When Vandryss walks into the room it’s all I can do not to stalk right up to her and behead her on the spot. I’ve just gotten so thoroughly sick of all of this shit, I truly don’t care what might happen anymore, I just want this done with, and to never have to look at her hateful smarmy face again. Their plan has gone to hell in spectacular fashion, leaving my friends in a genuinely terrible situation, and she just looks bored. It’s honestly a miracle I don’t kill her right now.
The fact we’re stood at the back of the main upstairs lounge of Hontiresk’s gods-awful gentleman’s club, with more than a few of his fellow idle-rich peers present to witness such an act, is just about the only reason I don’t. As it is I still break away from my position leaning against the impressively tall bookshelf to approach her as she joins us now, my still empty hands itching to commit magnificent violence upon her. Trouble stays where she is for now, still cradling her sword like a mother with her child, trying to ignore the disapproving looks the distinguished highborn gentlemen around us aren’t even trying to hide. She hates this place even more than I do, that much has been clear since the moment we set foot in here, but while the general atmosphere of unnecessary opulence and unrestrained arrogance just makes me ill-tempered, she’s become a good deal more meek.
“Perhaps this isn’t the best place for you to be right now, Mallys.” she sighs as she looks me over, her expression slipping from apathy to irritation now. “You might be better off joining your companions, helping them complete the task you’ve so far spectacularly bungled.”
“Shut up.” I snap at her now, stepping close so I can tower over her as I glare down with all of my enraged intensity. “Your idiotic little enterprise, as you so charmingly call it, has turned into an incredible clusterfuck. You better pray none of my friends end up getting hurt by what you’ve done here, or I really will have to end you on the spot. Regardless of where we are.”
The way she just rolls her eyes as she cranes up at me, like she doesn’t care a single jot about the fact she’s barely more than half my size, is so infuriating that I feel the fire raring up inside me again. “Calm yourself, Mallys, you’re creating a scene. You wouldn’t want your employer’s business being aired in public now, would you?”
“It already is, you stupid cunt. The Playhouse is burning down. As soon as the Authority find out what you idiots have been doing down there in the catacombs, there’s going to be absolute uproar. There won’t be any covering this up any more, it’s already out there for anyone to see. In a few hours you’ll be done in Untermer.”
“Calm yourself, Mistress Mallys.” Hontiresk produces a cigar from somewhere inside his robes and starts rolling it between the fingers of his right hand while his left starts rummaging through the various layers of rich grey silk and linen draped over him. He’s sat there in that ridiculously opulent soft leather armchair like he doesn’t have a care in the world, sniffing the expensively rolled tobacco, looking almost as bored by all of this as Vandryss. “The Oceanic has been insured for centuries, and this … unfortunate incident is clearly no fault of mine. I stand to be recompensed significantly more capital than the entire business is even worth. I can rebuild it finer than it already was and still pocket a substantial profit on top of it.” He finally finds the silver cutter he’s been searching for and snips the tapered end of the cigar with swift efficiency. “Perhaps I should invest it in some form of expansion. What do you think I should try?”
Gubal doesn’t even have to move from where he’s been stood the whole time since we first arrived after we all arrived here together from the Playhouse via swift private carriage, he simply leans over the back left corner of his master’s chair as he strikes a match. Hontiresk doesn’t even glance in his direction, simply turning his head just enough to meet the flame with the cigar he plants between his lips. Their complimentary actions unfold with such startling precision it’s clear they’ve done this a thousand times before.
“I don’t fucking know, your world is burning down around you and you don’t even seem to care.” I completely fail to keep the frustrated sarcasm out of my voice as I step away from her so I can regard him more directly. “I’d suggest you buy yourself a one-way ticket to the Isles of Gedouhan on the fastest clipper you can charter, but I suspect you wouldn’t listen to that advice.”
When he looks up at me with a slightly raised eyebrow, the way his face tightens mid-puff is the first real show of any actual acknowledgement of inconvenience he’s shown all night. Even when we were obliged to flee at Tavarrat’s insistence once he contacted her with our warning via a strangely coloured stone he produced from one of his well-concealed pockets, he remained so unreasonably calm it was all I could do not to shake him. It doesn’t feel very much like the victory I would have preferred. “I really don’t see what you –”
“Gods, this has become exhausting. I’ve always credited you with far more intelligence than you’re currently displaying, it’s like you’re being wilfully dense. She’s fucked you and you don’t even seem to see it. If you had any sense left you would have cut loose of her and her dark, dangerous friends the moment she had that Silver Order wizard kidnapped, and certainly before you called on me and mine to murder a dozen or so people to cover up the mess she’s made.”
