Mavros's men closed in the moment Caelestis turned his attention back to Eleanore, and he was forced to release her gently onto the platform floor, spinning just in time to parry a blade aimed at his back.
Steel rang against steel, three of them converging on him at once, but grief and fury had sharpened something in him that made him faster, more brutal than any of them anticipated. He cut through the first with a single decisive stroke, ducked beneath the second's wild swing and drove his blade up through an opening left too careless to defend, and turned to face the third with blood already slicking his grip.
His breath came ragged, his arms burned, but none of it mattered. Nothing mattered except finishing this and getting back to her.
"You should have stayed away," the last soldier said, though his voice wavered with the first real fear he'd shown all night.
"You should have chosen a better employer," Caelestis said, and ended it quickly.
