Valiant Ladies by Melissa Grey

Author:Melissa Grey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends

CHAPTER 20

Kiki

I should have stopped her.

I should have told Ana to sheathe her blade so we could all carry on with our lives.

I should have placated Esmeralda.

I should have done all those things, but I didn’t. Once the promise of a fight sang through the air with the clarity of the finest choir, I couldn’t help myself. All the pent-up energy, the useless anger, the righteous fury, came pouring out.

What can I say? It feels good to punch something.

I just don’t really want to be the thing that gets punched. A fist—roughly the size of a whole roasted ham—hurtles toward my face with alarming speed.

“Kiki, duck!” Ana shouts, as if it wasn’t obvious.

I duck. The man’s fist lodges itself in the wooden slats of the wall behind me.

“Mother of God, where do you find these ruffians?” I pop up, brushing the dust off my sleeves as if I hadn’t a care in the world. Which isn’t true. I have a great many cares. But now’s not the time to entertain those. “More muscle than brains, and that’s putting it politely.”

“Kiki, less quipping.” Ana spins away from the second man as he lunges at her, arms extended as if to grab her. As if she’d make it that easy. “More fighting.”

“As you wish.” I slip the dagger from my sleeve and fall into a crouch as the first overly muscled barbarian lumbers back toward me. Around his bulk, I spy Esmeralda walking downstairs, her hair flouncing with each step.

Doesn’t want to get her hands dirty, I see.

The lout takes one step toward me. His first mistake. Well, his first mistake was starting the fight in the first place, but I can certainly finish it.

And I do, by thrusting my dagger through the top of his boot, straight through the meatier bits of his foot and into the wooden floor below.

He howls.

Doors farther down the hallway open as girls and worried men peek their heads out to see what all the commotion is, but those very same doors slam shut when they find Ana and me elbows-deep in some truly cathartic violence.

It isn’t the way it was yesterday. My grief and my anger and my fear are not riding me like some prize show pony, not wielding me like a weapon. They are there. They might always be there, but I am in control. I am issuing the orders. My fists and my feet and my blades all follow, going exactly where I want them to go.

The man falls to his knees, which probably only makes the blade tug more on his poor, beleaguered foot, but the folly of my plan becomes evident immediately. The knife is his now. Pulling it free of meat and bone and wood would take more time than I have in the moment. More time than Ana has right now.

She shouts, and I turn away from my own foe to find her locked in a vicious hold with hers. His arm is pressing against her neck as he pins her against the wall.

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