Chapter 30
MAE
Asmo funnels us into a dank alleyway. The sound of screams and the metallic scent of blood hang in the air. I turn, adrenaline and the burn of my magic beginning to take hold, but Asmo grabs my forearm.
“Wait,” he says, turning me to face him. “How are you feeling?”
Despite the adrenaline, my pulse races and my palms are already slick with sweat. “Nervous,” I admit.
“Come on,” he scoffs. “You’ve taken on an army of cambions before and you fought off the First Witch.”
But his words only remind me of my failures. “The army of cambions nearly killed Elle, and Cora nearly killed me,” I grumble.
“We handled those witches at Bouldercrest without a problem,” he says. Yeah, when that Cursed wolf sunk its teeth into my leg? Asmo pulls me into his arms. “You’re powerful and you’re smart. We can do this,” he says, brushing my lower lip with his thumb.
We can do this, not just me. I don’t have to do this by myself.
I have my…whatever Asmo is to me to help me.
Boyfriend feels too trivial. We’ve been through too much together.
Partner, maybe. Because that’s what he feels like—he’s been with me through everything and stood beside me through it all.
I press my lips to his, wishing I could melt into him.
“You’re their queen, Mae,” he whispers against my lips. “Show them.”
He’s right. I am the rightful High Queen. I am of Wrena’s line. I have a well of power in me that continues to grow, and I grow stronger every day.
Show them.
My boot heels strike the cobbled streets as we fly toward the square. Rage courses through me, and my magic churns as the screams grow louder and the scent of blood grows stronger.
But it stutters when I come to a stop at the end of the alleyway.
Three bodies hang from the gallows, their feet floating as they gently sway from nooses. Below them, three more lay face down in still pools of blood, arms reaching out, as if they were slain while trying to save those above from their fate.
They swing in a rhythm known only to them. I’d like to think it’s to the tune of a beloved song, or maybe the ghost of an “I love you” to their partner as they thought of their goodbyes.
Innocent people executed—my people executed. People with families, with dreams, with jobs, and favorite foods and colors and laughs and dog-eared books. For what? Having an opinion that doesn’t match Marik’s?
A hand grazes my shoulder. “I’ll cut them down,” Asmo says. “Use your wind to slow their fall.”
He stands beneath the first body—a female with tight black curls that tumble to her waist. With a slash of his shadow sword, she falls. The magic that once felt so difficult to summon bursts through me and slows her landing. Asmo catches her with ease and lays her down gently.
When all three are down, I walk to those lying in pools of their own blood.
The blood has turned tacky and sticks to the male as I flip him.
He looks like he’s sleeping, his long eyelashes resting against lifeless cheeks.
I turn the other two over and commit their features to memory. I will not forget.
I step to the gallows and summon fire, resting my hand on its wooden platform. The blaze takes hold, and my flames lick and bite and consume the structure within moments. Heat radiates from the writhing mass of smoke, and I move away.
From the alleyway, the gallows appeared huge, like some monster that might scoop me in its meaty fist and hang me with the crook of its finger.
But up close, it feels more like a stray dog that can be scared away.
Like it was just a terrifying shadow that’s actually nothing at all.
Something that can be beaten. Destroyed.
Just like Marik and Cora.
“Princess,” Asmo says, a warning and a reminder.
“I know.” If we don’t get moving, more people will die.
My throat burns as I scan their features once more—a crooked nose, high cheekbones, a birthmark in the shape of a leaf—before turning to the square.
It’s chaos. Cambions and the Cursed race through the streets while creatures resembling massive bats fly through the sky.
Elemental, Fae, and streaks of dark magic zing through the air, finding purchase against their victims or striking the buildings around us.
Glass shatters, wood splinters, and blood spills.
Citizens stand their ground against witches and cambions, clutching anything that can be used as a weapon—broken chair legs, wooden stakes, frying pans.
Across the square, Lower House members dressed in fighting leathers spill through another alleyway, weapons and hands raised. Amaris leads them. She wastes no time, slashing the back of a cambion’s neck with her sword.