His eyes flicker around the room to check his surrounding peers, far enough away they might not have caught my every word even though I’m not making any effort to control my volume, but close enough for my words to carry to them all the same. This admittedly tall, expansive room has been suitably muffled by the well-laden bookshelves lining all the walls and the thick carpets underfoot and richly upholstered furniture, but even so there are more than enough pairs of eyes still trained on our group.
“Have a care, Dramrath. I’d have you remember –”
“Oh stick it, Refick. You may have bought me and mine for a pretty sum for the duration of our transaction but you haven’t bought my silence. You’ve been an incredible fool letting this … woman involve you in one of the most heinous horror-shows I’ve ever had the misfortune to witness, and it’s finally snapped back to bite her in the face, and you with her. For someone I’ve always considered to be significantly more intelligent than your father you really have proven very stupid in your judgement since I’ve been gone.”
Vandryss glides past me now, still moving with unnervingly silent ease across the rich, thick carpet to the substantial wet bar set against the side wall. Tavarrat’s already there, nursing a glass of what I suspect is just water that I don’t think she’s actually touched yet. She has her staff propped casually against her shoulder as she leans against it, still watching the floor very much as she’s been doing since she preceded Vandryss into the room and took up her silent position. Now she looks up for the first time, giving her colleague a wary sidelong glance that the smaller woman largely ignores as she collects a tumbler and immediately fills it from a decanter without even bothering to consider her selection.
Something about it has the shorthairs at the back of my neck bristling, it just feels wrong. Again my hands start to itch, and I shoot Trouble a wary look, finding she’s already watching them both with narrowed eyes and a tight jaw. Hontiresk, meanwhile, is frowning down at his expertly manicured nails as he takes a hefty pull on his cigar, his mood clearly thoroughly ruined now.
“My business with Mistress Vandryss, along with those she represents, remains my business, not yours. I would again prefer to remind you that I hired you for a very specific task, one which has only the most tangential bearing on any other business I may have at this time. I will, however, state that your continued failure to complete said task has created the circumstances which have made this current inconvenience possible, and so –”
“Oh please, this whole shitshow’s been entirely inevitable ever since you first let her move those people out of that warehouse on First Point and stash them underneath your big fancy theatre. Honestly, I’m surprised she hadn’t already worked out that was going to happen ahead of time, it seems painfully obvious with hindsight.” I turn to her now, giving her a suitably sharp glare. “Or perhaps you did. You do seem the type who likely got a sadistic thrill out of setting your own business partner up to take the fall for your shady dealings.”
Knocking back the contents of her glass in one single swallow, Vandryss gives me such a bland look it almost feels like sarcasm. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean, Mallys. I’m as surprised by this unfortunately turn of events as your employer.”
Rolling my eyes as I turn back to Hontiresk, I let out a weary sigh as I take a step away, starting to sidestep towards Trouble now. I’ve a mind to just leave them both to it now, I’ve definitely had enough of her for one night. “You would do well to cut her loose, Refick. All she is now is a threat, there are no more business opportunities to be had in her company. Honestly, I’m surprised she hasn’t murdered you already.”
This makes him frown a little deeper as he gives me a cool sidelong glance. “Whatever are you prattling on about?”
Vandryss is watching me too, putting her glass down behind her on the bar without even looking as she starts to move towards us again, her face becoming a good deal more neutral now. “Careful now.” she purrs, and while she says it in a particularly matter-of-fact way, I can sense a cold threat in her words all the same.
Through the corner of my eye I see Gubal stiffen, his eyes narrowing as he looks from me to her, and back again. I see his hand shift to the hilt of his sword now as he senses the same threat I do.
“You’re no longer a viable business partner to her. Her precious enterprise has entirely collapsed here in Untermer now. I told you, before the end of the night the Authority will know exactly what’s been going on at the Playhouse, behind closed doors, and they’ll be looking at your other concerns too. Everything you’ve been trying to keep off the books, intentionally buried from their prying eyes, either through bribes or obfuscation, it’ll be dug up and used to hang you. But I suspect she’ll have had you butchered in your sleep long before that, likely having made it look like it was just some business rival or perhaps even some cleverly constructed accident or a particularly embarrassing botched suicide. Whatever this may be, she’ll make sure none of it can be traced back to her.”
