Stiletto

by Emma Savant

  “It’s our mission now, huh?” I had whispered.

  He had leaned in and given me another long, lingering kiss before reaching for my hand.

  “I’ll do whatever it takes to protect my pack.” He’d tangled my fingers between his and squeezed, engulfing my hand in his warm strength. “My pack includes your coven. My pack includes you. Whatever it takes.”

  Now, the world seemed to slow. Sienna growled and tightened her back legs, ready to leap and snap me between her giant jaws. Brendan raised the gun again. I took a deep breath and shoved my hand into the inside pocket of my jacket.

  The spool of glittering silver thread looked bright even in this dim hall, and Sienna froze for an instant and fixed her eyes on this new object. Her tail twitched, and the tip of her nose quivered as she tried to identify the incandescent thing in my hand.

  I pulled the needle free from the spool and gripped it tightly. I knew this weapon, in a way that might have come from hours spent stitching in Carnelian’s studios or from the familiar warmth of Grandma’s magic. I held the tiny stinger up, and then, before Sienna could come again for me, I dove toward her.

  She skittered back in surprise, but not before I managed to dive under her heaving chest. I drove the needle into the skin of her front leg as I passed through, the metal slipping through her flesh as easily as if it had a mind of its own.

  This magic knew where I wanted it to go.

  I drove the needle through the skin of her hind leg, too, and somehow, the thread held. The single silver strand hung like spider silk between her huge, hairy limbs, and when I yanked, the thread drew her legs together.

  Brendan was watching me, and now I fixed him with my stare. I raised the needle and threw it to him. It arced through the air, traveling a distance that should have been impossible, and settled between his fingers in a perfect landing.

  “Pull,” I shouted, and I dove away from beneath Sienna.

  Her giant tail whipped down on me as I scrambled under it. I crashed to the floor, and pain jolted through my knees and arms as they hit the stone.

  Brendan tugged on the needle, and slowly, surely, the legs that had been stitched together trembled.

  That inconsequential silver strand shouldn’t have been enough to overcome Sienna’s resistance, and Brendan’s human form shouldn’t have had the strength needed to move such a massive creature. But he dropped his firearm to grasp the thread with both hands, and then he braced himself against the floor and heaved.

  Her legs bucked at his next hard yank and she fell, crushing the bodies unfortunate enough to be lying in the way. Her muscles and fur rippled with the impact as a deep thud echoed through the room.

  Even bound and on her side, this beast was the most dangerous I had ever faced. She wrestled her snarling head up and bit at the thread that connected her to Brendan. Her free paws slashed and tore at the air. Each desperate movement shifted her closer to Brendan, bringing her razor-sharp claws closer and closer to his delicate human skin.

  I wouldn’t make it in time. I knew that as I struggled to my feet. I knew it as I ran toward them. I knew it as I launched myself at Sienna’s writhing back and climbed up the boulder of her body, hand over hand, yanking on handfuls of crimson-tipped fur.

  I crested her wriggling side and reached down for my dagger. My hand found its hilt. I gripped the handle and the heat of my weapon coursed through me.

  Her fiery heartbeat pulsed beneath me. The sharp, warm smells of her fur and blood all around us filled my senses.

  Gravity took me, and I skidded down across her heaving belly. I angled myself as I fell, aiming for the thumping that beat her whole torso like a drum.

  Brendan’s face was white with terror, but still he held his ground, pulling the threads that bound her tight. He looked up at me, and I opened my mouth to apologize, and his lips formed one word: Go.

  I plunged my dagger into the very center of Sienna’s throbbing heartbeat. The blade carved a path, and my fist followed. The muscles of her body clenched around my arm as the weapon drove its way home.

  Sienna screamed, a bloodcurdling sound that seemed capable of collapsing the high ceilings in on us. With one final, desperate lunge, she kicked at Brendan, and her deadly claws tore through him. The tatters of his clothes peeled out in every direction, and dark-red blood spurted across his skin. He let go of the silver thread and jerked abruptly back.

