Daggers, as it turns out, are different from regular knives.
I realise this as the tip fills my vision. Cutting the air. Dropping fast.
Straight for the space between my eyes.
Fuck.
Then something cracks into bone. Into the back of his skull.
"Get away from him!"
The blade jerks off course. But not clean. It skims down my face, misses my nose by a breath, then bites into my chest.
It burns. Scorching through the gash.
Then the blade's gone.
My body moves before I can think. My hands reach for my chest and come back red. Blood.
She comes out of the dark with a blood-slick vase and swings again. It connects. Hard.
The man reels—dagger still in his hand—then drops.
Blood splatters. It pelts my face. Still burning with life.
The vase rises again.
He's faster.
He knocks it from her hands with a backhand. Then grabs her arm. Yanks her down.
She fights—
He slams her back into a table leg.
She screams as she drops.
"Heylel—run!"
For me.
Wheezes come out of her. "Heylel—" The hit had taken her breath.
I turn to the brightest light. It bleeds through the half-open door.
An easy escape. The man is too disoriented to chase. So I toss away the silky quilts and roll off the bed.
"Die, bitch!"
I look back. He's over her. His dagger at her neck as her hands desperately hold it there. An inch more and she will bleed.
"Heylel—run!"
He tried to kill me.
I can kill him.
Scanning the room, I see swords on the wall, too far. A ceramic vase on my bedside. That'll do.
I grab it by the handles.
But it is heavy.
God damn it. Letting go of the handles, I wrap my arms around the base and, with my whole body, struggle to pull it off the table. Its curve doesn't help. But the golden leafing gives me friction.
I pull it up. She sees me. Eyes widening. Mouth opening—
"No!"
Just shut up.
I walk behind the man.
And raise the vase.
I shake. My body can barely hold the weight. Why?
His hair is matted with blood where she struck him.
Then bring it down.
Exactly where she did.
Edge first.
The vase cracks against his skull with a hollow, sickening crunch.
———
——
—
That terrible crack echoed above her, followed instantly by a sudden, heavy shower of blood.
Mydra flinched, bracing for the end, but the promised death never came.
The dagger aimed at her nape slipped from a loosened grip, and the wielder collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut.
None of that mattered. Frantic, she rolled him away, ignoring the fierce, dull ache screaming in her back. She scrambled up, desperate for the sight of her boy.
And found his eyes.
Her brown drowned in his black. The utter stillness of them. She didn't see.
Only her child.
And threw her arms around him.
She held him. A desperate, trembling grip.
Then came the footsteps.
A flurry of them, heavy on the floorboards, rushing down the hall. Voices overlapping in the corridor, panicked and breathless. The half-open door was shoved wide, and the sudden, harsh flare of lantern light broke the dark of the bedroom.
Gasps snagged in the doorway.
Three servants stood frozen at the threshold.
The warm, yellow light washed over the nightmare: the ruined silk quilts, the gleaming pool of red seeping into the wood, the dead man with his skull caved in.
Mydra, kneeling in the center of the slaughter, covered in blood, clutching her son.
"My Lady..." one of the maids whispered, her hands flying to her mouth. Her eyes darted from the corpse, to Mydra, and finally to the bloody ceramic shards at Heylel's feet.
Mydra tightened her grip, pulling Heylel closer, pressing his face deep into the crook of her neck.
She buried him in her hair and the fabric of her ruined clothes, shielding him from the gore.
"Don't just stand there!" Mydra's voice cracked. It was raw, harsh, and unrecognizable to her own ears. She glared at the servants, daring them to look too closely at the boy in her arms.
"Fetch the guards! Now!"
[A/N: Just a pilot. Will continue if interest expressed.]