Chapter 17
Amriel pitches forward, his gyre falling from his hand as he catches himself against the wheel with both palms. A grunt tears from his chest, thick with pain but also rich with satisfaction.
My scream carves itself out of me, starting from my toes and rushing upward, a torrent of fire and razorblades that pours from my throat. These trolls hurt him. They stabbed him. And there’s a fifty percent chance he’s going to die in the next few seconds, right before my eyes.
“No, no, no,” I gibber. “You weren’t supposed to come, you were supposed to let the Shadow do it, you were supposed to just stay there and—”
“Princess.” He raises his head, a wince contorting his features. “It’s fine. All right? I’m fine.”
“But you’re not.” Frantic words bubble out of me, beyond my control. “You’re stabbed. And what if you die? What if you explode? I can’t watch. I can’t stand it. I can’t bear it, I’ll never be okay again, I’ll—”
“Princess.” His mouth slides up at one corner. Somehow, that wry twist takes the edge off my hysteria, so casual, so familiar. “I’m fine. If I were going to die, I would’ve done it already.”
I pause. Princess. He only ever calls me that when things aren’t dire. When he’s fully in control. “You’re not going to explode?”
“No.” His golden eyes move over me, drinking me up, stealing away my panic, soothing the rhythm of my heart. “At least, not this time.”
“But… But…you’re stabbed.”
“This is hardly the first time,” he says. “And it’s only in my shoulder blade, not my lung. Not fatal in the slightest.”
My stomach twists at the sight of the hilt jutting from his shoulder. “But doesn’t it hurt?”
“Oh, Princess.” Again with that croon. He closes his eyes, breathes me in like he always does, like he’s drawing sustenance from my smell. Like he didn’t just take a dagger to the back to protect me. “A little pain never hurt anyone.”
Soundless sobs quake inside my ribcage. But the way his breath feathers across my cheek, the way he leans into me, so solid, so certain, so terribly, horribly, wonderfully alive, sends a paroxysm of laughter up my throat, instead.
“Touch me.” I can’t tell whether that’s mirth thickening my voice, or tears, or both, but goddess, I’ve never beheld anything so magnificent, never had relief lay me out like this, strip me bare and rip every last scrap of logic right from my hands.
“Touch me so you won’t hurt anymore. Anything. Whatever you need.”
He makes a thick sound and aims his face toward my neck, just like he did last night. “I didn’t think I’d see you again,” he murmurs. “Smell you again. I thought you were gone.”
I angle my head toward his, even while some distant part of me registers what’s happening behind him. The trolls mill in confusion, one frowning as if he can’t understand how this giant fae brute appeared from thin air. Another plucks Amriel’s gyre from the grass and turns it over and over.
“You might want to close your eyes now,” Amriel says as another roar splits the evening. Not distant this time, but here, so close the ground shakes.
I don’t close my eyes. I peer past his shoulder to where the earth trembles and trees crash.
The Shadow bursts from the forest, a blur of indigo muscle and gleaming claws. He streaks across the clearing, incandescent, blazing like a meteor.
The trolls don’t even have time to scream before the Shadow barrels into them. Three bodies go flying, the Shadow’s claws ripping into the fourth like he’s made of paper. Dark green blood spurts in every direction. A second later, something wet splats against the ground.
But the Shadow doesn’t hesitate. He just destroys, a whirl of teeth and rage and claws.
My eyes pop as my avenging angel doles out vengeance. Meanwhile, his other half curves around me, a blade buried in his back, his contented exhales warming my ear.
“I’d love nothing more than to touch you again,” Amriel croons. “Since you offered.”
Goddess, how can he even think about that when—
His mouth finds my neck, blesses it with a kiss, and… Oh. I have to fight to keep my eyes from closing, even as the trolls’ screams filter into my ears.
“But,” he continues, “I have something I need to do.” Another kiss. Another shiver plucked from the depths of my soul.
“What’s that?” I whisper.
His tongue finds my throat, drags slowly upward. “I need to kill something. Right now.” He sucks gently while his Shadow slashes and tears. Something rolls across the grass. A head, maybe. I let my lashes drift against my cheeks.
“And I need to do it…” Amriel says, his teeth scraping against my neck, his mouth painting my skin with heat. “Very…” Another kiss, another suck. “Very…” One last open-mouthed kiss, then he pulls back an inch, denying me his touch. Denying us both.
“Violently,” he says.
A whimper pools in the back of my throat.
“So don’t watch.” He breathes the words directly into my ear. “Or…do. If you happen to like that sort of thing.”
