Chapter Ten
Avelina
She wasn’t sure what all cleverness had to do with escaping from the exit the Paladins were currently searching, but she wasn’t the professional outlaw.
Cottonmouth is. Avelina did not have the emotional bandwidth to fight him, not any longer.
Not after the first boy she ever kissed looked her dead in the eyes and leveled a spear at her throat.
Now that hurt. Waking up and finding out she was a monster, covered in blood, having just signed away her soul to a goddess of madness?
Sure, that stung, desperation always hurt a little.
But seeing Lancelot, and having all those memories well up as he threatened to arrest her?
That was a dagger to the chest. There had been a part of her—miniscule, really—that hoped if a paladin saw her, they’d whisk her away safely.
That section of her brain where she saw the paladins as storybook heroes who stood for justice and understanding, it shriveled up and died when she realized that they weren’t there to save her.
She was the monster at the end of the book now. Like Callum said, it was time she started acting like one.
Tala, please, what would you do here? Huh? Give me your strength. Gods above, she missed her best friend.
Callum slunk around the edge of the gate, disappearing into the gateway to the drawbridge.
She considered for a moment that he would drop down into the mote and they might escape right out from under the Paladins’ noses.
Then, her boots ground a piece of gravel against the stone, the sound echoing off all the stone around them.
The guards and two Paladins holding torches aloft spun to the sound and immediately illuminated Callum, who was in front of her.
“Sir! You need to return to your housing.”
“Wait…wait, I know him.”
Shit. Avelina licked her lips, putting herself up against the inside wall.
“Shit.” Was all Callum said before two golden swords erupted in holy flame beside him, illuminating Avelina.
“Cottonmouth, as I live and breathe!” One of the ones staring right at them grinned maliciously.
Think, Avelina, think. If the Paladins put two and two together, the entire Stronghold would come down on them. This would be easier if I even knew what powers I possess. If she even knew a single spell. Her heart hammered in her chest. They were outnumbered.
Only under the sun…at night, when their goddess sleeps, they are unprotected.
Avelina glanced up into the sky and realized all the stars had disappeared. Clouds rolled in and turned the once sparkling horizon into a hungry abyss. Thunder rumbled overhead and she saw sparks of green lightning.
I’m a warlock. Time I start acting like one.
It started with a tickle at the back of her spine.
Pressure built behind her eyes, and it felt like something wanted to escape.
Lightning cut through the sky and stabbed down into the stone between them.
Screams echoed throughout the Stronghold.
Thunder clapped immediately following the flash of sickly green.
The guards were on the ground, scrambling backward from her as she felt something seep out of her.
That pressure left her pores in a gaseous form as she stepped out into the gateway.
The torch-holding Paladins stared with wide eyes.
Her gaze darted to them and their lights went out with a hiss.
Engulfed in darkness, Callum’s claws brushed the back of her arm, but he didn’t stop her as lightning split the sky again and struck down behind the ones holding smoking torches.
They reignited with that same sickly green flame and the men screamed.
Blood dribbled out of their eyes, and they shrieked the whole way back into the Stronghold.
Two blades, roaring in their holy flame, were leveled at her.
Callum’s hand wrapped firmly around her bicep but didn’t tug her, not as the blades steadily lowered.
The Paladins behind their blades trembled.
Blood dribbled from their ears and noses, mouths open as they drew in ragged breaths.
One of them whimpered, “Blessed SunBringer, please no. Please.”
Their begging awakened something cruel in her belly as another crack of lightning struck.
Something in her knew this was the last blow she could cast. Something in her warned her that her limit was a racing pocket watch where she could hear the cursed mechanical arms ticking down.
Steam left her ears, every inch of her skin soaked in sweat as the pressure within her body escaped her in a sudden woosh.
A cloud of mud brown and sickly green surged at the men and they howled all the way back into Parandor.
With them went the last ounce of consciousness in her body…Avelina’s eyes closed and she sank.
And sank.
And sank until she was at the bottom of the ocean.
She stared up through her eyelids at an endless, inky oblivion.
Water brushed over her in gentle waves, pushing her along the gritty sand.
