Chapter 28
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“Girl, if you don’t fucking run and take down Jade, then you’re going to lose everything!”
Poppy’s cry came from the left, and I glanced over in time to watch her bound through a portal, which then shuddered closed at her back.
For a moment I could only stare, caught unawares by her arrival.
Her knees slammed into the ground as she gathered Mike to her side. Exhaustion deepened the wrinkles around her eyes. Twin swords were crossed on her back and her cloak fluttered around the laces of her boots.
“Well?” she hissed, struggling to get them both to their feet. “Find Jade! Stop this. I’ve got Michael.”
Somehow Poppy had enough magic left to save her grandson. She hadn’t listened to me and stayed behind.
Something in my chest cracked and my next blast of magic knocked an entire battalion of soldiers backward. A snarl pried my lips open and I prowled through the destruction.
Dorian hurt Mike.
So I ran, fury bubbling up and erasing everything else. Maybe I’d absorbed those killing shadows. Maybe not. For the first time today there was nothing but darkness inside me.
I wasn’t a prophet. But I sure was pissed the hell off.
And now our enemies would find out the hard way what happened when they tested me.
I sprinted through the remains of camp, and finally the listing spire of Dorian’s tent swam into view. Leaning, but not toppled.
Someone has to protect this kingdom.
Plowing forward with magic and fury, I kept charging. Ignored the way my gaze snagged on rebels I knew as they fought, struggled. Some died. Too many died.
The heavy magic of the Unseelie battered against us repeatedly but my power never failed. It had gone from an inconsistent flicker to a nuclear explosion.
Halfling shifters flew overhead, and between them and the Encantado, the net we wove around the camp tightened and shrank.
Pixies fluttered in the air ahead, using the broken chunks of earth I’d carved to their advantage. My heart swelled when Elfwaite fluttered by and shot me a salute.
Dorian had numbers on his side, I’d give him that. But as my sneakers sent plumes of dust into the air, as I closed in on his tent, those numbers mattered less.
I raised my hand and the path ahead cleared. Spell words escaped my lips and the blockade door, a new addition, disintegrated into useless dandelion fluff.
“Dorian!” My roar shook the ground. “Come out and face me.”
His eerie laughter cut off as a beast with a collar around his neck rounded the corner of the tent. This creature was larger than any of the direwolves I’d seen.
A blunted snout turned up beneath beady eyes, the majority of its face taken up by teeth. Patchwork fur covered its hide, and claws cut up and out from five fingers on each foot. It was the size of a Burrendigger, I realized, but without the tentacles.
There was nothing more terrifying than tentacles.
Or that’s what I thought until a bony protrusion lifted from its tailbone, a scrawny curving limb like a scorpion tail. The creature flashed teeth at me, a snarl promising agony, before it attacked.
I shot off a blast of energy that did nothing but knock it off its feet. A shake of the head had it righting itself, and a shiver raced along my skin.
My next attack hit its skull, and it roared and blinked like I’d thrown dirt in its face.
The tail stabbed at the ground near my feet and dissolved whatever it touched.
Okay. No one was meant to survive that kind of strike.
And whatever Dorian had in the tent, he didn’t want me to see. Was he there?
I angled away from the tail at the last moment but one of its paws slammed into me. I flew sideways, landing on my hip. Pain splintered out from the hit.
It’s not stronger than you.
Swiveling in time spared me from being crushed when the creature pounced. I sucked in a sharp breath and rolled up. The beast circled and I swallowed the thick knot in my throat when its bony tail whipped out again.
It hit a Dryad in its river-birch trunk, pieces of bark flaying off. The Dryad dropped straight back and if I looked, if I pulled my attention away for a second, I knew I’d find nothing but a pile of sawdust.
My wolf urged me to look closer. Her animal instincts understood the intricacies of a hunt.
But this wasn’t serious. This was a test. A way to prove how far I’d come.
Without emotion or without hesitation, because that’s what I was doing. I was going about this fight like the old me, looking for weaknesses to exploit.
Right now, I had to get inside the tent. This beast tried to stop me.
I snorted.
“Sorry about this,” I muttered.
My wolf huffed in agreement but I gave her more freedom, allowing her to drive into the complexities of my Fae and with powers.
The creature tensed to pounce and the moment it went airborne, I reduced it to pieces, the same as the direwolf. Only its metal collar survived.
No more wasting time! Adrenaline stung through my system, tightening my ribs, and I stepped through the opening into the tent to face Jade.
Except Jade wasn’t there.
My gaze fell on the shield of thickened air decorated with a lattice of more ancient spells. He’d strung Melia up on the other side.
Our gazes met and I lifted a hand to drop the shield, but she shook her head, eyes dark.
A metal clamp affixed to both ears muffled her words. My gut dropped. What did he do to you?
Heavy chains kept Melia suspended in midair, her arms outstretched and her legs locked together. A swollen black bruise spread from her left eye all the way into her hairline.
“He’s going to die for this,” I said as I ran toward the shield. “Hold on, Meli.”