I narrowly avoid the ball of black magic that flies toward me. It hits the ground with a hiss, charring it upon its contact. A raven-haired witch stares at me from the roof of a bakery, her telltale black aura writhing around her.
I grin at her in invitation.
She leaps from the roof, landing on her feet with an otherworldly grace, and immediately begins her attack. I barely get my shield up, but every blow slowly eats away at it. She doesn’t let up, a grin splitting her face as each one lands. Asmo is right—I can’t attack her from inside my shield.
She fires another shot. I drop the shield and duck, summoning wind and fire, sending it blazing toward her. She leaps out of its path with a giggle, then fires at me again. I dodge it. I funnel more magic into the path of wildfire, but it’s too slow to catch her.
She turns back to me, hand raised to attack again. But she doesn’t get the chance.
Asmo slams his hands over her ears and sets her ablaze. Her shriek dies as her body slumps against him.
One witch down.
Across the square, two Lower House hybrids fight another witch. Although they’re hurling fire at her, she dodges each blow with effortless speed, while somehow still hurling strikes at them. Her back is turned to us. Good news for us, bad news for her.
“Want the honors this time?” Asmo asks me, a smirk on his face.
I don’t bother responding. I sprint toward the witch and leap, my palms already on fire. I wrap my hands around her and force my flames down her throat. Her body collapses, and I tumble with her.
Two witches down. Eight to go.
The hybrids offer me a quick thanks, then speed off in search of another target.
A few feet away, three Panthera citizens face off against a witch, her all-black leathers shielding her from everything they fire at her.
I watch in horror as she hurls a writhing ball of black magic at the group and finds her mark, catching a female hybrid in the gut. Her body thuds as it hits the ground.
Asmo leaps into the air and shifts into his serpent form.
He races to the witch and rips her head from her body.
I blink. Between the shadow sword and whatever that was, just how powerful is Asmo?
Someone screams for help, and it snaps me out of my thoughts.
I rush to the fallen female, who now lays still.
I close her eyes and commit her face to memory.
“Watch out!” someone shrieks. Two cambions race toward me. These fucking things.
I summon water and douse them, then summon an icy wind to freeze them. I stab both of them where their eyes should be, and they explode into icy shards.
A witch jumps from a nearby roof and lands directly on Asmo’s serpentine back. He thrashes, but it’s no use. Her sharp nails are embedded into his scales. If she summons her magic…
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
The square blurs past me and I jump onto Asmo’s back, then pounce on the witch’s. She wrenches herself from Asmo’s scales and reaches back for me, razor-sharp nails grazing my cheek. I hiss as pain erupts and the warmth of blood spreads. Asmo writhes beneath me, and the witch and I go flying.
My head smacks onto the street with a burst of pain.
I blink furiously, hot blood pouring down my face.
The witch reaches for me, and I brace for the feeling of her nails raking across my skin again.
But it doesn’t come. A sword slashes through her neck, and her head goes flying.
A blond Fae male stands behind her, holding an enormous sword, now covered in the witch’s blood.
His golden hair reminds me of August, but his eyes are pits of black.
He offers me a bloodstained hand and helps me to my feet.
Four witches down.
“You okay?” he asks.
I nod. “Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it,” he says before taking off and disappearing into the crowd.
Nearby, a Lower House hybrid is in a losing battle against another witch, barely able to fend off the her blows as she advances upon him. Asmo slithers toward them, unlocking his massive jaw and sinking his teeth into the witch’s side. She shrieks and tries to turn, to escape, but she can’t.
Her shriek turns into a full-blown scream when she sees me running toward them.
Music to my ears. My flames already burn on my palms. I shove them down her throat, suffocating her and burning her from the inside out.
She stops squirming, and I pull back my fire before it reaches Asmo.
It wouldn’t be very helpful if I set him on fire before we had a chance to figure out what’s between us.
He shifts back into his human form. The witch tumbles to the ground as his fangs disappear.
