Page 68 of Merciless Is My Crown

She attacked again, knives flashing silver, and one blade sliced through my forearm, but the pain was worth it when she left that side wide open and my fist connected with Vireena’s jaw, sending her reeling back. I chopped my other arm down on her wrist and sent her knife flying.

I grinned like a madwoman at her shock.

Fight dirty, Tavion said. Fine, that I could do.

She wanted this fight to be to the death, then fine.

“These are your rules, remember.” I launched myself at her, wrapping one hand around her left wrist, other fingers clawing for the eyes, my knee slamming into her crotch and her softening stomach over and over. She couldn’t break my grip until she finally kicked me off. We broke apart, gasping.

She was as bloody as me, though chances were that was mostly my blood all over her.

“I was brought up fighting to survive.” I wiped my streaming nose, leaving a smear of black across my arm. “You think this is any different?”

My eyes fell to the other knife, lying a few feet from Dane.

The shifter was already moving. The witches around him saw what he intended and grabbed for him, but not before his foot swiped out and kicked the knife to me. Out of sheer instinct, I dove, snatched up the blade, and kept rolling, Vireena’s knife whistling over my head as her blade caught nothing but air.

Dane was fighting for his life, cursing as the witches pinned him down, silver knives flashing in the moonlight, red blood dripping.

For one brief second, our eyes caught. Held.

We were both dying tonight.

The coven was going to slaughter him, Vireena would kill me, and there’d be no one to save Tristan and Tavion. I kept rolling, stopping only when a mighty roar rose above the shouting. Not human or Fae. But something primal.

Where Dane had been buried beneath a pile of writhing bodies, an enormous black wolf rose from the crumpled pile, throwing witches off his broad back like they weighed nothing.

Hope—violent, burning hope—rushed through me.

The shifter was beyond the stones, outside the dampening ward, which answered the only question that mattered.

Outside those stones…my magic would work.

I just had to get there.

The wolf snapped his jaws down on the arm of the closest witch and jerked, tearing the limb free in a splatter of blood and screams, then he tore his way through the crowd, ripping and shredding…clearing a passage between me and the columns.

I charged for that narrow opening, bare feet slapping on stone, only to be dragged back, tossed to the ground like I weighed nothing.

Vireena straddled me, blood streaming from her scratched-up face, the knife raised up over her head. I couldn’t buck her off. “You will not escape this, girl. You will not escape me, and soon enough, you will hang on my wall along with the rest of them.”

Her blade sliced through my left arm with a searing bolt of pain, then she began sawing back and forth, my vision going black, then white, the crowd cheering, the pain overpowering Dane’s growls as he wreaked havoc on the coven.

I plunged my blade—her blade—deep into Vireena’s thigh, the only part of her I could reach, and the searing pain paused, long enough for me to yank the curved knife out and jam it back in, even deeper this time.

Vireena threw her head back in a scream, and I leveraged that, too, like Raz had taught me, tipping her backward then crawling out from underneath her. And this time, this time I careened through the crowd, following the black, snarling wolf, clawing and stabbing blindly, even as the witches hacked me apart.

Until finally—fucking finally—I broke through the Arena’s border.

Magic, blessed magic flowed into me and overflowed, jarring the entire outcropping, sending everyone down to their knees as the ground rumbled in fury.

The frozen air heated around me as my magic exploded out, turning the closest witches into writhing, vine-covered monsters.

Dane picked them up and snapped their necks. Efficiently and quickly enough the closest witches carefully backed away, until they were all penned within the Arena’s pillared boundary, believing, perhaps, their precious magic would save them.

Vireena paused at the very edge, arms flexing as she debated the wisdom of coming after me with only one knife.

And what her chances might be if she did.

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