Page 101 of Heartless Enemy

I turned around to face him.

His body spasmed and a strained gurgle made it out of his throat while his eyes, still glassy with pain, flicked desperately between me and Eve.

“You’re too predictable, White.” A mocking grin spread across my mouth as I looked down at him. “You always use the same technique. A quick sneak assassination with a knife to the throat from behind.” I tutted and shook my head. “You really should’ve gone for the front this time.”

It had been a gamble, an absolutely insane gamble, but it was the only way to kill someone as slippery as Christian White.

We couldn’t kill him in the middle of a battle. It was too chaotic and there were too many variables that could, and would, fuck up our plan. So we’d had to force him into calling a ceasefire, because we needed to do this in a controlled environment.

A meeting between just the three of us in the middle of an empty field was as close to a controlled environment as we would ever get. When he worldwalked, we would see it right away.

However, we knew that it wouldn’t be enough to be able to see him vanish. Just like every time he had done this move, he was too fast. He would always be able to kill me before Eve could draw her sword or I could slap my palms together and summon my magic.

Which was why I had done that before the meeting even started.

When I brushed my palms together to lower the helmet, I had done it for two reasons. The first was that I had to give White a clear target. My neck had to be exposed, otherwise he would never try to assassinate me like that. The second reason was that I needed to have my magic already flowing through the metal of my armor, ready and waiting for me.

The moment White had slapped his hands together, I had made a spike of metal shoot out from my backplate and into the space that I had calculated, that I hadhoped, White would occupy when he materialized.

Attacking before he had even reappeared had been the only way to kill him. But it had been a gamble. In order to finish creating the spike in time, I had only been able to form one. If White had worldwalked to a spot in front of me instead,Iwould’ve been the one bleeding out on the grass right now.

But he hadn’t. Because thankfully, the predictable son of a bitch always went for a sneak attack behind his opponent’s back.

When he had materialized on the grass, the spike had already been half-formed and had speared through his chest before he could finish his own strike. And Eve’s sword to the side of his chest a few seconds later had just made extra certain that he truly died.

I stared down at the worldwalker who was still twitching slightly on the ground. Relief and smug fucking victory pulsed through my whole soul.

“Told you that you would be bleeding out at my feet before this was all over,” I mocked.

But Christian White was already too far across death’s doorstep to reply.

His chest shook another couple of times.

Then he went still.

Pale blue eyes stared unseeing up into the gray clouds above.

I raised my gaze.

With a brush of my palms, I made Eve’s helmet flow back into the rest of her armor as well. She raked her fingers through her hair, shaking out her loose brown curls, and heaved a deep sigh.

Then we turned towards the army still standing on the other side of the field.

No one moved.

No one so much as uttered a single word.

They all just stood there, an entire army of dark mages, and stared at us and the worldwalker we had just slain. No one killed a worldwalker. But we just had.

“You are outnumbered,” I called across the bloodstained grass, spreading my arms to indicate the massive force facing them behind my back. “And now, without your worldwalker, you are also outmatched.”

A ripple went through the enemy army ahead.

“You have two options,” I went on. “You stay and die one by one as we decimate your leaderless army. Or you go back to Helmark and fight each other for control of White’s castle.”

Winds rushed across the grasslands, pulling at our clothes. Everything else remained still and silent.

Then, the stillness was shattered like a broken mirror.