Dorian obviously set it to keep Melia inside, but also to make it harder for me to get through. To distract me and keep me out of the fight. He surely wouldn’t anticipate this taking any significant energy to break, but he only needed long enough to gain the advantage.
A fresh wave of curses fell from my lips as I swung my power out toward the spell.
The white glow lodged in the anchoring points, sparks flying where it touched. Melia screamed at me to stop, shaking her head until tears flew free and cut damp trails down her cheeks.
The interior of the tent spelled like him, I thought with a grimace. All artifice and pungent musk dampened through with florals.
Disgusting.
Another wave of magic melded with the first—there was no time to take this slow, not even for Melia—and the first crack erupted from the corner. It cascaded through the spell one piece after another until the entire shield dissolved.
It fell away and in the space between heartbeats I ran forward.
I cast a shield behind us to keep anyone else from coming into the field. I had an inkling of what Dorian was up to but first things first, I had to get Melia out of here.
She fought against the chains, already bleeding from multiple places. Her skin chafed where the cuffs tightened. Another thought, gentler this time, snapped all the chains at the same time, and I reached out to catch Melia when she dropped.
She sagged against me, my arms going around her automatically.
“Hold on, let me get this gag off you.” I saw red.
It was an archaic device, meant to muffle not only her voice but her magic. The moment the metal fell free, Melia sucked in air, a deep vibration twanging through her body.
“I didn’t tell him anything” were the first words out of her mouth. She’d gone paler than I’d ever seen her. “I didn’t tell him a single word about the rebellion.”
“What did he do to you?”
I replaced magic with my fingertips and scored them across the cuts and bruises over her face. Jade hadn’t done what some sadists do where they relegate the obvious wounds to places they won’t show. He’d gone at Melia with probably gleeful abandon.
She hugged me tight and her trembling became mine. “It doesn’t matter.”
“It matters to me!” I didn’t return the squeeze. If I hurt her any more—
“He’s not very creative, I can tell you that. He likes to use brute force, but he also has a way with spells I’d love to study if he were literally anyone else.” Melia fixed me with a fierce look, belied by the bruise around her eye. “I’m fine. I knew you’d come.”
“He basically rolled out the welcome mat.” I shrugged. “Sorry if I got gore on you.”
“It doesn’t matter as long as you get me the hell out of here.”
Dorian had tortured my best friend for information. No matter her gratitude, as I was always going to come for her anyway, I now imagined at least twenty new ways to make him suffer.
I kept Melia at my side, blasting my way out of the tent and scattering anyone close enough to get in our way.
The fight spread out around us and I took down another wave of warriors. I hadn’t heard even a whisper of Dorian’s laughter recently.
Where was he?
A flash of red and there was Coral, bleeding from several claw marks and tearing through more Unseelie. A body went flying overhead and landed with a harsh wail.
“Come on.” I pushed Melia ahead of me but her body refused to move fast, hampered by her injuries.
I slashed anyone near us as I backtracked to where I’d left Poppy, to where those shadows had bound Marsh and Nora and—
“Ah, exactly the person I wanted to see.”
A body stepped in front of us and before I reacted, the female cast ice at my feet to bind me, to hold me down.
Melia yelped. I broke the enchantment immediately but then, oh, then I got a good look at the speaker and my jaw dropped.
Her sly smile announced her presence. Selene Montrosse greeted us with the weapon of her choice, her words, black hair cut to chin length and slightly curled around her pointed ears. Deep silver eyes pinned me in place.
The devil was exceptionally beautiful with warm honeyed skin and a designer dress.
“Please, darling, don’t leave now. The party is just getting started and there’s still so much fun to be had,” Selene said.
I managed to shove Melia out of the way before blasting Selene with magic. The attack gave my friend a chance to escape but Selene didn’t counter the way I thought she would.
She leaped aside from the attack and shook her head, annoyed at my retaliation. I growled and sent another wave of light at her but she only grunted and snapped her fingers. Her shield held up much better than any of the others.
I shifted my claws and pierced through it, a hot knife through warm butter, already tasting her hot blood on my lips.
I never made contact.
“I’m not here to fight with you,” she said, too calm for someone in the middle of a war zone. “There’s something you’ll want to hear. Let’s talk, or I’ll activate the spell Dorian lodged in your friend’s spine and she’ll be dead before you can blink.”
Don’t trust her.
My wolf and I were in complete agreement.
Yet I stalled, caught between her ultimatum and the vision of Melia’s death in my head.
“You’re lying.” I dragged my claws toward her belly and this time she wasn’t fast enough.
I ripped through clothing and Selene glared down at the tears with amplified irritation, as though these would be a pain in her ass to fix.
“Are you willing to take that chance? You speak to me, and she goes free. The spell will erase once she makes it out of camp. If you don’t, I’ll activate her and your friend goes boom.” Selene waggled her fingers in the air like fireworks.
“Tavi—” Melia started, huddling close.
“Sit,” Selene commanded. “We have things to discuss.”