Then he’s gone, pushing away from the wheel, reaching over his shoulder to wrench the dagger free. No hesitation, not even a flinch. He just rips the blade from his body, reaches the nearest troll with a few ground-eating strides, and whips a precise, back-handed slash across the creature’s throat.
The troll screams. Or tries to. The sound comes out as more of a gurgle. Frothy green blood bubbles from his lips while dark sheets jet down his front.
I expect Amriel to move on to another, but he doesn’t. He pivots with lethal grace and rams his blade into the creature’s belly. He saws up and to the side, cutting a gaping, diagonal hole. The troll screams and gurgles, his misery ringing through the meadow as he collapses.
The Shadow has a troll on the ground, too, but that one has already gone silent. Still, claws shred through flesh, reducing what was once a living thing to a pile of glistening ribbons. And that’s definitely a head on the ground. Maybe an arm, next to that pile of entrails. Or is it a leg?
I can’t say for sure, but I don’t look away, like Amriel suggested. I can’t. Or maybe I just don’t want to.
I don’t know.
I don’t know anything anymore. Except that a strange, pulsatile thrill beats inside me as my mate delivers punishment with both halves at once.
When they finish their mutual disembowelment, they turn to the two remaining trolls, who huddle together, shaking. One clutches Amriel’s gyre so tightly his fingers turn white.
Amriel licks his lips as he stalks toward them. Blood wets the back of his shirt, but the deadly slink of his steps suggests he told the truth, that his wound isn’t critical. Or maybe he’s just so familiar with suffering that this extra dose of pain doesn’t mean that much to him, anymore.
“Whatever you do,” Amriel says, his gaze fixed on the troll, “do not think about transporting to the center of this meadow.”
The creature shuffles backward, the gyre flaring in his hands. Its rings hum and spin. Reality splits, leaving a thunderclap behind.
The troll reappears ten feet away, at the center of the clearing.
And promptly explodes.
Green blood arcs through the air, tatters of skin flying. The troll’s meat-covered skeleton folds in on itself, the gyre thunking to the ground amid a pile of slime and gristle.
A painful breath lances into my lungs. So this is the curse of the Wildwood. The same fate that might have taken Amriel from me, if his gamble hadn’t worked out in his favor.
Seeing it in the flesh shrinks my heart to a cold, pale speck.
But Amriel just laughs.
The Shadow growls, his eyebrows pulling low. “Why’d you do that? I wanted to rip him apart.”
Amriel snorts. “Why eviscerate something when you can outsmart it?”
“Why outsmart it,” the Shadow grumbles, “when you can eviscerate it?”
Amriel cracks his knuckles, then his neck. “Hush. That was exciting enough even for you. And there’s still one left. We can share him.”
The last troll backs away, gibbering, gooey snot running down his already bloodied face.
I strain against my bonds, trying for a better view. Because this is the one that wanted to cut my clothes off. The one that wanted me to have more holes.
Some wild new feeling unspools in my veins, one that echoes in the Shadow’s every step. He and Amriel move in eerie harmony, two hands turned to a single purpose.
The troll begs and snivels, but my fae men remain unmoved. They pounce, each one taking hold of an arm and a leg, pulling so hard the troll lifts from the ground. The Shadow’s muscles tense, his toes pushing up furrows of dirt. Amriel leans back, too, his entire weight thrown into the effort.
The vicious glee in their faces should frighten me, but it doesn’t. The savage flame inside me only burns brighter.
Joints snap and pop, dislocating one by one. The troll opens his mouth, but what comes out barely counts as a scream. It’s more silence than sound, or maybe so high-pitched that the register escapes me. And it doesn’t last long.
Because in the next moment, this troll explodes, too.
Flesh tears, bones crack. Blood fills the air as the creature rips into halves.
Amriel and his Shadow don’t stop. The meadow fills with the wet, sucking sounds of violence, long after the troll must be dead.
I watch to completion, my stomach doing a slow, complex dance. I’m glad they killed him. I’m glad they killed them all.
A sinful thought, but I don’t care right now. Because Amriel and his Shadow saved me. They came when I called.
They answered my prayer.
When the troll’s corpse has been sufficiently brutalized, Amriel and the Shadow turn to me in sync.
Four golden eyes cut a path across the meadow, stilling my heart mid-beat.
I’ve always perceived them as so different—one controlled, the other driven by passion—and yet right now, they’re one and the same.
They glide toward me, one indigo, one gold, both so beautiful my vision can barely hold the two at once. I arch off the wheel, trying to get to them, not caring that the ropes slice into my wrists.