Cocking her head, Vandryss regards me for a long beat, unmoving now. Hontiresk’s watching her with a very wary look on his face now, growing increasingly uncomfortable as he seems to finally consider my words. Far too late now, I can’t help thinking. I really don’t know what he could actually do now to change any of this in his favour. At this point his only hope would be that swift shipboard escape I just suggested.
Finally she sighs, shifting her feet a little as she just shrugs. “Well, aren’t you the observant one? I’ll have to come up with a better use for you after this.”
That makes me frown as a genuinely icy chill rides up my spine, I don’t like the implication in what she just said at all. Meanwhile Hontiresk turns to look up at me, his eyes slowly widening as something seems to dawn on him, and he opens his mouth to speak.
In the same instant she moves, very nearly faster than I can actually catch, certainly quicker than I could realistically react to. Her sword’s left its sheath before I’ve quite registered it, and she’s completed her savage, sweeping stroke long before he actually realises what’s just happened. It certainly happens so fast that there’s almost no blood, just the finest cut slowly seeming to open up across his throat.
He manages to blink twice in genuine surprise, a small trickle of blood starting to run down from the corner of his mouth, before his head rolls off his neck with a surprising lack of ceremony. Now the blood comes, a surprisingly lively jet of it spurting up in a tall jet from the stump, painting half of his surroundings with the first scattering of fine red droplets, then the second. Gubal’s so startled that he’s caught twice in the pump of that severed pulse before he finally reacts, stumbling back against the bookshelves behind him in wide-eyed shock as his grip tightens on the hilt of his sword. Still conspicuously sheathed at his side …
My eyes shoot to Vandryss as she gives her sword an almost casual swipe off to the side in order to shake loose the very few drops of blood that actually stain the blade, but her eyes are scanning the rest of the room instead. Taking in the reactions of the uniformly startled bystanders around us. “Mistress Mallys, if you want your people to survive another night beyond this one, I would suggest you follow my lead and kill that impressive orc bodyguard before he’s regained his senses. Am I understood?”
Just as I’m about to ask what she even means by that she jumps up onto the couch directly behind her, using it as a springboard to launch into the centre of the room, where she cuts down two of the nobles while they’re still rising. This is enough to break the trance of those who are still just stood by watching or not yet risen from their seats, each of them going from stunned surprise to abject terror in a blink. Then Tavaratt suddenly materialises at the far end of the room, just inside the entrance, swinging her staff to strike the first one to make it that far. He folds instantly, but the strike itself knocks him aside with significantly more force than it has any right to, a bright, flashing crack resounding across the room as he’s blasted a good ten feet into the wall. The bookshelf he’s hurled into explodes in a great avalanche of displaced books, but even this can’t hide the splash of freshly shed blood as he’s broken on impact.
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I turn back to face Gubal then, and he hasn’t moved, still looking down at the headless corpse of his master as the severed stump gives one last, far more half-hearted little spurt to indicate that that’s definitely it for one of the most powerful men in the city. It takes me another moment to muster enough focus just to squeeze out the word: “Fuck …”
Slowly Gubal’s amber eyes rise to meet mine … and as they narrow their irises immediately start to grow darker. His fingers tighten around the hilt of his sword as his other hand goes to the scabbard, taking a firm grip of its own, and that cold weight that’s settled in my stomach feels like it’s just dropping right out of me as I feel the rush of adrenaline hit my system and I react.
We both move at the same time, Gubal drawing his sword and starting to shift around the chair still inhabited by his boss’ dead body. I don’t give him a chance to work his way into clear space to attack me, rushing forward to kick the chair hard with full force, launching it with surprising ease across the carpet so it takes the orc’s legs out from under him. He stumbles and starts to drop, but manages to catch himself enough at least that he halfway sprawls over the corpse, and I have to jump back to avoid his bastard sword’s sweeping blade as he swings it outwards to warn me off.
Shoving himself off the body, he stumbles away from the chair and gives his sword another wild swipe to keep me from trying to take advantage of his further distraction, but I’m just keeping a wide berth as I draw my own, backing up as I start to circle him. I catch sight of Trouble, who’s now finally shaken off her own shock, drawing her sword and dumping the sheath as she works her way around behind him, clearly looking for a chance to attack with that oversized blade. I catch her eye and wave her down, hoping she can read well enough that I want her to just back off, I can’t risk her complicating this further right now. It’s bad enough I have to do this right now, knowing full well that Vandryss would follow through on her threat in a heartbeat if she felt sufficiently obliged.
