Chapter 25 #2
A small crowd blocks my view. Several heads whip around at our arrival but their attached bodies press tighter together and form a wall of flesh. They’ve got a front row seat to the fight.
I growl and several of the youngest girls skitter out of the way.
“Move,” Astrid says under her breath.
Finally, the crowd parts for us and I lose my mind.
Morgan has Evie pinned to the ground, punching the blonde in the face, over and over.
All that red hair is pinned to the top of her head and there are a few bruises on her neck and cheeks.
Her lip is split and dripping blood, and her brow bone has swollen slightly, giving her an off-kilter appearance.
But Evie is barely recognizable.
Morgan rages, her lips twisted in a silent scream, her fists landing with machine-like precision. It’s all Evie can do to try and protect herself. The fight is mismatched and not the way I thought it would be.
She is a vision, a fighter, no longer a victim but a victor. My admiration of her swells.
What’s wrong with me? Something serious. Something with no cure.
Astrid buries her knuckles in my side. “Kieran, do something!”
I shake my head, but the cobwebs don’t clear. “Hey. Hey! Break it up. Stop it.”
As expected, neither of them listens. Morgan does not slow her frantic destruction and Evie yells, kicking her legs, but can’t dislodge Morgan.
I wade into the melee and grab Morgan by the elbows, hauling her off of Evie. She pulls against me like her body refuses to stop its forward motion. Her teeth gnash and I catch a glimpse of tears at the corner of her eyes.
Her words blur together with animalistic intensity.
Both women struggle, Evie kicking out and managing to strike my ankle. My right leg threatens to buckle, and I widen my stance to avoid any other rogue hits, hauling Morgan against me.
Her slippers skitter across the floor while she struggles for purchase. It’s too long before I realize—it’s a trick. I’ve got her in my arms and close enough for her to turn the tables.
She grabs for the holster on my thigh and yanks the dagger free. This time, unlike in the past, she’s successful. The blade presses to my throat before I have a chance to yell.
Her eyes meet mine and she blinks the tears away. “Get back,” she hisses.
“Kieran! Don’t do anything stupid.” Astrid’s voice sounds from a distance and someone is coughing, a wet hacking sound.
A round of gasps drones in the background as the room narrows down further. There’s only Morgan and the rage in her eyes. The depths of it threaten to burn me.
“What are you going to do, Princess? Are you going to slice me open?”
Her head tilts as she takes me in. “I will. I won’t hesitate.”
“You’re hesitating now.” A dark chuckle rumbles out of me.
She angles the blade against my Adam’s apple, her head cocked to the side while she stares me down, waiting for me to make a move. Neither one of us breathes.
“Now.” I’m not exactly the voice of reason but it’s the best I can do. “Let’s be reasonable. You’re going to kill me, and then what? Do you think you’ll make it out of this room before someone catches you? It’s a miracle the guards haven’t been called.”
“It’s only fair,” she whispers. The movement opens up the split in her lip and blood trickles over her white teeth. “Your father took my family. I’ll take his.”
Movement flutters at the corner of my vision and I know it’s Astrid and Evie, a twining of silver and gold as my second in command helps the beaten girl off her back.
Morgan grunts and pushes the blade closer, sensing my distraction.
I want to use her rage. I want to empty her of it until there is nothing left and we’re guaranteed a win because she will never stop. I won’t, either.
One wrong move and she’ll slice my throat without hesitation. I know it. So why is she paused now? For impact?
Because she wants me to feel every bite and sting of the steel before it severs muscles.
“My blade is sharp enough for you to take my head off, if you’re strong enough,” I tell her in an undertone. “But he won’t care. You’re making a mistake if you think my death will prove your point. Roman Ryson only cares about one single thing in this world, and it’s definitely not me.”
And because I’m a sick bastard, I smile.
“Go on. What are you waiting for? Take your revenge. Do it. I’m begging you.” I hold my arms out to the side again to make myself a bigger target.
