Chapter 46
Chapter Forty-Six
Fox
In the chaos of battle, I’ve lost the others, finding myself pincered between the Titan twins as we fight the Empress’s elite guard.
They come at us with their magic and their weapons, and as quickly as we manage to defeat one, another appears.
The Titan twins may not be clever, but they’re good, strong fighters, and I’m actually thankful to have them here with me. We find a rhythm, fighting together, working to trap and eliminate the guards as they come for us.
Of course, it comes at a cost.
I’m hit in the leg. The twin on my left in his arm. The twin on my right in his gut.
We don’t have time to heal ourselves or each other. We have to fight on.
I send my magic swiping, stabbing, burning, crushing. I’m wild, like those early days. Maybe my taste for this hasn’t dampened as much as I thought it had. Maybe I’m still hungry to see blood spill. Maybe I still have that killer inside me, desperate to be unleashed.
Now he has his reason.
Briony.
I don’t know where she is, somewhere lost in the shadows and the smoke and the fog, but I feel her nearby. I feel the brightness of her light.
She’s alive. She’s fighting. And as long as she is, I will be too – with everything I have.
Four elite guards come at us at once. They swing their weapons, firing magic at the same time.
I fire back as one Titan brother charges forward, swinging his fists while his brother sends fire-bolts in front of him. Their knuckles are bloodied. Sweat drips from their faces. Even I am panting for breath, my heart racing, though both should be still and silent.
It’s her light. I can feel it within me, making my magic stronger and more vibrant.
I can see it swirling in my shadows, particles of light mixed with the darkness.
If I weren’t fighting for our lives, I’d be standing and staring at it in awe.
So strange after everything that’s happened. So different. So beautiful.
The last of the four elite guards falls to the ground, lifeless, his face a bloody mess. The taller Titan twin hunches over his knees. The other spits mucus and blood onto the frozen ground. I stretch my arms above my head, roll my shoulders, feel for Briony, steady myself for the next attack.
What comes strolling out of the mist this time is far more deadly.
The Titan twin next to me groans.
It’s the Empress herself.
She’s dressed from head to foot in solid silver armor, something that should make her movements stiff and impeded.
I’m guessing it’s magical, though, because she moves with ease, the armor seeming to slide over her lithe body.
She has a sword in her hand, longer, bigger than the one Beaufort had out in the demon wastelands.
A sword that seems to glow in her hands with dark magic, snake-like tendrils of deep crimson crawling over the blade.
The dark magic that prickles against my skin and sets my killer instincts frantic.
The Empress stares at us with her cold silver eyes.
I always considered the woman beautiful. Her skin is like porcelain. Her bone structure chiseled to perfection. But there’s no beauty to her face, really, because there’s no emotion in it. None at all.
The woman is ruthless. I see it now, plainly. It’s how she’s kept a grip on this realm for all these years, with very little struggle and practically no dissent.
“We are disappointed,” she says, her voice cutting through the mist. “In the three of you. You’re foolish to throw your lives away. You especially so, Fox Tudor, after we spared you once, after we showed you mercy. We won’t do that again.”
She slices her sword through the air, and her dark shadow magic races toward us.
For a moment, I’m struck by indecision.
My magic can’t meet hers, even with Briony’s light swirling through it. I’m not as strong as she is. Trying to fend her off, trying to battle her, is of no use.
But I am immortal.
She can’t kill me with her magic. She can make me hurt. She can torture me. But I’ll live. I’ll live through it all.
This is my moment, though. She’s here. Yards from me.
I can’t fight her magic, but can I find another way to strike at her? To save Briony and us all?
I am faster than her, after all.
I leap out of the way, but the two Titan twins are not as fast as I am.
They start to move, start to dart away, but they’re too slow.
The Empress’s black shadow magic strikes them both with a sickening blow and they tumble to the ground in synchronicity, just as lifeless as the elite guard moments before.
