Chapter Forty #2
The man got his feet under him and dragged in a gasping breath. He stopped struggling, stopped moving altogether, but for the stricken glance he shot over his shoulder at Adeline. She swallowed back the rising tightness.
“This night isn’t going to end the way you imagine, Captain. Avette will be in no position to pardon your senseless violence, I can promise you that.”
She let her suggestion hang in the frigid air; let him think of what might become of Avette’s position, and where that would leave him.
She saw the moment it landed, the flash of understanding in his iron eyes.
Doran released the man just as slowly as Adeline released her taut breath.
The man spun, eyes wide with awe and gratitude, before he turned to run again—and impaled himself directly on Doran’s blade.
Adeline caught her own scream in her palm.
Her heartbeat drummed in her ears as Doran let the man sink slowly to the ground.
The ice beneath him splintered into crimson fractals, a hundred rusted daggers fanning out beneath his body.
And then, with a booted knee to his chest, Doran gently shoved the man off the end of his sword and watched, dispassionate, as he keeled sideways and stilled.
Dead.
An innocent, under the Beiras’ protection. Her mother’s protection. Her own.
And she had failed him.
“I think I’ll take my chances,” said Doran softly.
Adeline flew at him.
The Captain’s face came alight, without a doubt, the most joyous that she had ever seen him.
He kept his stance open and unguarded until the very last moment, then swung out and shoved her backward with a trill of steel on steel.
Adeline’s feet slid out from beneath her, and Doran’s weight sent her sprawling, breath bursting so viciously from her that stars flared in her vision.
She had a fleeting impression of their last spar, Adeline winded and flat on the ice just as she was now, Doran prowling over her like a ravenous beast. He had dragged out his victory then, relished every moment of her pain and fear in full view of her mother and all of Eisalaan.
There was no one now to watch his victory; no one to demand an end to his cruelty.
As though he could read her memories, Doran grinned.
“Ever the meddling brat,” he said.
His grin became a vicious gritting of teeth as he swung his sword back, and Adeline did not think.
Did not decide. The storm erupted from her skin with a grinding rush of roots and leaves and roaring winds, and by the time she managed to wrestle back the unending flow of magic, Doran’s face was a breath from hers. He was rigid with shock.
And tangled in vines.
They stared at one another, each of them panting with entirely different exertions.
Doran made no snide remark; he simply stared down at Adeline from where he hovered, strapped in place by tangles of green that hung from the distant shards of ice above them.
His face worked furiously, fingers flexing until, with the great huff of a raging bull, he ripped his arms free and fell atop Adeline, snarling.
She had barely a moment to throw her arms up and block his full weight before he was scrabbling at her throat.
Not choking, but searching for a source, a treasure she did not have.
“How,” he hissed over her gritted shrieks of effort. “How, you little bitch?”
He tore at the front of her frilly dress, ice pearls popping free from her bodice and snowing down around them.
She tightened her jaw deliberately, and he reared back so fast she did not register the pain of his palm across her face until the crack had cleared the air.
Her skin roared, aflame beneath the sting, but she only bit down harder on her own tongue.
“How?”
Doran shrieked the single command in her face, spittle flying.
“You backed the wrong Beira,” she finally snarled back.
“Not fucking likely.” Doran wound his grip in the torn lace of her sleeve and yanked her shoulders off the ground, so hard she could hear the groan of her spine in her own ears.
“What other choice was there? Your whore mother opened her legs for any foreign fucker with the right title. Her one and only pure-bred heir will never bear a royal child of her own.”
He yanked her closer still, his cold nose brushing over her own almost lovingly.
“Then there’s you. Half a Beira, although you made your share of the Snow Queen’s legacy count. Made her proud, didn’t it, to see you rutting with the fucking fishes?”
“And that’s why you chose her,” said Adeline, then caught her breath in a gasp when Doran gave her another swift shake. “Because of what my sister and I might choose to do in our own beds? Not because Avette gives you free license to be fucking deranged?”
Doran grinned, every gritted tooth gleaming near as bright as the delight in his eyes.
