14. Aldrin #2
Belladonna slams her staff into the ground.
Magic distorts the air around its length, pouring out of her hands where she grips it, then that infernal rain of silver light falls around us in a heavy torrent.
I let out a long string of curses as I pour all of my power into my sword and use its reservoir completely, throwing out an air shield to protect myself against those needles of the most toxic poison and lightning.
Sweat drips down my face as they cut through the many layers of the barrier and I work hard to patch them up again.
This fight is a losing battle.
I have gone up against this rain before, but it has never been this torrential. It takes all my focus, all my magic, just to survive it.
I am left wide open.
Belladonna’s magic flares a second time. Blackness covers the skin of her hands. The scales of her armor ripple and shift. Long, ribbon-like whips shoot out from her palms and each notch of her spine. They wrap around me, catching me like a tiny sprite in a spider’s web.
I expect to be squeezed to death.To feel my ribs creak then snap as those whips constrict around me.
Instead they start to…undress me. The tip of one black appendage flicks off my helmet while multiple others unbuckle the straps of my armor.
I have no idea what horror she has planned for me, but I don’t intend on waiting to find out. I am going to fucking die here if I don’t take a huge risk. I can sense Keira’s heart hammering painfully, so gods-damned fast it might burst, while she watches on helplessly.
I will not abandon her to her fate. I will not leave her a widow.
Belladonna’s eyes have become moving quicksilver now, and black runes thrash across her skin.
Her legs shake ever so slightly as she holds onto both wields, the rain and whatever else she is preparing.
I hope for my sake that she is overextending herself greatly.
That she cannot manage a third burst of complex magic.
I suck the energy of my shields back into my sword and burn raw magic to let out a beam of intense light.
The wield devours all the power left at my disposal.
It is enough to scold my skin and burn my eyes.
My unshaped magic disintegrates the fall of rain, and the white light has Belladonna falling backward, screaming as the skin of her face cracks and peels away.
The scent of burning flesh fills the air.
She drops her wields. The toxic needles stop falling and the whips constricting me turn to smoke.
I am left a heaving, shaking mess, doubled over my knees.
My power is almost completely gone. A heavy fog of fatigue settles over my mind and for a heartbeat, I can’t hear anything over the ringing in my head.
Aldrin! Look behind you! Keira shrieks, her whole body jolting with shock, the waves of it slamming into me.
I whirl around to find a tall high fae stalking toward me, brimming with violent tension.
He has black hair with thick streaks of blue pulled back into a knot, the sides of his head shaved and long tendrils escaping his messy bun.
Matching runes swirl across his temples and over his neck.
It is his piercing violet eyes that capture me, eyebrows slashing down over them and sheer hate burning within.
“I’m guessing no one told you that the Assassins of Belladonna are led by a Mistress and Master of Death,” he growls. “And I don’t like the way you just hurt my mate.”
“Valentine,” Belladonna croaks. “This one was meant to be my plaything. You had your turn last time.”
I glance back at her. The smooth skin of her face is almost completely healed, but her throat still has a huge, gaping hole burned through it, covered mostly by her hand.
She is recovering fast. Then I notice them: the shadows billowing off Valentine and encircling her, lending her power and matter for healing.
We can do the same, I’m sure of it! Keira says frantically. I can send you my magic.
She doesn’t wait for my reply, just forces her raw power down our bond. It trickles into me, clearing my head and allowing me to stand straighter, but it isn’t enough to fuel any wields.
Buy me time, she pleads. You are so far away.
Her magic hits a choke point in the bridge between us and much of it sloshes off the sides to fall away into oblivion, wasted. The little that reaches me trickles in slowly, but it is better than nothing.
Keep going, I encourage her. It’s working. I don’t tell her that there is little I can do against two of the most powerful Assassins of Belladonna, even with a magic boost.
“I will not stand by and watch while he burns you alive.” Valentine doesn’t take his eyes off me as he pulls a short metal pole from his belt and flicks his wrist. Twin blades of crackling starlight materialize, forming a double-headed spear.
Its tips are huge with ornately curved edges.
“But you are right: this is your fight. Allow me to herd him for you.”
“Do you think your mate is too weak to fight me by herself, Valentine?” I throw the words at him, hoping they will make him back down.
He laughs. “She is stronger than you and I combined. Belladonna likes to play with her food, but I am not a patient man.”
Valentine is like a whirlwind as he comes for me, swinging that spear rapidly in a single hand.
The blades leave a sharp arc of glowing light in the air as they move.
His weapon slams down toward me and I bring my sword up just in time to keep it from slicing through my shoulder.
Sparks shower over me as his blade slides across the length of mine, and those drops of starlight burn all the way through my armor and into my skin.
The agony of it is a shock to my system.
He smirks, his head close to mine. “Do you feel the burn of the poison yet?”
He rains multiple attacks down on me with that spear, and I narrowly evade each one.
My movements become sluggish, my brain groggy, slowing my senses.
Electricity ignites a path through my nerves, dancing with fire and making my limbs numb.
I can’t afford to let any more of that poison drip from his blade into my body.
Valentine circles me while my heart rate slows dangerously. “You’d be a dead man by now if Dante hadn’t improved your tolerance to our poisons. Shame that he had to waste his time on you.”