I race toward the Empress, leaving the bodies of Titan twins behind me. She fires her magic at me, missing me by mere millimeters. I fire too, but my magic simply bounces off her armor, without even a scratch, or a dent, or a flinch.
Damn.
I swerve out of the way as her magic keeps coming, zigzagging this way and that, like a rabbit attempting to escape the clutches of a fox. I keep firing, hoping I’ll get a lucky hit, some chink in the armor where my blow might do damage, if not be fatal.
Her magic hits me on the shoulder, on the foot, singes my hair. I gasp and grunt and groan. It can’t kill me, but then she’s swinging that great sword again. And though a stab through the heart will not render me lifeless, if I lose my head, that will be the end.
I jump back. I flick fire at the sword. I swerve. I spin.
I know I’m so fast that my movement must look like a blur of motion to her, or at least it would to any normal shadow weaver. But she seems to see me perfectly, seems to predict my every move.
And then suddenly the sword is coming for me.
Coming for my neck.
This will kill me. If I lose my head, it’s the end.
I try to fall backward, away from the blade. I send my shadows spinning in all directions, but I can see it’s no good. The blade will hit me and I will die.
Then someone roars my name, speeding in front of me – a flash of black shadow.
“Not Fox!” Veronica cries. “Not him!”
She pushes me backward, hard and powerful. I fly across the grass, eyes wide, as I watch the Empress’s sword swing. Veronica attempts to pull back, but the sword meets her neck.
Dark blood pours from the wound.
She staggers backward, clutching her throat. Now there’s emotion on the Empress’s face – shock, horror, disgust. The two women stare at each other, the blood seeping through Veronica’s fingers.
For a moment, they’re both frozen.
Then Veronica staggers backward. One step, two steps, and then she’s racing my way, blood running down her neck, soaking into her clothes. She finds me and pulls me into the mist.
We’re somewhere out by the trees now, the mist not so thick, the battle behind us. She’s swaying on her feet.
“It’s okay,” I say, with a little disgust. “You’re immortal. You can heal it.”
She looks at me and takes a deliberate step away.
“Veronica?” I say.
She keeps looking at me. The blood continues to seep from her neck. She falls to her knees.
“No,” she croaks, her voice torn and shattered. “No, Fox. This is the end.”
And I understand, the Empress’s sword was no ordinary sword. That dark magic it contains is unstoppable. Deadly – even to an immortal.
“Veronica,” I say, falling to my knees as well, frozen leaves crunching beneath me.
“Your wish has come true. You wanted me dead,” she says, her painted mouth curling into a weak smile. Before my very eyes, the life, the strength, even the shadows are draining from her.
“No, Veronica. Not like this.”
“You were hoping to kill me yourself?”
I open my mouth but no words come. She turned me into this monster. She ripped my life away. She tried to kill my mate – Briony. Yes, I’ve wanted her dead. Yes, I’ve wanted to kill her.
“It’s time,” she says, her eyes falling closed.
She collapses forward, and I catch her in my arms.
The magic has always resonated fiercely from this woman. You could taste it on the tip of your tongue. You could feel it on the ends of your fingers. But there’s nothing now. Not even a flicker of a shadow. She’s literally shriveling and fading away in my arms.
She murmurs something against my ear, but her words make no sense to me.
“You saved me,” I whisper, still unable to fathom it.
After everything – even knowing I would kill her given the chance – she chose to save me.
To sacrifice herself for me. There’s always a reason with Veronica, a hidden motive, a deceptive intention.
But this time I don’t understand why she did it. “Why?”
Her eyes flicker open for just a moment. She peers up at me. I don’t know if she even sees me. Blood trickles from her mouth, a line of it running down her cheek like tears.
“Because I love you, Fox,” she says. “And I always have.”
And then she closes her eyes and her body fades to ash, ash that catches on the wind and blows away into the forest, leaving me alone on my knees on the hard ground, my hands and clothes soaked with the blood she’d stolen from some other being.