Gubal’s eyes meet mine again as he finally settles himself enough to take up a ready guard. The rational part of my mind is trying to come up with some way to word an apology, a plea, something to make it clear that I really don’t want to do this, that it’d be easier if he just ran away and tried his best to just get past Vandryss and her pet wizard. Perhaps find a fast way out of the city, like the fast ship I suggested to Hontiresk. But I know that’s not going to work, there’s no chance he’d listen to me anyway. His blood’s all the way up, his eyes are indicator enough, and even if I could make him listen I’m not sure Vandryss would really go along with it. I’m as stuck with this as I’ve been with everything else we’ve had to do so far, she’s put me in another impossible position and this time I even saw it coming …
For a long beat nothing happens, he just watches me while I watch him right back, trying hard to ignore the chaos unfolding behind him as Vandryss and Tavarrat wipe out the remainder of the room’s occupants. That being said, right now they’re already starting to make their way outside to start mopping up the rest of the building. Given that we’re on the second floor I can only imagine there’s going to be a lot more murder laid at their feet before we’re done with this. It’s enough to make my skin crawl as I edge a little to the left, looking to open a little more space between us while I adjust my grip on my sword.
His lunge comes fast, his footwork impressively accomplished, jabbing at me with surprising agility and clear educated skill I’ve rarely seen in a full-blooded orc. If I hadn’t been taught so relentlessly by my own tutors when I was young he might have killed me on the spot with his opening move, but I simply turn it aside while sidestepping and dancing to his right. While he’s adjusting I respond with a swift and merciless flurry of deft cuts on his open side, and he jumps back again, eyes widening, startled now by the speed of my own blows.
Making a feint to the left that I’m not even remotely surprised that he spots, I spring to his right and slash down from on high, aiming to cut him down but simply pressing him back again, and there’s a moment I think I might catch him out. Instead he sidesteps the couch behind him I’d been hoping to trip him up over, once again warding me back with a wild swipe before he lashes out with his foot and kicks this piece of furniture aside too. Opening up a little more space for us to manoeuvre in, although the way he does it still smells like well-hidden desperation. I’ve got him worried now, I can tell, he’s worked out that I’m the better fighter and he’s not sure he can survive this.
Sidestepping again, I circle again the best I can, hoping to turn him around again so I can perhaps work him back into the wall instead, or maybe get some more of the disturbed seating behind him. But he catches me too soon, skipping the other way before pressing me instead, and I have to lean onto my backfoot to keep from getting forced back myself as I parry his still skilful attack. Turning the latest cut aside I respond in kind, pushing forward on light feet while I swipe back with speedy strokes that he starts to struggle to turn away as well as he works to just keep his own footing. This time when I feint he doesn’t catch it so quickly, almost responding to the trick so that when I turn and thrust at his exposed belly he stumbles aside more clumsily.
This time when he tries to keep me beyond arm’s length with another wild slash I instead step into it and counter with my own parrying strike, and as I batter his sword aside with a great ringing buzz it opens him up just right. While he desperately plants his feet, trying not to trip himself up while his arm goes halfway numb from the rattled shock, I simply step into the sudden gap in his defences and turn my sword round and down in mid swing. I time the slash to perfection, opening his throat right across in a swift diagonal cut.
There’s a moment when Gubal staggers back, fighting to keep his feet under him, that I think he might just go down right here, as he tries to pull in a breath and instead simply produces a hollow, uncomfortably wet sucking sound from his severed trachea. He shuffles back on unsteady legs, still battling to keep upright, and when he raises his sword between us to keep me at a distance his hand shakes … but he manages to stays up as he presses his empty hand to his gushing throat and squeezes, glaring at me with hot, still clear eyes. He tries to speak now, but only produces an ugly rasp.
For a single beat, I almost attack him after all, ready to bash his sword aside and just rush him, hoping to cut him down with a last, forceful two-handed slash up through his torso. But it just seems too brutal, an ugly, graceless way to end a fight I’d rather not be having in the first place … which I realise too late is a mistake as he rushes me instead.