I focus what little magic I have left on meticulously burning away each particle of toxin in my blood, just the way this order trained me, but it is slow work that consumes too much of my attention.
Let me do it, Keira begs. I will clear your blood while you fight. She joined me in enough of my lessons to know what to do.
“While this has been entertaining, I find myself getting bored now.” Valentine deactivates his spear, returning it to a simple metal rod. Shadows pour out of his body. The ropes of them ensnare me, pinning my arms to my sides and dragging me to my knees.
He squats to look me straight in the eye, but when he speaks, it is not to me.
“Belladonna. Finish this now, so we can get to more important matters.”
I burst one of my bindings, followed by a second, because the fool has stopped poisoning me. He chuckles deeply as two more fail, then his eyes flick over my shoulder and my heart stops.
Heeled footsteps approach.
Cold hands grab my face, turning my head until I am looking into Belladonna’s silver eyes. The black runes are crowded on her skin, overlapping each other, and her lips have turned black. Not a single drop of magic stirs at my call, all of it expended. The ropes of shadow reform around me.
“This is what happens to warlords who come here and try to take what is mine,” she purrs in the softest whisper, then bends low and presses her lips to my cheek.
Confusion blooms through me, right before searing pain erupts from the spot.
“They call this death’s kiss, because nothing is more poisonous than the skin of my Nightmare. ”
My blood turns to ice as my vision blurs.
Toxins flood my body, rapidly multiplying and attacking with an aggression I have never experienced before. They consume everything. My magic and my life force.
All I can see is her black form walking away from me, those long ribbons extending out from her body, her tail darting. I don’t realize I am falling until I slam against the ground, landing on my side.
I can’t move.
I need to get up.To keep fighting for my life.But I can’t make my muscles respond. Not even a twitch.
For the life of me, I cannot remember who I am battling. Does Finan have Keira locked in his palace? Is the Winter King invading my court?
I need to get up.
“Such a waste, Belladonna,” a masculine voice rumbles. It sounds so far away. “We could have used this one.”
My heart slows until it stops beating.
Each panted breath comes shorter, shallower and further between.
An agony like none I’ve felt before rips through me, lighting up every inch of my body, making it spasm, until that too dims. There is crying inside my head.
A voice wailing and screaming at me to get up.
A soul-deep grief rolls through me, piled with hysteria, but those emotions do not belong to me.
Layer by layer, they float away on the wind, until they are just a distant whisper.
Blackness crowds around the edges of my awareness. Dark pinpricks form across my visual field, half blinding me. A bone-chilling coldness seeps all the warmth out of me. I can no longer feel my body, but that doesn’t seem to be such a bad thing. The pain is gone.
I am so incredibly tired, I could sleep for an eternity. There is a deep part of me that wants to give in to the beckoning calm and peace, away from the agony of my flesh, but something holds me back, with claws sunk into my soul. Someone still needs me. And so I hesitate.
“Well fought.” A loud clapping rings out, paired with a deep, masculine voice, jarring what is left of my senses.
It’s not Valentine. A new silhouette walks out before my eyes.
The strike of a cane against the floor tells me exactly who has entered the arena.
“Really, Belladonna. Did you have to kill him? You have no manners at all…no sense of diplomacy.”
“It’s the rules,” she replies with nonchalance. “He shouldn’t have challenged me.”
I slip away, until there is nothing left but bursts of light among the blackness and that most distant pleading inside my head. She tries to hold on to me, but I am dragging her with me down into the abyss.
A sudden warmth blooms through my chest like a fire roaring to life, jolting my entire body, then my heart gives a feeble beat, followed by another.
The pain of being sliced apart from the inside by a vicious poison flares as the numbness recedes from my limbs.
I drag in a ragged breath, filling my lungs, as my vision slowly returns.
As my brain registers that I died. My body did at least.
But somehow, I am still here, in this fighting ring, defeated without a drop of my blood spilled.
Oh, Aldrin! Thank the gods! Keira cries out. Trauma lashes through her, making her shake violently. I hate that I did that to her. Again.
There is a hand on the bare skin of my neck, warm and large, controlling the very particles of my blood, forcing it to move around my body and making my heart beat even after the flesh died.
That foreign power attacks the poisons plaguing me, purging them from my system.
It is an immense, specialized magic that succeeds where my own would have failed even if my reservoirs were full.
There is only one fae with such magic.
I rear up, gasping, desperately scanning the space around me for the next attack. Would they be cruel enough to kill and resurrect me again and again?
He is crouched over me. Leonardo. The infamous King of the Starlight Court, with a reputation as black as the lands he rules over.
“Aldrin.” He drags my name out. “I have been following your plight very closely these last decades. You have finally decided to take action and that has sparked my interest. I would like to offer you a bargain you cannot refuse. One that could be beneficial to both our courts.”
My skin crawls. I do not want to be at the mercy of this brutal king, one who rules over Nightmares and vicious monsters, but I have little choice. This fae is just as likely to drink my blood and devour my organs as he is to offer me a bargain that is actually beneficial to my people.
He holds out a hand and I take it, hiding my shudder as he drags me to my feet.