Page 45 of Hollow Court

Gwyn severed the binds on his hands just in time for him to slump forward. His body was racked with a violent tremor, then another until he was seizing.

“Hold him down,” I all but yelled.

She anchored her hands at his shoulders, and I started on chest compressions, already knowing they wouldn’t save him. This was what I got for splitting away from Gallagher.

Then again, if I hadn’t, Galina would be dead.

And now I was put in the infuriating position of trying to save the man who would have killed her.

“Damn it,” I cursed, just as foam bubbled forth from his lips.

It was pink at first, fading into a deep crimson until it turned black. Veins burst in his eyes, a deep purple that spiderwebbed down his face into his chest.

Then he was still.

I sat back, checking automatically for the pulse I knew I wouldn’t find.

Gwyn let loose a string of curses that made mine look mild by comparison, then silence fell. We stared at each other, trying to comprehend what the hell had just happened.

I wasn’t sad to witness the demise of the man who had tried to kill a defenseless woman in her bed, but any hope we had of finding answers had followed him in death.

Which, I suspected, had been the point.

I ran my hands through my hair, repeating every moment of our interaction in my head, playing it all out again and again, wondering what I might have missed.

He had poisoned himself—unless someone else had poisoned him, but that seemed unlikely. There had been a crack. Was he carrying poison in his mouth somehow? A glass vial?

I couldn’t very well go poking around where he might have a deadly poison, but perhaps the village healer could tell us something.

Faintly, I registered Gwyn saying my name.

“Davin,” she said again, more firmly.

I followed her gaze to the assassin’s chest. His shirt had come loose at the laces, falling to the side and revealing more inky veins that stood out in contrast against his pale skin.

But that’s not what she was staring at.

There, branded into the skin above his heart, was the image of a snake coiled around a broken crown.

It surely wasn’t a coincidence.

The rebels until now had been disorganized, disgruntled, and as susceptible to bribes or corruption as anyone else. But this one was willing to have their cause branded into his skin. Not only willing to kill for what he believed in, but willing to die for it.

If they were all like this, we had a problem, because what they apparently believed in was the end of my family’s reign.

By any means necessary.

SEVENTEEN

Galina

A knockon the door startled me from my deep sleep, and I sat up with a gasp.

Was I in the guest rooms at Castle Wolf? Was the maid here to fetch me for breakfast with Alexei? Blinding panic overtook me when I realized I might be late, might be less presentable, might be anything that would give him cause to be upset with me.

I shot out of the overly plush bed before my eyes were even fully open, stopping short at the feel of the polished wood floor beneath my feet where there should have been a bear skin rug.

Belatedly, I registered the light that stabbed at the back of my eyelids, more than the heavy drapes at Wolf would have allowed.