Chapter 33 #2
I take off at a sprint, leaping across the gaps in the rock, keeping one eye on the path in front of me and one on my target.
When I reach the right angle, I lower myself into a crouch, rubbing my hand across my sweat-slicked brow.
I unsheathe the sword from my back carefully, quietly, and leave it tucked between the two boulders I shelter behind.
I take a single steadying breath, bracing my arms on the stone under me, and throw my legs over, heavily landing in a crouch.
When I lift my eyes, I meet the gaze of Mara, and I know she doesn’t fully recognize me, not really.
She pauses, stepping back, thrown off by the hardness of my gaze, the wickedness there.
The monster that lives within my Mortal shell.
She regains her footing. “You must really have a death wish, don't you?”
I let that wickedness pepper the grin I give her as I push off the ground and stand to my full height. “I think the words you’re looking for are ‘thank you’.”
Mara sneers, shifting her feet apart into a more balanced position. “What in all of the Ever Realm should I be thanking you for?”
I purposefully kick one ankle up over the other and lean back against the rock behind me, a picture of relaxation. An easy target.
“Do you need me to spell it out for you?” I mock. “Boy, they really don’t teach much at Fae schools, do they?”
Her brows lower. Her lips twitch. There’s the slightest scent of Fae magic in the air.
“Repeat after me,” I continue. “‘Thank you, Huntyr, for stopping the big scary prince from slicing my head off last night when I very immaturely stole you from your bed because I was too afraid to actually face the Conclave like a true warrior’.”
Mara hisses just as a gust of wind brushes sharply against me, blowing back my hair.
No time to think about that, though.
I’ve set my trap.
The blades strapped on my hips, my thighs, in my boots, tear free of their sheaths, flying to join Mara’s own daggers, already assembled in the air around her.
“You talk too much,” she growls.
And the first blade flies.
Then the second.
Then the third.
Quick, precise strikes. One at a time, because she has to focus on her aim.
Still, she’s fast enough between throws that it takes every ounce of my skill and experience to duck and swerve out of the way.
I hiss sharply when a blade catches the front of my thigh and slices through leather and skin.
Still, I go on. Even when the blades that fall return to her. I continue dodging.
“Are you even trying to hit me?” I tease, keeping my position carefully close to the boulder at my back.
The wind blows against me again, as if to question what I’m doing.
“You can’t dodge forever!” she shouts, her voice thick with anger.
“Not forever, just until you tire yourself out.”
The daggers are dragging themselves across the ground. Not floating through the air. She’s already weakening. It took less time than I’d expected.
I just need to egg her on a little more.
“You know, maybe your power is so rare because it’s kind of pointless.”
Her eyes flare in rage. “What did you just say to me?”
“You’re not a fighter. Not a warrior. You just throw sharp things and hope they land. You’re a glorified knife thrower. It’s a party trick, really. In the Mortal kingdoms, you could make an incredible living in one of those traveling circuses.”
She snaps. I feel it in the way Fae magic crackles through the air. See it in the way her hands flex.
The blades lift off the ground, four of them at once. Lifting. Pointing at me.
I scan over them. Track them. Map them.
They fly at once towards me.
My heart is in my stomach as I bend backwards.
As I twist above myself.
As my hand catches one of those knives and throws it right back in the direction it came from.
She gasps.
No cry or scream of pain. Just a gasp as she looks down at it in shock, as if she genuinely can’t believe I got lucky enough to actually hurt her.
It hadn’t been luck that had driven my blade home, though.
In fact, that particular blow had been the first thing I planned out.
The dagger now stuck out of her abdomen, right through her stomach, giving her a rather precise injury. A fatal wound, but not one that promised an immediate death. The kind of wound Mara liked to inflict on her victims.
She lurches forward with a growl, running at full speed for me, pushed forward by absolute, blinding rage.
It never once crosses her mind to consider there might be another weapon hidden out of sight. She never considers the option that I might have realized she would strip me of my daggers and leave me defenseless.
She didn’t think ahead, just like I knew she wouldn’t.
My fingers wrap around the sword hidden behind the rocks, and I bring it down in a clear arc, cleaving her from shoulder to hip as her blood sprays across my face.
Mara falls.
She drops heavily to the ground at my feet.
There’s the smallest of tugs at the sword clutched in my hand, and I almost laugh at her feeble attempt to use her magic while she lays gurgling at my feet. As if that would save her now.
“I made a promise to someone,” I say, staring down at her as coldness flows through me.
I picture Jeseina as I lift my blade once more.
Even now, I hear the desperate gasps of air the Mortal woman had struggled to take before asking me to help her, and I let them play on repeat in my mind. “I keep my promises.”
When I finally walk away from the small clearing where our fight had culminated, her blood isn’t just splattered across my face. It’s heavy in my hair, covering the metal of my sword, smeared down my bare arms.
Jeseina got her revenge.