Chapter Two #2
Aurelie spun, but not fast enough. Claws tore across her side, sending her sprawling to the ground. Her armor dulled the blow, but the sharp pain in her shoulder knocked the breath from her lungs.
A shadow loomed above her, bloodshot eyes gleaming with hunger. The demon was an envyborn. Its forked tongue flicked in anticipation, scenting the air for fear.
Aurelie refused to show it. One kill was all it would take to secure the bond and gain the power of Glory.
One kill, and she would accomplish what her brother had died trying to achieve.
She drove her blade into the demon’s ribs, but the envyborn pivoted at the last second, sidestepping the blow and seizing her by the hair.
Aurelie’s skull jolted as the demon slammed her against a wall, pain lancing through her body.
She staggered to one knee, biting back a cry as she struck her blade down.
The steel connected with the demon’s foot, earning a shriek that drove into her ears like knives, so sharp that it nearly stole her focus.
The demon tightened its grip, its long nails grazing the skin at the back of her neck.
“Bond with me,” it hissed, pressing its forearm against her windpipe, “and I’ll let you live.”
“I’d rather die.” Aurelie dug her blade deeper. While the demon’s hiss acknowledged its pain, it held its ground and squeezed tighter. Aurelie despised her own involuntary gasps as she struggled for air.
“I won’t ask again.” The demon’s bloodshot eyes were dilated, its hunger unmistakable.
Aurelie had no choice but to drop her longsword, useless from this position. She clawed instead at her belt, fingers straining for the dagger sheathed at her side. Her muscles screamed with the effort, and with the last of her breath she wrapped her fingers around the hilt and yanked it free.
However, it wasn’t her blade, but a golden dagger that drove into the demon’s chest and spilled its blood onto the cobblestones. The envyborn released her, its claws slackening.
Aurelie collapsed to all fours, gulping in desperate breaths as the demon fell. Glory pulsed from the wound, spreading like veins of molten silver as the envyborn was consumed.
She whirled to face Azriel, whose dagger was lodged in the demon’s heart. “That kill was mine!”
The angel was unflinching. “That’s not how it looked from where I’m standing.”
Her frustration burned hotter as she retrieved her sword, embers extinguished beneath the angry stomp of her boots. “If I die tonight, it will be because you stole my chance at a bond!”
“If you die tonight, it will be because you weren’t worthy of the bond.
” When Azriel spoke in her mind, it was as if the sky itself were splitting open at the seams. She’d known the angel all her life—he was a second father to her—and still it was overwhelming.
His lips hadn’t moved, and yet the sound was everywhere, seeming as though he were both speaking directly in her head and simultaneously all around her.
Azriel closed the distance between them, a faint glow emanating from his hands. He pressed them against her side, then her shoulder, and Aurelie only then realized how hollow her breaths had been. A strange calm settled over her as the angel sealed her wound, the pain receding into memory.
Soon, her father rejoined them. “No wrathborn have been sighted,” he reported, and Azriel echoed her sigh of relief. Demons were always at their strongest when acting on the emotion that fueled them. A wrathborn in battle was a terrifying sight.
“Looks like mostly pride and envyborn,” Azriel said. “At least four dozen by my count.”
Varen’s face darkened. With each passing year, her father’s resemblance to the angels grew.
His once-blue eyes had silvered, his scarred skin a log of battles hard-won.
His hair and brows, too, were a product of their bloodline, marking the Chantelunes’ connection to the angels.
He looked every bit as terrifying as one in that moment, though only those closest to him might note that he was favoring his right knee or that there was a hitch in his step.
The lines around his eyes grew deeper by the day, and though he would never admit to any pain, Aurelie saw it every time he tried to rise from his seat only for his knee to give out or his body to seize.
Varen was a hero. He was the captain of the king’s guard, who had slain more than a thousand demons. But even heroes took their fair share of blows, and his body had suffered irreversible damage. He shouldn’t have been carrying the burden of Rhovar’s safety on his own. Aurelie needed to help him.
“We’ll push west to see if we can find where they’re coming from,” Azriel said, tilting his head toward the west gate, where the smoke thickened and the glow of fire pulsed like a heartbeat. “Stay near the castle and cut down anything that moves.”
“Strike hard, Aurelie,” Varen told her, clasping a hand on her shoulder. “It’s time for you to fly.”
Her fists clenched around her scabbard, the cries of her fellow knights echoing all that was at stake. The slain demons at Azriel’s feet were far from the last of them, and it was time she finally earned her wings.
“Light be with you,” she told them, steeling herself.
“And with you.” And then they were gone, disappearing into the chaos of Rhovar.
Soot spiraled in the wind as she hurried through the broken street.
The clang of steel rang out ahead as two silhouettes fought against a demon that towered above them.
She recognized the sharp, lethal precision of Solange’s strikes, her twin blades a blur as she darted beneath the prideborn’s guard.
Nicolas moved in tandem, hammering the demon with heavy blows until it could no longer move.
They didn’t need her help, but there in the distance she caught a flicker of movement.
A shadow darker than the night itself, slipping away from the chaos.
The figure was small and lithe—unassuming at a glance, but unmistakably demon.
It slunk along the edge of the street, not toward the fight but away from it.
A coward, perhaps. Or, more likely, a scout.
She gripped her hilt tighter, heart racing. If she was fast enough to follow it, the demon might very well lead her straight to wherever the rest of the horde was hiding.
Such knowledge could turn the very tides of this war, which was why when the demon fled, Aurelie followed, eager for the hunt.