  A scream ripped its way out of my throat, and I shoved the knife the final, fatal inches. Sienna’s great body twitched beneath me, and I twisted the blade deep into the enormous heart muscle that had been keeping her alive.

  She spasmed, thrashed, let out one final, furious whimper, and lay still.

  44

  Silence filled the throne room, and my ears rang with it. I threw myself off Sienna and ran to Brendan, a sob I couldn’t control already fighting its way out of me.

  He wasn’t alone. Alec was there, too, and he had his cousin in his lap. I hadn’t seen Alec come in; I hadn’t seen anything but the mission in front of me. I threw myself to my knees.

  “Bandages,” Alec said.

  The word didn’t mean anything. I could barely hear them over the my heartbeat in my ears. My skin tingled with adrenaline and leftover fear.

  I fumbled for Brendan’s skin. There was a pulse. It was weak, it was faltering, but it was there.

  Goddess, it was there.

  “You pulled him out of the way.”

  “Not fast enough,” Alec said.

  He pulled his shirt off and pressed it into the wounds on Brendan’s chest. Blood seeped through the fabric almost immediately, and Brendan’s closed eyelids twitched slightly before falling slack again in his pale face.

  I ripped my jacket off, too, and held it against the blood-soaked shirt. The lining and leather wouldn’t be enough to absorb the blood, but it might stop the bleeding long enough.

  “You saved him,” I said, as if saying it aloud would somehow cement the truth. “He’s not dead. This is just a wound.”

  “A bad one,” Alec said. He looked up at me, and his hazel eyes seemed to burn in the dim light. “The kids are out. The Waterfall Palace broke through the wards. They’re on their way in.”

  I hadn’t noticed the sound before, not in the middle of everything, but now I could make out the footsteps and voices and occasional soft, shimmering whisper of a faerie spell.

  I pressed my hands to Brendan’s chest and tried to summon a healing enchantment that might knit his skin together long enough for us to get help. The magic coursed through my heart and down my arms, weak and thready and exhausted, barely enough to make even the smallest difference.

  But the smallest difference could be plenty. The inches Alec had given Brendan had saved him from an instant death. My pathetic spell might be enough to save him from a longer one.

  Magic flowed from my fingertips, and I shoved my jacket and the shirt aside and pressed my fingertips into his skin. Blood pooled up between my fingers, and power poured down. Slowly, delicately, his body began to heal.

  It was a weak healing, a tissue-paper fix that would only last until he coughed or breathed too hard, but it would hold him until help arrived.

  “You love him,” Alec said.

  Startled, I looked up. Alec’s hazel eyes were so like Brendan’s, and I couldn’t deny anything in the face of them.

  “I think I do,” I said. “A lot.”

  “Good.” Alec shifted and pulled Brendan farther up onto his lap, supporting his cousin’s shoulders with his knees. He touched a few fingers to Brendan’s throat to check his pulse and left them there, where he’d be able to detect the slightest change. “He needs someone like you.”

  I nodded and went back to the spell, letting the last dregs of my magic suffuse his skin. I rested my head forward on Alec’s shoulder, and he dropped his chin to rest on my head, and we waited like that until the Waterfall Palace guards found their way to the throne room and gently broke us apart.

  The kit
chen was so crammed a Humdrum fire inspector would have fined us for unsafe occupancy levels. Or so Kamala informed us when she arrived, leading a group of the other teenagers who hadn’t been able to resist the noise and laughter emanating from the room. Finally, Rowan brandished a spoon and told us to get out of her kitchen if we wanted cake in the next three hours.

  “She said cake,” Brendan said, grabbing my arm. “We have to go.”

  A few Daggers were drinking wine in the parlor as we passed while the toddlers played at their feet, and Ginger and Cerise were making out behind the coat rack in the foyer outside. The whole house was in a state of exuberance and celebration—all except for Grandma, who had seemed quieter than usual since she and Saffron had gone back to the vampire nest to examine Sienna’s body.

