Page 53 of Starside

“Enough whispering, we can hear you,” the woman snaps. “And I assure you, if you try to throw your blade, it’s not going to work.” She takes a feline step forward. “We are faster than you. Stronger than you. We hear everything. Smell everything. Even your fear …”

She looks back at the two masked men. “Mortals are so weak. So pathetic.” In a flash, she’s right in front of us, hand outstretched. “The blade. Let’s see it.”

I don’t make a single move.

Her glittering eyes narrow. The archer cocks his arrow. He aims it right at my head. “Leave it right here, or you die. But not before I slice your face off, slowly, carefully, so that you feel every single turn of my dagger.”

I swallow. Dread spills through my bones as I reach back toward my sword.

“Try something, and your friends die too,” she warns. I’m not stupid enough to try anything now. Not when I just saw her cross a few yards in less time than it takes me to blink. I curl my hand around the hilt. Lift it with all my strength, teeth gritted with the effort. Bury the blade right between us, in the dirt of a missing stone.

I step back just as she steps forward.

Her eyes widen. “Look at this,” she says, turning back toward her companions. “She must have stolen it from somewhere important … The diamond alone … What kind of favor do you think it might be worth?”

The green-masked thief steps forward. “A good one,” he says. He still hasn’t lowered his bow. “You know how much our god enjoys rarities.”

The woman nods, eyes flashing with greed. She curls both hands around the hilt. Pulls.

Nothing happens.

She frowns. Pulls again. Again. She digs her steel-plated boots into the ground, bends her knees. A frustrated groan escapes her lips.

The sword doesn’t move an inch.

There’s the twang of a bow. I close my eyes, bracing myself for a flash of pain.

Nothing.

I open them to see the arrow sticking out of the woman’s forehead, right through the mask. Her hands are still around my sword’s hilt.

She drops to the ground, blood dripping in a line down the ruby. It’s red, just like ours. Not the fabled silver blood of the gods.

Metal clashes. The gold-masked and green-masked thieves are dueling. They fight in wild streaks of color.

“Run,” Zane says. I pull my sword from the dirt, and we shoot into the forest. It’s not long before more steps join us. Faster steps.

A beam of silver metal arcs to my left, and I just barely stop it with my blade, both arms hardly holding it up. The green-masked thief. There’s a sickening crack as his sword breaks in half against mine, but that doesn’t stop him.

A moment later, his halved blade is at my neck. My pulse beats along the jagged metal.

Then a sword is through his chest. He falls, only to reveal the gold-masked thief standing behind him. The first one we encountered on the road.

“Where did you find it?” he demands as he lifts his sword between us.

My back is against a tree. There’s nowhere to run. Even if there was, he would catch me.

“The—the other side,” I say, trying to buy myself any time.

My blade is still in my hand. Just as I wonder if I have the strength to raise it again, the tip of his weapon is against my heart.

“Where?” he demands. “Where exactly?”

I open my mouth to answer—

And close it against a spray of blood.

The man … his head is gone. It’s on the ground, right in front of my foot. I push the rest of his body away before it and his blade can fall onto me.