.

“The next time I see you, we will be enemies again.” Using my grip on her shirt, I jerked her forward and then gave her another shove up against the wall before finally releasing her collar. “Now, go back to your side of Malgrave before I change my mind.”

Without waiting for a reply, I simply turned around and stalked down the alley. I half expected her to shoot me in the back with a lightning bolt. But she didn’t.

My mind churned all the way across the Entertainment District. In fact, I was so distracted by my own thoughts that I didn’t even realize that something was wrong until I had almost rounded the final corner that led to the street right in front of my Court. But the moment that my mind returned fully to the present, I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how I could have missed it.

Dread raked down my spine like shards of ice.

Something was wrong. I could feel it in the thick tension that hung over the street. Smell it in the air.

I brushed my palms together and called up my magic as I rounded the final corner.

For a few seconds, I couldn’t process what I was seeing.

There were bodies lying on the stone street in front of my Court.

Were they enemies? Had there been another attack? Didn’t Shinji tell me that the House of Stone was planning an attack too? Had that happened while I was gone? But then who had managed to kill these people? None of them were burned to ash, which meant that Shinji wasn’t responsible for their deaths. And if there had been an attack, why had my people just left these corpses here in the street?

Hundreds of questions spun through my mind like a whirlwind. It felt as though the walk from the end of the street took hours when I knew that it couldn’t have been more than a minute.

As I got closer, the faces of the people lying dead on the bloodstained stones at last became clear.

I stopped dead in the middle of the road.

My people. These weremypeople.

I scanned their faces.

Eight of them belonged to my group of lower-level fighters. The other two were runners. They weren’t even mages. Just people who were quick on their feet and brought me information and messages and warnings from all over the city.

There was a dull pounding inside my skull as I tried to make sense of this. Had my Court truly been attacked? I glanced towards the now red and gray front doors. They looked completely untouched. Shifting my gaze back to my people, I realized that all of them had died of knife wounds. Most of them had had their throat slit. Or their carotid artery punctured. These were not injuries that were normally found on corpses after a dark mage battle.

What the hell had happened here?

Then my gaze snagged on one of my dead fighters. Tom. He was a stocky guy with dirty blond hair. A water mage. Decently skilled but not powerful enough to be a true battle mage.

Both rage and wariness flooded my veins as I stared at the knife that had been buried in his chest in order to secure a piece of paper to his body. Stepping over two dead wind mages, I moved up to him and yanked the paper off the blade.

I instantly recognized the messy handwriting.

You killed my people, so I killed yours. And I will keep killing them until you give me your healer. This was only a demonstration to show you just how serious I am. Tomorrow, I will begin a more systematic slaughter. Three people. Every day. Until you hand over your healer.

The doors to my Court were thrown open. I snapped my gaze towards them, ready for a fight with the fucking worldwalker who thought that he could just come in here, tomycity, and slaughtermypeople.

But it wasn’t Christian White.

I released the grip on my magic as Shinji and Anna instead hurried through the door.

“I’m sorry, sir,” Shinji began.

“What happened?” I ground out before he could even finish speaking.

“I was on the other side of the building when Anna called, and by the time I got there, it was already over.”