  I felt quiet, too. I also felt elated, and a little stunned, and relieved, and tired, and a hundred other things that jostled for space in my body and especially my heart.

  Cate passed us in the foyer on her way to the crowded parlor. “We’re starting a mini-Orbs game in the basement,” she said. “Still need a few players.” She poked her head into the parlor and repeated the message.

  But we didn’t go to the basement. Instead, Brendan headed for the stairs. He was moving slowly even after all Clancy’s ministrations, and he couldn’t hide the way he winced at every step. Finally, at the top of the first flight, I turned to him.

  “You want a ride?”

  He smirked. “You think you can carry me?”

  “Don’t flatter yourself,” I said. “You’re not that skinny.”

  No one could accuse Brendan of being thin. Even after he’d been stuck in bed on a limited diet for the better part of a week, he was straight muscle and sinew.

  But I was a Dagger.

  I scooped him up like I was trying to carry a bride over a threshold. He was bigger than me, and taller than me, and his legs dangled awkwardly over my arm. But he let me heave him up the next flight of stairs, and the next, until I set him carefully down on his feet outside my bedroom door.

  “You think you can crawl onto the roof?”

  “If I’m following you? You bet.”

  It was nippy outside, but the shingles had been warmed by some unexpected afternoon sunshine. Between the roof, our blankets, and the reliable heat of Brendan’s body, I felt as cozy as I’d been in a lifetime.

  “We did it,” he said.

  I let the words sink in. Even these many days later, it was hard to believe we’d finally come to an end—of the hell the vampires had put those Humdrum and Glimmering children through, of the constant fear that someone might try to steal the Dagger girls away again, of the ever-present threat of Sienna that had clouded our lives for so long.

  “We got final numbers from the palace,” I said. “Seventy. We saved seventy children, who are all receiving the best therapy and healing the Glimmering world can provide. Seventy.”

  There was nothing anyone could say to that, so Brendan didn’t try. He just let out a deep sigh, of relief and of memory, and gazed out across the dark trees and the glittering silver city beyond.

  “It’s all thanks to your pack,” I said. “We couldn’t have done it without your help.”

  “And thanks to your coven,” he said. “We’re a good team.”

  He reached for my hand and held it atop the blanket. Our fingers tangled together, each one falling into place exactly where it belonged.

  <<<<>>>>

  A Note from Emma

  Thanks for reading the Crimson Daggers trilogy! I hope you’ve enjoyed it. If you did, would you mind leaving a review on Amazon or Goodreads?

  My writing world is a busy one right now. I just released a fantasy retelling of Aladdin in a limited-edition box set, and I’m hard at work on a top secret project with some other authors, which we’ll be announcing sometime in the next couple of months. If you want to catch that tea as it’s being spilled, subscribe to my newsletter or join The Glimmering Group on Facebook.

  And as always, thanks for being part of the Glimmering world. ❤️

  Emma

  Also by Emma Savant

  Glimmers of Feye

  Glimmers of Glass

  Glimmers of Scales

  Glimmers of Thorns

  Glimmers of Garlands

  Crimson Daggers

  Dagger

  Sabre

  Expanded Glimmers Universe

  Spinning Into Gold

  Holly North

  Multi-Author Box Sets

  Kingdom of Glass & Ashes: A Limited Edition of Cinderella Retellings

  Kingdom of Sand & Wishes: A Limited Edition of Aladdin Retellings

  To be the first to hear about new Glimmers stories, subscribe to the newsletter or join The Glimmering Group on Facebook

  www.emmasavant.com

  About the Author

  Emma Savant lives with her husband and cat in a small city in California. She loves fairy tales and once took an archery class in the hopes of becoming more Narnian.

  Follow her online and be the first to hear about new Glimmers stories:

  www.emmasavant.com

  emma@emmasavant.com