Morgan inhales, her eyes narrowing further, and I make my move.
I slide my foot against hers and knock her off balance. The slight pause where Morgan drew breath is my one inroad and I take it to disarm her. Rather than falling away, Morgan steps into me. Surprise flickers through me and I grip her wrist to draw the dagger aside.
She refuses to let go of it no matter how hard I squeeze her tendons. A flash of pain echoes in her bright green eyes before she grits her teeth and bears down, pushing her full weight into the blade.
It skims my throat and snags when I swallow compulsively.
I’m not dead yet.
Her knee lifts between my legs. I see the movement before she executes it and sidestep, avoiding the hit in the balls, tugging her with me. She moves, but her continued grip on the dagger makes it hard to get the upper hand.
All she has to do is pull it to the left and I’m gone. So, I do what any man would. I refuse to let her see me sweat. I push into her and her spine bends with the movement, as flexible as a willow branch, her hand knocked to the side of her head and the dagger with it.
“Well?” I taunt. “What’s the matter? Finding it a little difficult to actually make contact? Come on. Maybe you exhausted yourself on Evie and now you’re finding it tough to navigate a real match.”
“A real match? Please. You are like a disease,” Morgan says through a sneer.
The gesture brings the stark relief of those bruises to attention, the pale ghosts of blue and purple against her freckled skin.
She looks too delicate to cause any kind of real damage, which only swells my heart. I pull her up from the dip and snake my hand around to the opposite side of her wrist. There’s the slightest chance she’ll stab me during the maneuver.
Morgan knows it as well as I do.
She slices for my exposed forearm and the veins there. One good hit and I’ll bleed out.
The tip of the dagger drags from the crook of my elbow to the bone at my wrist. The pain is sharp, fleeting, before it settles in with claws.
“If I’m a disease, then you’ll never be rid of me. I will infect you until there is no way to separate the two of us.”
I push the agony aside and punch out above her hip with my opposite hand. Morgan yelps and her fingers loosen around the handle.
Okay, I’m done playing around. As fun as it’s been to test her.
Yet disarming her is difficult even with my training. If the cost is the scratch on my arm, then I’ll take it. At least I’m not dead. A second decisive punch to her ribs marks the exact path Evie must have taken. The redhead yelps and I go for the dagger while she’s distracted.
The pain gives me the necessary edge to take back the upper hand. I spin her around and grab her, pulling her flush to my chest and banding my arm around her midsection. Grabbing her dominant hand, I angle the blade to a spot between her ribs and keep it there.
Easy to slide it into her heart this way.
Her lungs bellow like a trapped animal, her body vibrating.
“What are you waiting for?” She inhales deeply enough to send the tip into her skin. “Do it. Kill me. Do it now.”
The moment stretches between us. The intensity takes my sanity away.
She’s waiting for me to stab her, wanting me to.
And I’m wondering what that rage tastes like on her perfect lips.
How easy it will be to spin her around again and capture her mouth with mine and swallow her yells.
To take them in my body and absorb them.
She’ll taste like blood, coppery and rich, but what else?
Morgan shivers, bringing me out of my body and into the present moment.
Those kinds of desires get you killed. They are a weakness and a liability, and it doesn’t matter what kind of fire she has, or how she uses it.
It doesn’t matter that she fights like fire over water, as Astrid claimed, an appropriate description. The moment doesn’t matter.
If I try to kiss her, she’ll kill me. I have no idea how she’ll do it but if anyone can find a way, it would be her. This fierce creature the others should be scared of. Mountains should move for her.
And the moment shatters, irrevocably interrupted, when Evie wheezes. The choked, clogged sound of her desperate inhalation should make me worry. Why hasn’t Astrid gotten her to a healer yet?
It only reminds me that we’re not alone.
We’re standing in the middle of an audience, a crowd, and still lost in a sea of tension and want and loathing.