Chapter 34 #2
That might be what bothers me most.
I’m dripping with it, and the fire-wielder looks as perfect as ever.
When her brows lift half a centimeter and her eyes sparkle just a bit, I know she’s tired of the game.
And then she really attacks.
Her right hook swings wide, catching the other side of my jaw. My head snaps sideways, pain flaring along my cheekbone, and I stumble back, struggling to keep my balance as my muscles take on the weight of exhaustion. The tangy taste of blood bursts inside my mouth, nearly choking me.
There’s no time to fall, though. I barely manage to get my guard back up before Seraphina is on me again.
She’d been masterful in the training yard. It had taken me some time watching her to start to pick out the few ways she might be vulnerable during hand-to-hand, but this version of Seraphina was not the one who had shown up to the fortress courtyard.
This version is impossibly more skilled and deadly than how she’d portrayed herself before.
The Fae presses forward, and her elbow drives towards my ribs. I throw down my forearm to block it, but the force sends a sharp jolt of pain up my arm, an arm already mangled from Fae fire. The pain is all I can see, feel, think about.
My legs tremble, ready to give out.
Her knee slams into my stomach, and a groan explodes from my lungs.
It hurts. More than I ever expected it to.
I hold my stance, though. I lock my knees.
Seraphina’s fingers lock onto my shoulder and she pulls me right into her uppercut. Stars burst in my vision. Nausea rolls through my stomach. My pulse pounds like a steady beat in my ears, almost drowning out the violent roar of thunder.
A sharp stomp to the back of my calf.
I don’t want to go down.
I don’t want to lose.
I don’t want to die.
But my leg buckles.
The ground comes towards me too quickly, and I feel my cheek split open along the dirt as I hit down hard on the rocks. I’m shaking, blood is coating my tongue, and I spit it out as I desperately try to rise.
“Where’s your talk of Derian now?” she taunts me, stalking to where my own sword is discarded on the ground.
With a wicked grin, she lifts it, testing the weight in her hands.
“Don’t you want to tell me how special you are to him?
So special, in fact, that he’s just sitting up there watching you bleed out? ”
I push onto my elbows, using every ounce of my strength to hold my shaking body upright. I will not let her stab me while I lie helpless on the ground.
“No? How about I tell you a story then?” Seraphina comes to me, the steps of her boots heavy beats against the ground.
She lifts my sword, using the tip of it to brush my hair back over my shoulder.
The rain is falling heavier now, not enough to wash away the blood staining my body, but enough to cool the fire in my blood.
“When I told Derian I was entering the Conclave, I told him I would remind every last Mortal of where they belong.” She kneels in front of me, and her dark eyes are practically glowing, alight with the fire she controls so easily.
“I told him I’d leave you all dead on the ground at my feet.
I’m so glad you’re the one that’s going to make that promise come true. ”
Through some impossible final burst of speed or strength, or maybe even foresight, I lift my hands just in time to catch the steel as it careens towards my throat.
The force sends me falling backward again. The sharpened edge of the sword, the edge I’d sharpened myself hours ago, slices through my hands and I scream.
I scream louder than I ever have before.
She’s growling above me, pushing the blade down, closer and closer to my throat, and then the blade is warming under my touch, the metal burning my skin so intensely that I think that maybe I’ve never known true pain until this very moment.
Lightning cracks only a few feet from us, and yet neither of us turn away.
“HUNTYR!” Kaia’s voice snaps in my mind for a moment before all I can hear is her roar echoing through the arena.
I’ve pictured my death before. In my line of business, it’s hard not to imagine it from time to time. I never quite pictured it like this, though.
I wonder what my father would think about this. I wonder how he would have felt about his little girl, who he used to read to sleep every night, having followed the threads of fate to become this person, to die like this.
No vengeance in his name.
No justice for what was done to him.
Just my death at the hands of a Fae.
Just like him.
And Tyla, too. My death will inevitably cause hers. Without that tonic she won’t have long. She’ll be just another victim in the broken story of my existence.
She doesn’t even know I’m here. Will Derian and Roland tell the Mortal Kingdoms of my death? How will that news eventually spread to our tiny apartment? My heart breaks for Tyla, for the moment that she’ll have to receive that news, the news that I’m gone and she’s utterly alone.
She doesn’t deserve that.
But maybe…
Maybe I do deserve this.
These wretched hands that have ended so many lives deserve to be cut apart.
This throat that has laughed at the pain of my victims deserves to be slit.
Perhaps, this was always meant to be my fate.
I let my soul turn so black with hatred that the very source of my fury is to be the one to deliver my punishment.
I deserve this.
A small, choked sound escapes me, and my fingers tremble, unable to hold on much longer.
There’s roaring in my ears, Kaia’s, filled with pain and anger and defiance.
The thunder cracks over my head, louder than I’ve ever heard before.
Seraphina pushes harder, her eyes glazed over with bloodlust, and just as I’m about to lose my grip, acceptance crashes over me, through me. The kind of clarity I’ve seen on so many faces before I take a life.
“Just give in,” she hisses. “You have nothing to live for anyway!”
But I do, I think to myself suddenly.
Just as I’m about to release my grip on the sword, Seraphina’s words fall over me like a heavy weight, and I just know, deep inside, how truly wrong they are.
I might deserve death, but I do have things to live for.
Kaia.
Tyla.
Even Derian.
And… myself. I have to live for myself.
Because the little girl inside of me, the one who had been thrown onto the streets as a child, deserves to experience something more than just the brutality I’ve embraced.
I have to keep going. I have to keep fighting. I’m Huntyr fucking Lachlan. I’m the Huntress.
And I’m going down fighting until the very end, no matter the odds.
I scream as I push back against the sword and thrash my legs. The sound is raw, filled with a lifetime of traumas that have all led to this very moment.
Fire snakes sharply down my spine, a heat that’s a living thing, trailing through me in an electric burst. It sparks through every part of my body until I’m barely in control of my own movements.
I’m nothing but that burning energy, until, with a roar of pain and anger, my hands explode into a glorious golden light.
Seraphina flies backward, her surprised scream echoing as she’s blasted back several feet by the rush of that strange light, and all I can do is stare at my hands, at the way they still glow with that beautiful sheen.
I can still feel it, like a rush responding with every inhale and exhale of my lungs.
What did I do?
What did I just do?
She’s still screaming, the shrieking sound piercing the silence as she rises to her feet. She rubs at her eyes, blinking rapidly, like children do when they stare too long at the sun.
And even though I have no explanation for what just happened, I don’t have the time to ponder it.
This fight isn’t over.
I rip my useless, beaten body up from where it had surrendered, and despite the agonizing pain, despite the utter exhaustion of both my body and my heart, I crawl forward, scraping my bleeding hands through the dirt as I pull myself forward.
Towards my sword.
Seraphina is still blinking and dazed when I manage to wrap my hands around it.
Her hands light up into flames as I step forward, those orange flickers climbing to her shoulders, but I’m not afraid of them now. I don’t feel any pain anymore.
When I throw my weight into swinging that sword, slicing it across the soft skin of her throat, I let out a battle cry filled with such agony that I hardly even recognize it as my own voice.
Her body crumples before me.
Her flames flicker out.
The arena is silent, like they’re all holding their breath with me.
And then a guttural sob pours out of me as I fall to my knees.