Aria ran.
The castle battlements were an uneven path of broken stone. The masked figure moved ahead of her. Leaping between merlons, sliding along narrow cornices, cutting impossible angles. Aria followed. Bow in hand. Cape rippling at her back.
The sky was orange. The explosions from the beasts and the armory stained the night with fire. Columns of smoke rose from the east wing. But up here the air was cleaner.
The masked figure turned a corner. Aria lost sight of him for a second. When she rounded it, he was already standing in the center of an open courtyard. A plaza between two walls. Fallen columns. Loose stones. A dry well in the middle.
Aria raised her bow. Drew the string.
The masked figure turned his head. The mask showed nothing. He raised one hand.
The darkness exploded.
It wasn't mist. It wasn't smoke. It was a black dome that expanded from his palm and swallowed everything. The walls. The columns. The orange sky. Aria blinked and saw nothing. Absolutely nothing. Not her hands. Not her bow. Not the ground beneath her boots.
She went still.
The silence inside the dome was thick. The noise of the explosions couldn't get in. Neither could the wind. Only her breathing and her pulse hammering in her ears.
Aria didn't move. She drew the string. She listened.
A scrape to her left. Stone against metal. She turned. She fired. The arrow whistled through the darkness. It hit nothing. A dull thud against stone, far away.
Another sound to her right. Fabric brushing fabric. She turned. She fired again. The whistle of the arrow. Again nothing. Stone, in the distance.
Aria held her breath. She went motionless. The hunter's instinct told her not to move. To wait. That whoever strikes first in the dark gives away their position.
The masked figure didn't attack.
He waited too.
Ten seconds passed. Twenty. Aria felt cold sweat on the back of her neck. Fingers on the string. Arrow ready. Where was she supposed to shoot? She had no target. She saw nothing. She lowered the bow a hand's width. The darkness was absolute. He could be a meter away and she'd never know.
A vibration in the floor. Steps. Fast. Light. Closing in.
Aria turned. Drew the string. Didn't fire. The steps came from one side, then the sound lurched to the opposite end all at once. As if he'd jumped without touching the ground. Aria turned again. The sound shifted once more. Left. Right. Left. No rhythm. No pattern. It couldn't be a single man.
Then the dagger grazed her hip.
Aria jumped back. The cut was shallow, but it burned. Something on the blade. A substance that stung. She touched it. Her fingers came back stained. Not blood. A cold, thick liquid.
Aria moved. Crouching. Short steps. Her fingers brushed the stone to keep her bearings. She found a fallen column. Pressed herself against it. The stone was cold. She held it.
She closed her eyes. They were useless. She opened them.
She listened.
The masked figure was moving too. Aria caught the brush of his boots, barely a whisper. Left to right. Circling her. Playing.
"He wants me to move," Aria said quietly.
She didn't move.
The whisper stopped. Silence. Then a metallic clang three meters away. A dagger against the floor. Aria didn't react. She knew it was a lure.
Another clang. Closer. She still didn't move.
The third sound was different. Not a clang. A scrape. Fabric over stone. Straight toward her back.
Aria turned. She didn't use the bow. She used the grip. She swung it back like a staff.
The impact was solid. Wood against flesh. A muffled grunt. The masked figure stumbled back.
The dome flickered.
An instant. Less than a second. But Aria saw it. The masked figure's silhouette against the walls. One hand on the shoulder where she'd struck him. And something else. The neck. Below the hood. A black mark. A tattoo. An elven symbol. Three curved lines woven together.
She knew it. Her father had described it to her. The emblem of the Silent Ones. Aelthas's personal guard. Assassins trained from childhood. They didn't speak. They didn't fail. And they left no witnesses.
The dome closed again.
Aria pressed her back against the column. A Silent One. Her father's stories came flooding back. The Silent Ones didn't pursue. They didn't interrogate. They only eliminated. If Aelthas had sent one after her, it wasn't to capture her. It was to erase her.
A vibration to her left. Aria turned. She didn't manage to raise the bow. A dagger passed a finger's width from her cheek. The wind from the blow moved her hair. She stepped back. Another vibration to her right. She ducked. The second dagger caught her cape. The cut was clean. A strip of wolf skin fell to the floor.
Aria rolled. She stood up blind. She drew the bow. She didn't fire. She waited.
The sound of the footsteps multiplied. They went from one side to the other with no transition. Aria turned her head following them. It was as though the masked figure were in three places at once. He moved inside the darkness like a fish in water. Sinking into one spot and surfacing in another without crossing the space between.
A dagger nicked her shoulder. That burn again. Aria clenched her teeth. She didn't cry out. Her arm felt heavy. She shifted the bow to her left hand.
"You can't see me," said a voice. Low. Raspy.
"I don't need to."
Aria drew the string with her left hand. She closed her eyes. She listened.
The vibration came from the floor. Moving right. Fast. Aria read the trajectory ahead of it. She aimed where he was going to be, not where he was. She fired.
The arrow whistled.
A short cry. Something fell to the floor. The dome flickered again. Longer this time. Aria saw the masked figure on the ground, an arrow buried in his thigh. Blood darkened the black fabric.
The dome reassembled itself. But Aria had already seen enough. The masked figure was wounded. Slower.
Aria walked backward, pressed against the column. Her fingers searched for another arrow in the quiver. Only a few left. But enough. The masked figure was moving somewhere in the dome. Slower now. Dragging his leg.
Aria drew the string.
The dome began to shrink.