Chapter 96 Elena Heart- POV
"You know, for half a million gold, you’d think they could hire a better public speaker," a voice echoed from the rafters.
Marcus snapped his head up.
I was sitting cross-legged on the stone archway directly above him, tossing a single platinum ingot from the Royal Treasury casually in my hand. The sea-foam light of my emerald ring cast a predatory glow across my face.
"Who goes there—!"
"The woman who's about to make you unemployed," I interrupted, dropping from the archway.
I didn't need a cheat-skill to kill the momentum; I used the weight of the platinum ingot to smash directly into Marcus's shoulder as I landed, the bone shattering with a satisfying crunch.
He screamed, dropping the heavy blade as I rolled to my feet, my obsidian daggers already unsheathed.
"It’s her! Seize her!" the guards shrieked.
"Xavier, now!" I shouted.
The sky didn't just drop; it shattered.
A localized storm of royal blue lightning arcs rained down from the clouds, precisely striking the mercenary crossbowmen positioned on the walls.
Xavier stepped out from the shadow of the gatehouse, his hands glowing with the devastating, high-tier sorcery of the Drakmor line.
He didn't look like a puppet king; he looked like the God of Storms himself, completely shutting down the perimeter in a single, breathless second.
"Focus on the prisoners!" Xavier roared, his voice cutting through the thunder as he caught a charging mercenary by the throat, channeling a kinetic blast that threw three more back into the mud.
"On it!" I shouted back.
Three guards lunged at the platform to pull the levers. I activated the Void-Anchor.
The emerald ring flashed a violent, deep jade. Instead of swallowing gold, I reversed the vortex. The sheer gravitational pull of the ring didn't pull the men; it pulled their steel.
The swords, the chainmail, the iron buckles of the mercenaries were violently yanked toward my outstretched hand.
The three guards were literally dragged backward by their own breastplates, flying across the platform. With a swift, fluid sequence of slashes, I cut the ropes binding the weavers before the platforms could drop.
"Get to the alleys! The Ravens have the perimeter!" I told the old men, slicing their hand-bindings. They didn't ask questions; they ran.
More mercenaries poured into the square, their eyes wide with a mixture of greed for the bounty and absolute terror of the lightning-wielding giant clearing the field behind me.
I turned back to Marcus, who was crawling through the mud, clutching his broken shoulder. I stepped onto his chest, pinning him down, the tip of my dagger resting right beneath his chin.
"Tell Duke Hallway that I appreciated the invitation," I hissed, leaning down so only he could hear me.
"But if he wants to play with fire, he should make sure his own house isn't made of paper. Tell him the Tyrant King has returned, and his assassin is feeling very, very expensive today."
I kicked him unconscious, turning just in time to see Xavier shatter the last line of defensive shields with a brutal, two-handed downward strike of his broadsword.
The square was ours. The executioners were either dead, unconscious, or fleeing into the rain.
Xavier walked up to the platform, his breath even, though his eyes were still flashing with residual mana. He looked down at the mud, then up at me.
Without a word, he reached up, his large, warm hand cupping the back of my neck to pull me into a hard, breathless kiss right there in the middle of the ruined execution square.
It was fierce, possessive, and tasted of rain and adrenaline. The Celestial Tether between us flared, a bright, blinding combination of blue and gold that lit up the dark afternoon.
"You're reckless," he muttered against my lips, though his grip on my waist was unyielding.
"I'm efficient," I corrected him, leaning into his touch with a breathless laugh. "And we just saved three lives without spending a single coin. I call that a win for the treasury."
He looked at the scattering crowds, then back at the burning smoke of the palace in the distance.
"Come. Hallway will know by now that his trap failed. Let’s go show him what happens when the vipers finally lose their teeth."
The aftermath of our kiss still tingled on my lips, but as we moved through the subterranean aqueducts toward the North Gate, the heat of the watchtower crystallized into ice-cold precision.
The Celestial Tether was humming a violent, symphonic rhythm between our cores. I could feel the thunder building inside Xavier’s chest; he could feel the lethal, coiled tension in my legs.
We split up fifty yards from the exit. He went high into the shadows of the gatehouse scaffolding; I went low into the smoke.
When I dropped from the rafters and crushed Captain Marcus under my boots, the look on his face was worth every ounce of the gold sitting in my ring.
But the "Iron-Sash" mercenaries weren't just common thugs, they were seasoned killers, and the moment they realized the half-a-million-gold bounty was standing in the flesh, the square became a hornets' nest.
"It’s her! The Heart bitch! Kill the old men later, get her head!" a lieutenant screamed, drawing a broadsword that glowed with a toxic, corrosive green aura.
"Honestly, 'bitch'?" I vaulted off Marcus’s groaning body, my obsidian daggers flashing in a lethal arc.
I sheared through the straps of the nearest guard's breastplate, delivering a fierce kick that sent him flying into the execution gallows.
"For a kingdom that prides itself on culture, your vocabulary is incredibly bankrupt. Just like your treasury."
"Seize her!" Three heavy shield-bearers advanced in a synchronized phalanx, locking their iron barriers to trap me against the wooden platform.
"Xavier!" I shouted, dropping to one knee. "The roof is looking a little crowded!"
Above us, the sky didn't just split, it dissolved into a blinding, torrential downpour of royal-blue lightning.
Xavier stepped out onto the highest parapet of the North Gate, his dark cloak billowing around him like the wings of a predatory bird.
His hands were alive with ancient, high-tier sorcery, arcs of plasma dancing between his fingers.
With a brutal downward gesture, he dropped three concentrated lightning strikes directly onto the shield-bearers.
The blast shattered their iron defenses into molten scrap metal and blew the men backward into the mud.