I curled into a ball around my saber, plunging into the water. I’d had Slayer since I was five. Voron gave it to me. I had slept with it under my bed almost every night for the past twenty-two years. Slayer was a part of me and now it was broken. Broken in half. It felt like someone had cut my arm off and it just kept hurting and hurting.

I would kill him. It wasn’t an “if.” It was a “when.”

He broke Slayer.

Above me someone else was falling down, through the grate, and into the water. I choked and swam up. A moment later and Ghastek surfaced next to me with a gasp. He splashed around in panic. I gave him room. About ten seconds later, he stopped thrashing and stared at me.

“It was that water. It marked us and made us vulnerable to d’Ambray’s magic.”

“Yes. Hugh must have bribed one of my people. Or blackmailed them. Or threatened.”

It was Jennifer. It had to be, and if that was the case, Hugh wouldn’t have had to threaten very hard. She must’ve sat there with that bottle in her hands and tried to scrape enough courage together to throw it on me. She couldn’t.

This would not break me. My sword might snap, but I couldn’t. I would win. I would get out of here. I would live. I would see the people I loved again.

This wasn’t my first rodeo. I slipped into a quiet, cold calm. Voron’s voice murmured from my memory and I leaned on it like a crutch. “Exits first.”

“Yes. I remember.”

I bent in the water, trying to slide what was left of my sword into the sheath while staying afloat. I missed.

I fucking missed. I hadn’t missed in two decades.

“You were the target,” Ghastek said. “I’m an unfortunate bystander.”

“It looks like that.” I finally managed to slip Slayer’s stump into the sheath.

“Where are we?”

“I have no idea.”

“He knew we would be teleported here. He knew, and he did nothing to stop my teleportation,” Ghastek said.

“It appears d’Ambray believes you’re expendable.”

Ghastek looked at me for a long moment. A muscle in his face jerked. With a guttural snarl, Ghastek punched the water. “That’s it. That’s fucking it!”

Uh-oh. In all the time I’d interacted with Ghastek, he never swore. Ever. The “premier” Master of the Dead was about to throw a tantrum. I braced myself.

“He comes into my city, he throws away my people, he orders me around like I’m his servant and now this? How dare he!”

I sighed. “How dare he!” came out. Could “Does he know who I am?” be far behind?