Chapter 44 #2
He brought his hand up, ready to plunge the paring knife into her neck, but Silas acted faster. Thick arms wrapped around Zadriel’s middle, tearing him off the yowling woman and tossing him aside as if he were nothing.
“Touch her and I will peel the flesh from your bones!” Silas shouted, looming over him. Reaching for Zadriel’s throat.
A feral growl rumbled, leather biting into Zadriel’s palms as he swung, slamming his blade into Silas’s side. Sharp metal pierced through wolf pelt and leather, the point barely scratching flesh.
The brute paused to grin, huffing a laugh. “You think that puny knife is enough to end me?”
“He’s Fae,” Elodie marveled, groaning pitifully as she rolled to her side. Her frosty eyes fixed on Zadriel, awe simmering in their depths. Aoife forgotten on the forest floor.
Cold nipped at Zadriel’s ears, the tips aching from the press of winter’s frigid teeth—Mother damn him, his hood had fallen. He flashed his sharp canines. “I have no interest in being anyone’s pet.”
Silas wrapped a hand around Zadriel’s throat, squeezing until his lungs burned. “You will be whatever my lady wants you to be.”
There was a pulse pounding in his head, darkness blurring his periphery, but Zadriel pushed through it, his hold on his blade steady.
With a quick tug, he pulled it free from Silas’s leather armor and slammed it down again with all of his remaining might.
Aiming for the brute’s back. Sinking the small knife into flesh.
“Fuck!” Silas hissed, flinching away.
Air rushed into Zadriel’s lungs, a sputtering cough rattling in his chest, but he scrambled to his feet, racing to Aoife.
“Silas!” Elodie whined, cradling her arm as if Zadriel snapped her bones—he wished he had.
“Apologies in advance,” Zadriel said to Aoife, hoisting her over his shoulder and fleeing deeper into the trees.
She grunted as he ran, the bolas’ enchanted, swinging stones cracking against their backs with every hurried step. “Almighty gods, we’re doomed.”
It was the only warning Zadriel had before Silas snatched his cloak—one quick tug and his feet flew out from under him, Aoife screaming as they fell.
Zadriel landed hard, a rotten cluster of old, brittle roots crushed beneath his weight.
Snow puffing in the air. He tried to move, adrenaline surging in his veins, but a gleaming leather boot stomped on his hood.
“You’ll regret crossing me,” Silas snarled, slamming his fist into Zadriel’s face with a resounding crack.
Over and over again.
Blood clogged Zadriel’s nostrils, trickles flowing down to pool between his lips, but he clenched his teeth, blinking away the stars crowding his vision. Swinging blindly. His knuckles cracking against Silas’s cheekbones.
The brute didn’t slow, even as pain twisted his face, every jerk of his body wiggling the blade lodged in his back.
“Don’t kill him, lover,” Elodie called from between the trees, ice and bits of decayed leaves crunching beneath her steady steps, their royal blue bag hanging from her shoulder.
“I want the chance to teach him some manners.” A spray of Zadriel’s blood spattered her pale face as she drew near, thick drops of deep red painting her freckled cheeks.
She cringed, wiping at it with her hand, but it merely deepened the stain. An eerie blush.
The ground shuddered, roots snaking through frost to crawl free and reach for Zadriel, branches creaking as they clawed at Silas’s back.
His next blow missed, knuckles crunching on hard, frozen earth, flesh scraped raw on chunks of ice and stone, but it didn’t stop him from reeling back to hit Zadriel again.
The brute froze, his face complexion. A shuddered breath catching in his throat. His body swaying as he twisted, face contorting in agony while he moved to press his hand against the wound on his back.
“Silas, are you all right?” Elodie asked, a wide gaze tearing away from her open palm. Fingers frozen on the cut she’d made. A chilling breeze swept around her, the evergreen above painting haunting shadows on her pale face. Twigs peppered in pine needles stretching toward her hand. “Who are you?”
Something leaked between the cracks in Silas’s fingers, trickling over torn flesh, its dark ruby a perfect match to the small, bloodstained blade Aedlin clutched in a white-knuckled grip. Zadriel’s knife.
Her upper lip curled, Darius suckling on his fingers as he watched on, wrapped safely in her mahogany cloak. She raised her clenched fist, moonlight skittering along the knife’s sharp edge.
A prayer to the Mother flitted through Zadriel’s mind—may the blood he’d left behind be lost to Silas’s mess, too buried in the human’s own waste for the Enchanter, Elodie, to use.
“Those eyes,” Silas muttered, stumbling toward the fallen queen. Gritted teeth gleaming. “I’ve seen them before.”
Aedlin hesitated, brows furrowing. “You saw Mora?”
“Silas?” Elodie asked again, moving closer. Something roved over her fingers, glints of red glittering along with the snow.
“When did you see her?” Aedlin snarled. Silas inched closer, but her attention locked on Elodie. Fixating on the royal blue knapsack she carried.
Frosty eyes churned like a winter storm, narrowing on the fallen queen. “Put down your knife and I’ll tell you.”
Aedlin’s hand shook, her fingers tightening around the leather handle, her other arm curled around her son. “Was it you? Did you take her? Were you working with him?”