Chapter 20
Mari
Shazeera whipped toward me in a blur, flames seeming to pour out of every inch of her body, as if her pores produced raw fire instead of sweat. I’d trained for years to make sure I could protect my sisters from any Demon who tried to hurt them, but how did you even fight something like this?
You don’t. Just keep running and let Gabe handle this, said a little voice inside me.
But the bigger part of me balked. I was no damsel in distress. I was the Briar Queen.
No, even that wasn’t right.
I was fucking Marinnia of Wales.
And, if this demon bitch thought she was going to burn me alive without me putting up a fight, she had another think coming.
My fingers closed around the hilt of my knife as I lurched to a halt, turning to face her head on for the first time. Fire flared up all around me, licking at my cloak, but I pressed forward, staying light on my feet as I prepared for her attack.
Wounded or not, Demons were far faster than humans and, if I made one wrong move, I’d be dead before I even knew what hit me. At least, that’s what my brain told me. But that strange energy buzzing at the surface of my skin had my gut telling me otherwise.
You can win this.
Just as the thought occurred, she lunged, moving so fast she almost seemed to disappear. Yet, somehow, I twisted just out of her way, wincing as a wave of heat and blinding light washed over me.
But that didn’t stop me either. My leg snaked out on pure instinct, smashing into her wounded side. She recovered quickly; her face contorted with a mixture of pain and shock.
“What the hell are you?”
“Just a Dove,” I whispered, striding toward her. “A Dove that’s about to kill you.”
Her face lit with wild fury, and her magic responded in kind, consuming the ground around her in a towering pillar of bluish hellfire. She disappeared again, this time moving even more quickly than the last.
I managed to dodge again, but this time there was no pause. The fire grew hotter with each passing second, but somehow, I could hardly feel it. It had to be the magic from my cloak, woven deeper than I’d even realized.
There was no time to consider it as I danced around strike after strike, excitement thrumming in my veins despite the fact that I was dancing with death incarnate.
It felt like…this was what I was born for.
She brought her flaming sword down on me in a vicious overhand, and I flowed around it like water, already preparing for her next attack as a loud crack sounded from across the battlefield.
My attention wavered, for the briefest of seconds, but that was all it took.
Her flaming sword bit into my hip, bashing me to the ground.
It’d been a glancing blow but, when you were fighting a Demon, even that was something you could not afford.
I hobbled to my feet, ready for death, but her attention was on Gabe and Vin, a ball of hellfire forming in her palm.
“Gabe, look out!”
My body seemed to move of its own accord as I lunged forward, ignoring the pain as I dove for her, my knife aimed directly at her heart. She released the fireball, and her head whipped toward me when I was less than a foot away.
She twisted, throwing her arm awkwardly sideways to bat me aside, and every instinct I had screamed for me to stop, but I didn’t. At that moment, I was like a flowing river. And a river doesn’t stop; it only evolves and adapts.
I dipped my head just inches below her outstretched arm, ignoring the fire all around us as I snapped my arm forward, jamming it straight into her inner thigh. It landed with a satisfying squelch, and I tore it free as quickly as it had entered, dancing out of reach as she flailed wildly.
“You filthy human scum! I’m going to…”
I was already turning away by the time she realized she was dead, flopping helplessly to the ground as her femoral artery spurted blood in time with her rapidly weakening heartbeat. All that adrenaline only made the blood flow that much faster.
I turned toward Gabe and Vin, my own heartbeat anything but weak. Gabe stood in front of Vin, his sword on the ground beside him. His back was badly scorched, and his wings were still burning with the dead bitch’s flames.
Vin was wounded too, with a nasty gash that went from his chest all the way down to his groin.
Even his eyes dripped with crimson blood.
Every vein in the Demon Lord’s head and neck seemed ready to bulge out of his skin, as if he was at his absolute limit, but, somehow, with my newfound abilities, I could feel Vin’s magical hold on Gabe.
Shazeera’s distraction had been enough for him to seize near-total control, it seemed.
Vin’s chest heaved with effort, but his lips curled into a grin as he raised his sword, and the scene of him decapitating those ten Demons replayed in my mind, and I clamped down on my dagger, holding it back, behind my ear.
Please work.
Taking aim at Vin’s chest, I hurled the dagger with all the strength I had left. It seemed to hurtle through the air in slow motion, and my heart sank as it clunked, handle first, into his chest. His hold on Gabe remained.
I stumbled forward, the gash on my hip catching up to me as I tried desperately to get to him. To stop the inevitable. Gabe was about to…
Just as Vin was turning away from me, readying his sword to finish the job, Gabe’s fist snapped forward, leaving a streak of magical light in its wake as it smashed right into Vin’s exposed jaw.
Gabe’s magic, I realized. He’d used it on the metal in his own, gauntleted fist to strike when he should’ve been under Vin’s spell.
His opponent staggered back, his eyes wide with horror as his control faltered. “You… How did you–?!”
No longer under Vin’s spell, Gabe lunged forward, batting the other man’s obsidian sword aside and grabbing him by the throat. “Looks like my reign just got a little longer.”
Vin flailed wildly, grasping at the hand around his neck but it was too late. Gabe’s free hand twitched, and the dagger I’d thrown surged upward, crashing right into the left side of Vin’s exposed chest.
The Demon Lord spasmed, looking utterly bewildered as he fell backward, hitting the ground with a thud. The gathered crowd erupted in a mixture of cheers and horrified cries, and Gabe turned toward me, looking as amazed as his fallen enemy had as he glanced toward Shazeera’s corpse.
I stared back at him, unable to do anything but shrug as he limped toward me. “Guess we did it.”
“We did. But we need to talk about your listening skills…”
I wanted to argue that I’d clearly handled things perfectly. But the world seemed to ripple around me, and the ringing in my ears drowned out the rest of his reply.
“I don’t feel very good, Demon…”