Flint’s heart was a giant’s footfalls in his chest - slow and thunderous compared to that of a human being. For him, this might be called “racing.” So much hinged upon this moment.

Jake had come through on his part of the plan. Four dark-clad figures stood with hands raised, facing a firing squad, their daggers at their feet. The walls behind and to either side of them were cruelly solid. They had been outplayed by an impossibility.

But they were Lye’s trainees - perhaps directly, perhaps indirectly. Flint knew better than to think this was done. As he stood back in the shadows, hyper-aware of every facial twitch and micro-expression in the room, the brute knew that Jake felt the same. This wasn’t over. It was just beginning.

Skovik saw it between heartbeats. One of the men made a clicking noise in his throat - a signal of some sort - and then bit down hard on something. Before Flint knew what he was doing, he had a knife drawn out of the nearest soldier’s belt and had thrown it across the room. The butt of the knife caught a second assassin in the side of the mouth, forcing him to spray a mixture of blood, spittle, and a poison-filled false tooth onto the wall. The assassin went down.

Jake was across the room just behind the thrown knife, tackling the female assassin to the ground, forcing his fingers into her mouth. Another human heartbeat, and then the remaining pair was on the ground beside them, tackled beneath a wave of Aleraran soldiers. “Poison!” someone in the back cried uselessly. “Stop them!”

The woman had dark, steely-cold eyes, and she stared with naked, vicious hatred up at Jake even as he struggled to save her life. She bit down on his fingers, drawing blood, but he persisted. He had found the false tooth and was cushioning it against her attempts to crush it. He realized at the last moment that she’d given up on it already, and brought his free hand up just in time to catch her arm at the wrist. She’d struggled beneath him and retrieved one of the dropped daggers and…

Jake cursed, flinching away as she raised her other hand - a second knife clutched in it - poised to drive it into the side of his neck. She had such a savage hold on his other hand with her teeth that he couldn’t bring his hand to bear, and he knew his knee was coming up too slow…

But she didn’t stab him. Instead, she drew the blade deftly across her own throat. She smiled around his mangled fingers, and stared into his eyes as she died, and dozens of bodies struggled and cursed and jostled around them in the harsh electric lamplight.