Total pages in book: 139
Estimated words: 130991 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 655(@200wpm)___ 524(@250wpm)___ 437(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 130991 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 655(@200wpm)___ 524(@250wpm)___ 437(@300wpm)
“Do this for me, and I will never forget it,” Caldenia said. “I’ve spent years planning to secure him on his throne. Please don’t let it fall apart now.”
She said things like that a lot lately. “Fine. I will sit on my hands.”
I hoped I wouldn’t regret it.
Caldenia took my hand, squeezed, and let go.
Wow.
“I lost,” Amphie said, her microphone-amplified voice echoing across the arena. “I lost to a fish.”
That was uncalled for.
Prysen Ol was looking at Amphie. She turned her head slowly. Their stares connected.
The philosopher sprinted across the stage toward the small mountain, his eyes fixed on Kosandion on his throne.
In the observers’ section six seats away from me, Tomato jumped to his feet and vomited a pearlescent orb the size of a basketball. The orb streaked toward the throne.
I clamped the green-bear-alien into a vise of Gertrude Hunt’s roots. They couldn’t blame me for securing him. He was an active danger to the observers.
Prysen Ol leaped. He didn’t jump, he flew as if he had wings, shooting a full thirty feet up toward the Sovereign in a sharp diagonal line. A human being could not do this.
Sean activated a barrier around the Kai section.
Prysen reached the maximum height and streaked through the air toward Kosandion on a collision course with the orb. Was this levitation? What the hell was this? I could just snatch him right out of the air… Argh!
Prysen’s right hand snapped out toward the orb. His fingers touched it, and the orb popped like a soap bubble, releasing a coiled whip. Before it could fall, Prysen snatched it out of the air and swung it. The whip whistled, spinning in a wide arc crackling with red lightning.
A whip-sword. Made not out of leather, rubber, or paracord, but of razor-sharp metallic segments connected by a glowing monofilament. Released, it was a 20-foot whip that could behead a human being in a single snap. Retracted, it became a 4-foot sword, the segments fitted together into a flexible blade.
Time slowed. Prysen was still in mid-air, defying the limits of human bodies and gravity and flying toward Kosandion in a slowly descending trajectory. The whip-sword sliced in a devastating strike. He was aiming at Kosandion’s head.
The bladed segments whined as the whip completed its circle. Kosandion saw it coming but made no move to avoid it.
Lady Wexyn dashed to the edge of the stage, shot into the air like a bullet, and pulled a dagger from her cleavage. Prysen Ol never saw her coming. She caught him from behind, wrapping one arm around his neck like a lover, and drove the dagger between his shoulder blades.
Prysen jerked back, shock twisting his face. The end of the whip quivered, slicing a foot short of the Sovereign’s nose. Kosandion observed it with mild interest, as if it were a random curiosity.
Lady Wexyn hurled Prysen Ol away from the mountain. He hurtled through the air, spun, twisting his body as he fell, and landed on the balls of his feet near the center of the stage. The knife was still embedded in his back. Bright red blood spread through his robes.
Lady Wexyn floated down and landed near the edge of the stage, her back to the throne mountain, blocking the way to Kosandion. It had to be a technologically assisted jump. Gravity didn’t make exceptions.
Prysen Ol pulled a syringe out of his robes with his left hand and stabbed it into his thigh.
Lady Wexyn took a step toward him. There was nothing sweet or coquettish about her face now. She looked like Cyanide might have when she hunted her prey.
“Curse it! I’ll do it myself!” Amphie snarled.
Her necklace melted, sliding under her gown. The liquid metal slithered out of her short sleeves, down her arms, coated her hands, and hardened into four-inch claws.
She dashed forward, ridiculously fast.
Sean and I simultaneously sealed the Behoun’s section and sank the delegates into the floor up to their armpits.
Lady Wexyn glided sideways on an intercept course. Amphie raked at her with her new claws. Lady Wexyn caught Amphie’s right wrist with her right hand, jerked her forward, moving with her opponent’s momentum and pulling her arm straight, and twisted the arm elbow up. Amphie gasped. Lady Wexyn drove the heel of her left palm into Amphie’s elbow.
The arm crunched with a dry pop. Amphie cried out.
Lady Wexyn let go of the ruined arm, spun behind Amphie, grabbed her other wrist with both hands, pulled her to the ground, as if Amphie weighed nothing, dropped to one knee, and broke Amphie’s left arm over it. The entire fight was over in two breaths.
“Goddess preserve us,” Karat whispered.
“Kosandion,” Dagorkun said.
Karat nodded.
Oh. Lady Wexyn had echoed Kosandion’s fight with Surkar. Same tactic: grab the wrist, pull the opponent forward, disable the arm. Except she didn’t stop with one arm the way he had done.