Chapter 57: Chapter Fifty Seven: Intoxicating Hate

Carnen’s heart was pounding with furious adrenaline, as Aya made her entrance to wreak havoc on all of Clara’s plans. He would not be pricked by her poisons this time. He would not lose hold of his temper or fight too wildly and let her past his guard.

Even though a part of him wanted her to catch him again and wrap her legs around his torso. He wanted to feel her back against him on the floor, but that was a far more dangerous struggle than this dance of blades and footwork. She had dared attack Clara, and the band of rebels she had no doubt directed to storm this church had killed dozens of his men already, so Carnen was going to kill her this day.

He was holding back nothing and trying his hardest to kill her, yet she seemed nothing but thrilled by his efforts. Those dark eyes were flaming with excitement, those full lips twisted in a tight and bitter grin, parting only in quick gasps of exertion and strain. Strands of hair were flying free of their tightly twisted braid. A swing of his sword missed her nose by the merest finger of distance, and three of those hairs fell in severed strands of glittering gold right to the floor of the chapel.

She was incredible, so agile and alive... She was the most beautiful creature that he had ever laid eyes on, and she would never leave his thoughts. She would stay with him forever, his enemy to destroy and his poison to indulge in.

And how dare some foreign stranger be cutting into their dance, battering aside Carnen’s sword and placing himself out in front of her so protectively with the infuriating words, “Leave him to me, my love, and I will unman him soundly to prove all I earlier promised.”

“Your love?” Carnen could not keep the outrage from his tone, and his sword moved without hesitance to put an end to this pest.

Aya stood to the side of their conflict, staring on in cynical disbelief. “Are the two of you seriously about to duel to the death for my hand?”

The stranger gave some flowery swear, and Carnen drowned him out with furious denial. “Of course not!” He did not want Aya, and he was not fighting to claim her. He was fighting to kill her, and “Who even are you?” This fair-faced fool from Arakesh who had so suddenly declared his love for the little viper.

He was Arakesh nobility as it turned out, but Carnen could hardly focus on that introduction, because the rapid strokes of that puny, curved sword were darting so rapidly around his own guard, leaving a dozen stinging cuts in an instant. They were all minor wounds however. Even the bullet that had caught him in the arm earlier from Captain Banen and his rebels was just a graze. Carnen could block out the pain and ignore the steady blood loss and put an end to his enemy with ease the second he slowed or misstepped. He was far stronger than his opponent, and if he could land a single stroke with his broadsword, it would cleave this tiny, unarmored ponce in two.

The man was annoying fast though, just as fast as Aya herself, and he dodged and spun and kept dealing his little cuts for a solid five minutes.

Carnen’s savage swings were the ones losing energy now and slowing, but he felt no fear, only rage. He cleaved apart a wooden bench in the place Kareem had been crouched just a breath before, and that most fatal mistake, getting his blade stuck in the wood, left him completely vulnerable to that scimitar whipping down over his neck. He heaved upward in a shower of splinters, but he would never raise his guard in time to batter aside that blade.

Charlotte was crying out and racing toward them now, pleading with Kareem to stop, though her cries fell on deaf ears. Carnen lurched away and felt himself dropping to the floor, dropping to avoid his end, just a fraction of a second longer, but dropping also, because there was a needle in his neck and the sensation was already bleeding out from his limbs.

Aya had come up behind him, and she was stood right over him now, battering aside Kareem’s most deadly swing toward his already downed target. “He’s finished. Now we need to get Charlotte out of here,” she declared, eyes flickering to a bleeding Captain Banen and his decimated troops.

The northern knights had most solidly beaten the rebels, and they were already turning now to deal with Aya and Kareem. The panicking Stalis lords still cowering in the corners of this chapel would be of no help to them, so they most certainly needed to make their retreat from this ruined church.

“I promised to cut off his head, cali,” Kareem protested, eyeing ‘his woman’ in unhappy judgment.

“Who the hell is Cali?” Carnen slurred. He had yanked out Aya’s needle the instant he felt it in there, and the small does of sedative was now taking its time in dragging him under, as he fought with every inch of his willpower to keep focus and resist.

He lurched up toward the assassin, seizing hold of her wrist. “Is that your real name?” he demanded. He knew nothing about her after all. She was all lies and deadly secrets, most beautiful, thrilling secrets... “However many names you have, I’ll kill them… kill them all. For… Faust.”

His hand dropped from her wrist without her even needing to pull away, and he found himself face first on the floor.

Aya turned her back most callously and deserted him, as his armored knights all rushed to the side of their fallen prince. She had found a new lover, and she no longer had need of him. She had moved on from his memory, but the memory of her was such a deep-rooted infection for him that it could never be cured.

She should have just cut his throat instead of saving his life yet again. Her mercy was infuriating, doing nothing but prolong his suffering. He would wake from this poison and he would pursue her to the ends of the earth if he had to. The only thing that could free him of this misery was when one of them lie dead.