His hands fly to cup my face. “Shit,” he curses as he surveys the cut on my cheek.
“I’m fine,” I say, shaking his hands off me, but the movement makes my cheek throb. “Only five more,” I say.
“You’ve been keeping count, princess?” he asks with a smirk, but he watches me carefully.
A massive black bat shrieks through the air, swooping down with large, membranous wings. Asmo and I duck, narrowly avoiding his reaching claws. If I were in my actual body, he would have struck my antlers.
“What the fuck are those things?” I hiss as I watch it circle the sky.
“Drabar,” Asmo says grimly.
It swoops from the sky and hovers over two witches standing on a nearby roof, who both fire at citizens on the ground.
“Cowards,” I mutter as I scan the scene. “They won’t even come down and fight.”
“Then let’s go to them,” Asmo says with a wicked grin.
My eyes catch on a group of cambions surrounding three Lower House members. They stand with their backs against each other as they try to fight the cambions off, but there are too many. They’re going to be overwhelmed in a matter of seconds.
“Meet you there,” I say, leaving him and rushing toward the crowd of devil children, daggers drawn.
I slash the necks of two cambions simultaneously, then stab two more.
Some of the hollow-eyed freaks turn to me, giving the Lower House hybrids the perfect opportunity to strike with their backs turned.
More cambions fall to the ground. I summon fire and torch them, risking no chances of them popping back up.
One of them leaps up and sinks its sharp teeth around a female hybrid’s exposed arm. She screams and tries to pull it from her arm, but the cambion is latched onto her.
A flash of red hair flits in my mind, but it’s not Elle being bitten this time. I shake the memory away and rush to the hybrid. The cambion dies with a burst of ice and the kiss of my dagger.
It crumbles away from her. “Thanks,” she says, exhaustion lining her voice. She turns away from me and strikes another cambion, sword embedding in its neck.
I scan the scene. Asmo is locked in battle with the two witches on the roof, but I don’t see the remaining witches.
Bodies litter the ground, witches, cambions, drabar, Cursed, and Panthera citizens. Too many lay lifeless in the town square. I spot two fallen bodies in the familiar black leathers of the Lower House hybrids, both of them laying facedown, crimson blood pooling around them.
“Help!” someone—a child—screams. “Please!”
I don’t even think about it. The scream comes from an alley. I rush toward it, jumping over piles of trash and puddles of still water and blood. I follow the sounds of sobbing down the narrow back alley. Every movement jars the wound on my cheek. I’m going to need a healer.
“Mama,” the voice whimpers just ahead. My heart squeezes. Was their mother one of the many laying dead in the square?
The crying grows louder, then fades slightly as I run past a bakery.
I backtrack, stopping in front of its ivory front door, the fancy scrawl of the bakery name painted in bright pink in the center.
The cries are coming from inside. I peer through the bay window.
There are scattered chairs and half-eaten croissants, but no crying child.
I step inside, pulling my daggers out just in case. I pass small bistro tables covered in white linens, plates of food left in the chaos. In the back hallway, boxes are filled with imported fruits and unopened bags of flour. A soft glow comes from another room at the end of the hall.
“Shh, it’s okay, Mama,” the voice whispers as it chokes back tears.
The child sits on the ground in the empty, windowless room. A little girl. A lit candle sits on the floor beside her, illuminating filthy clothing, covered in crimson and black blood. Her hair is dark and stringy, hanging limply down her back. She looks down at her hands as they quiver in her lap.
“Hey,” I whisper, but her head remains angled downward, toward her shaking hands in her lap. “Hey,” I repeat. “Are you okay?”
I take a step forward. “Do you nee—” The girl’s head snaps up. The hair on the back of my neck stands. I drop my daggers and scream for my magic, but I’m too late.
Cold hands clamp around my arms, and my magic stutters at the touch.
The girl stares up at me with dark eyes and a cruel smile, then rises to her feet. Her dark aura writhes around her as she shifts.
Into a witch.
“Got you,” she whispers.