He charges on still clumsy legs, but he’s got desperate speed in his feet now as he comes like a furious bull, winding up an underhand swipe that I barely manage to parry in time, and as I turn it aside he keeps on coming. I’m wide open when he ploughs into me, turning just enough to hit me shoulder first, and I barely manage to plant my feet in time to try and bear the brunt of the hit and maybe keep my feet. The impact is hard, he nearly takes me down as I instead throw him aside, and as I stumble aside I fumble my sword, which clatters to the floor and spins away across the carpet. Leaving me momentarily unarmed, which should be all he needs.
Gubal’s a dead man, he knows it as much as I do, but he’s not about to just lie down and let it happen. He’s an orc through and through, I’ve not known many purebloods in my time but enough to understand they probably really are Thorin’s favoured race, and he smiles on them brightest when they’re facing death. He wants to go out like a true warrior, with his sword in his hand and blood on its blade, preferably taking someone with him. Right now his only opponent is me.
Only wavering for a moment before he rights himself, he’s already coming when I settle my feet again, now unarmed with a substantial length of strong, sharp steel rushing to meet me. My hand itches to draw one of my knives, but I hold back, knowing it won’t be enough to fight back in this moment … so I do the only thing I can think of in the slim time I have available, shifting my feet as he comes in and twisting aside at the same time I bring my hands up. Gubal doesn’t recover in time to stop me when I grapple his wrists, but there’s still enough strength in him as I give his arms a good twist that he fights me on it, even as his life’s blood keeps gushing from the ruin of his neck.
There’s a genuinely worrying moment, when our eyes meet and I see the fire still hot in his blood-red eyes and he holds fast against my own sorely pressed muscles, that I think there might still be too much strength in him for me to beat. He bares his teeth and growls in my face, but nothing like the powerful, rumbling thunder I would have expected comes out, it’s barely a rattle. And now the steel in his limbs is jut starting to ebb, slowly I feel it slipping inside of him, and I twist a little harder, putting the very last ounce of my own power into it now … and he finally gives.
As I wrench his sword from his fingers, his grip barely slipping but still enough for me to drag the sword away and pull back into a low, primed crouch with my thighs coiled tight, he staggers back a few steps, knees starting to wobble now. I can see his legs beginning to give out under him as the blood that’s been steadily soaking through his clothes finally reaches his knees, but even now there’s still a little fight left in him now. I’ve disarmed him but he’s just as determined to go down fighting, slipping a knife free from behind his back that he brandishes with a shaky hand.
Oh Thorin … at least he goes out with a blade in his hand. I draw back low and tight as I can and spring at him now, charging forward with full force with the sword thrust in a firm two-handed grip, and power it in a hard upward angle through the centre of his torso. As the blade runs him through with little real resistance I keep moving forward, letting a harsh, gritted snarl go as I force him back across the carpet and keep on going until I finally meet something genuinely solid.
When we meet the back wall I thrust harder with my last reserve of strength, driving the blade as deep as I can into the wood panelling while a battering cascade of disturbed books rains down over and around us. It’s enough of a pummelling I’m forced to stumble back, but Gubal stays where he is, stuck fast by his own sword.
For several long moments I stand there, rubbing at a sore spot on my wrist where a strike from a particularly hefty volume’s raising what I don’t doubt will be a mighty bruise, watching the last books thump down while he hangs where I’ve left him. His feet are almost flat on the floor, he’s tall enough to reach at least, but even so the sword’s the only thing keeping him up now, what’s left of his blood gushing around the blade driven clean through him just below his heart. His chest’s still heaving, even with his throat cut his lungs are still dragging some air down through his ruined windpipe, but there’s less point to the process by the second as his blood pools underneath him, turning all that paper red. There’s a woeful, savage beauty in a death like this, I realise, but it doesn’t hurt any less being the cause of it.
He still has the knife in his hand trapped in what’s fast becoming a death grip, but there’s no strength left in him now to raise the arm now, so it just dangles at his side. But he’s still in there, his eyes blinking but still just about managing to focus enough to meet mine, and they’re that striking yellowed amber colour again, as much because of his calm returning as the loss of so much blood. He opens his mouth now, but as before nothing comes out, his voice comprehensively lost now thanks to my handiwork. But I understand the sentiment he wants to convey clear enough.
“Trouble?” I barely manage to get her name out now, my own voice cracking badly as I speak, my throat very thick while my eyes are hot with the threat of tears. “Are you … can you do something for him?”