“Can’t it be both?”
And then he was choking her, his scarred hands thick beneath her chin, heavy, his weight bearing down entirely on her throat until her lungs swelled in her chest, two grapes ripe to burst. Her magic thrashed, but the pain was a brick wall she could not reach through.
Agony snatched at her vision in waves as she flailed and kicked beneath him.
Her brain was slowing and sluggish—she thought she had reached for his throat, but her hands were still frozen in claws around his wrists.
The pain reached a crest, and just as her sight went black, something did burst within her.
But it was not her lungs. She was breathing again, albeit weakly, her eyes blurring back into focus to find that Doran had faltered above her.
His eyes bulged just as she knew her own must be.
She had gone for his throat after all, she thought dimly, or a part of her had—her magic reaching where her hands could not.
Doran released one hand to scrabble at his own throat, the other tightening around hers.
The pain and pressure of his grip was excruciating, but it was not enough; she could breathe, she could think, she could feel for her magic and spool it up within her.
Her vines wound around Doran’s throat, tighter, tighter, so tight she could see his skin wrinkling in the grip of her magic.
In her childhood nightmares, Doran had been a man made of steel; sharp and colourless, all the life and light leeched out of him until he was a twin to the blade he so worshipped.
It seemed impossible now that there should be any colour left, but she watched it flood his face, watched in horror as his entire head turned purple, skin swelling.
His grasp on Adeline weakened enough for her to smack his hand away, freed at last. So she could not say why her first instinct was not to throw him off her—but to reach for the vines around his throat and tug.
He only lurched forward, but she tore at the ropes her flailing mind had called forth, ripping feverishly until Doran was free and gasping.
She did throw him off then, bucking so he slipped sideways and landed with a breathless thud on the ground beside her.
Adeline rolled and struggled to her knees, slipping on the ice and then again on her many layers of skirts.
She’d just gotten one foot beneath her when the entire room tilted, and she had barely a split second to throw her hands out before her cheek hit the marble.
Her pores roared their outrage, and all around her was a flurry of green and brown.
Adeline felt herself wrenched physically from the ground and thrown onto her back, teeth rattling with the impact.
Her eyes screwed forcefully shut, but when she opened them, she saw only the splay of Doran’s fingers, his entire broad palm shoving her head back against the biting marble.
She clawed and bucked and screamed, but his weight was too much, and she was so stupid.
So fucking arrogant to think that a clumsy grasp on magic and a few years in the training room would be enough to take down a man who outweighed her for size, years, experience, and sheer fucking will to cause harm.
“I won’t ask you to yield this time, Princess,” Doran panted. She caught flashes between his fingers; a canopy of green, his arm rising over his head, steel glinting in the air. “I’ll take your advice, once so eloquently offered. I’ll fucking make you.”
Panic screamed through her, a base and animal fear erupting beneath her skin.
It ballooned inside her, rising between her ears in one drawn-out howl that nearly drowned out the screams all around her.
Someone was calling her name from a great distance, and the desperate pitch of it chilled her crashing blood.
The sword whistled in the air for all of a heartbeat before its song was ripped clean away, and only a muffled clatter took its place.
Adeline was not aware she’d thrown up her arms in defence until they fell limp at her sides, her body feeling the loss of Doran’s weight before her mind could catch up.
She blinked up at the boughs and swaying young leaves of a small clearing, confusion dulling her senses for long enough that she didn’t immediately pick apart the nearby scuffle from the rustle of her trees.
A scream tugged at her attention, snapping like an elastic band, the sharp return of it sending her scrambling to her elbows and halfway upright.
Her body went rigid where she lay propped in her bed of moss and frost.
Towering over her was a woman, statuesque and terribly beautiful.
Her pale face and gleaming fangs were lit in an ethereal green glow that emanated from beneath a threadbare cloak as she stared curiously down at Adeline.
She held Doran almost absentmindedly by his cloak, his armour clattering as he clawed once more at his own throat.
His eyes bulged, red rims vivid against the mottled grey of his skin, and with his every strangled breath, droplets of water burst between his spluttering lips.