There was a sweet peacefulness, being at the bottom.
She was weightless and yet held against that bottom, like a rock that’d finally settled.
Her dreams were empty, save for the ocean she floated in.
Sun eventually pierced her watery prison and when she opened her eyes, she floated up through the endless sea to the surface.
She came crashing out of her sleep, sputtering and gasping for air.
Drenched in sweat, she fought the blankets wrapped around her till someone fished her out of them.
She flopped against cold, firm scales until her heartbeat regulated.
Avelina’s eyes finally recognized the room she was in. Gloomsdale, the cabin in the swamp. Her heart skipped several beats, leaving her breathless and sluggish, nearly drunken as she stumbled about the bed. Callum put hands on her shoulders and drove her back down onto her rump to recover.
“I’m alive.” What a revelation.
“Ye sure are,” he grumbled.
“I’m.” She sucked in a sharp breath, leaning back against his tail. “Alive.”
“Yeah, well, yer welcome for dragging yer corpse across kingdom come to get us back home alive.”
She stiffened, following the lines of his tail up toward his torso again. He laid curled up as he had before, hands under his head. All his hair draped down his sides like a silky curtain, and he was sporting five o’clock shadow, unlike when she met him. He looked ragged.
“How long was I out?” she murmured.
“Not long. Been a day. You and I came straight home. Didn’ even need to throw them off our scent on account someone scared them back into the castle.
” He finally cracked an eye open to glance her way.
Avelina wasn’t sure where to move, what to do, or what to say.
Accepting that she’d done that was one thing, understanding that she’d driven four Paladins inside with their tails between their legs was a whole other.
“I think I made them see something,” she confessed with a single, heavy exhale.
“Ye think?” He snorted, finally sitting up. His tail shifted around her but didn’t let her go. Instead, he coiled up so that he pinned her in his arms, hands flat against his scales. “You made four grown men piss themselves and run away—”
“What? How do you know they—”
“Avelina,” he barked her name and her mouth clamped shut.
Suddenly, asking him how he knew if they did pee themselves was no longer important.
Not when my name sounds like that coming off his lips.
He let out a long-held breath, eyes closed while he reined it in.
Avelina shrank, curling up into a tight ball.
Ah yes, this is where he hits me. This is where he cuts me up into cubes and feeds me to alligators.
This is where he decides I’m not worth the risk.
Then he opened his eyes and they were steady.
Irked, sharp golden eyes with paper thin slits, but they weren’t furious.
“Let me make this very clear, darlin’, cause I don’t think I have. You. Work. For. Me. Now. Am I clear?”
“Yes, sir,” she muttered, not sure why he was pissed or giving her this warning. He’d made it abundantly clear she worked for him and she had no choice.
“And if we’re cornered with four Paladins, and our escape window is closin’ in, don’t you dare pull yer fuckin’ punches. Kill them.”
“What!” she blurted out, eyebrows knitting down on her face. “You’re upset I didn’t kill them?”
“You had them scramblin’ all over themselves and you had the shot.
But, instead, you forced them runnin’ back like howlin’ pups with their tails between their legs.
Don’t you ever chicken out like that ever again.
It’s kill or be killed out here. Yer not a Paladin’s daughter anymore, Avelina. Yer a dead girl. Yer a warlock.”
“I know that!” She bared her teeth only to shrink back when his face snapped close to hers.
His nose brushed hers and every inch of her insides quivered.
Her toes curled up and she involuntarily inhaled a breath through her nose.
Unfortunately, all that did was fill her lungs with heavy smoke, not from tobacco but like a campfire, an earthy soap, and a touch of sweat.
It wasn’t acidic or vinegary like she was accustomed to, and it left a weird tingle in her belly.
Overactive imagination already toyed with the idea of what he’d smell like if they were skin to skin. If they were hot and sweaty, their mouths meeting in sloppy kisses as they moved together in a tangle of sheets.
“They’ll kill ya without a moment’s hesitation,” he whispered darkly, those slits now large gashes through his glowing orbs. “They’ll gut ya and not cry a single tear over it.”