“But … I don’t understand …” She steps closer, gripping her sword two-handed as she had before, but held low now, no real intention left in her. Her eyes are wide as they shift from taking in the dying orc stuck to the wall like a pinned moth to searching my face, and she looks as desperately sad as I feel. “I thought … you’ve killed him. I thought … was that not the plan?”
“No … damn it, Trouble, he’s going to die. Can you help him? Please?”
She’s another moment finally understanding, then she raises her offhand to her mouth as she gasps. “Oh … oh gods, yes. Of course, you’re right … I’m sorry …” She springs forward and rushes to him now, turning her sword around as she goes to hold it underhand now. She stops in front of Gubal and pauses for a moment, unsure again, before taking a breath and seeming to steel herself before offering up her free hand to him. “Forgive me.”
He watches her for a beat, eyes starting to turn glassy but seeing enough to catch her meaning, and when she reaches forward and starts to take his free hand he lets her interlace her fingers with his. She raises her sword now and presses the hilt to her chest as she bows her head, taking another breath to start praying.
“My blessed Lady, I know you are not the god this man would pray to in his final moments, but I ask you to look kindly upon him all the same. Help him to the place he wishes to go, send him off with your blessing and your mercy, let him go fast and with all the righteous glory he deserves for such a brave and heroic death. Should the Stormlord’s Valkyries arrive in time to collect him please guide them sure and true to his side, and tell them how proud Thorin should be of the latest recruit in His Immortal Army. Please hear Your Servant, Your wondrous dark Majesty, and know my words are true. Amen.”
The sound that Gubal produces here is more of a weak, wet wheeze than a true last breath, but as his chest deflates one last time and remains still after his head sags down on the ruin of his neck, his fingers finally go slack and the knife falls. It bounces a few times over the sodden books surrounding him before finally clattering away across the carpet, and after that the room grows silent again.
While Trouble lets out a slow, weary sigh and extricates her fingers from the orc’s now limp hand, I turn around and plod away, starting to feel every moment of the fight I’ve just had and the rest of the night besides. The unfulfilled duel with Kesla Shoon and my subsequent desperate escape from falling to several broken bones on the burning stage, and of course narrowly avoiding a very lethal trampling from that monstrous golem … gods, I’ve definitely been right through it tonight. Finally locating my sword again, I take a moment to step close to one of the nobles Vandryss cut down and drop into a crouch beside them, taking a deep breath so I can hold it when I lean in to grab a handful of their robes in order to wipe my blade clean enough to sheathe. Desperate not to breathe in the stink of all the blood that’s been spilled around me while I’ve been trapped in another fight I would much rather not have had to start at all, let alone win.
Even so, once I’ve got my sword safe in its scabbard again I stay where I am, just putting my hand to my face instead as I start breathing again, looking up slowly to take in the wreckage. My gorge start to rise, slowly but with growing enthusiasm, and it takes all I have to tamp it back down, desperate not to vomit right now. It’s hard enough, what I see now makes me sick to my stomach.
Then I feel Trouble’s gentle hand rest on my shoulder and I lower my hands, taking a deep breath in through my mouth and lowering my head, finally swiping my hand across my eyes while I inhale deep anyway just to clear out my nostrils, smell be damned. She squeezes, working to reassure me now, but it really doesn’t help as I sigh heavier than I’ve done all night, finally looking up again as I start to push myself upright again. “Fuck … I really didn’t want to do that.”
“I know.” She steps back now to give me some room. “She didn’t give you a choice. It was kill him, or … well, it sounded like something awful, really.”
“No. I won’t let her do anything to harm you, Trouble. Not any of you. I’ll kill her first.”
“What … what they hell have they done?” When I turn to her now she’s looking around with wide, haunted eyes, cradling her now sheathed sword very much as she did when we first arrived.
“Something monstrous. Again.” I step close and rest my hand against her cheek, trying to sound soothing as I pull her into a hug. Looking back at Gubal now, still stuck fast at the back of the room, and hate myself for letting any of this happen.
Gods, I hope the others are all right. I need one thing to go right tonight after all this unpleasantness. Right now I’d be happy enough just seeing Kuth smile at me again, make a joke, make me feel better about things. I need to get out of here, I need to sleep. Maybe even to get well fucked again in the morning, but in truth after this night I’d settle just for him to hold me …