Page 116 of Vicious Is My Throne

I grit my teeth, sending a burst of stars in Raziel’s direction.

Pale light wove through Raz’s shadows, that tightness beneath my heart throbbing as if some invisible tether had snapped into place. The odd tugging sensation didn’t worry me anymore. Instead, I felt like I had my feet more firmly planted on the ground.

Like nothing could knock me down.

I turned my full attention back to the shredding ward, magic arcing out in waves of molten flame, the forest floor heaving and bucking beneath my feet, my ears popping. Varitus was a power vacuum and the magic couldn’t wait to rush in and fill that void.

Beneath Raziel’s fortified dome, the others crouched, shielding their faces, though Bexley peeked up over everyone like he couldn’t help himself.

“Get down,” I snarled before Tavion jerked him to the ground with a wry grin.

The ward was collapsing, the solid wall of magic shredding into tendrils of darkness and light, bolts of blue lightning crawling up and down the length of the wall too fast for me to track, the cold blistering my face. My hands were numb, fingers as blue as the ward itself, but I kept my palms pressed tight, kept feeding magic in, drawing magic out, like a looping conduit.

This wasn’t how the other ward had come down, but that had been a different sort of ward.

Fueled by a different kind of magic.

This power even tasted different, of snow and ice and cold mountain passes. Of wickedness and ancient wisdom.

Everything inside of me stilled.

This magic tasted like the wind blowing through Stormfall.

Like witch magic.

But…was that even possible? That witch magic—not Fae magic—had forged this ward? Then the question no longer mattered because the ward crashed down around us.

Light splintered through the trees, piercing trunks and branches with an ear-shattering boom that pierced through my ears like a mallet. I couldn’t hear, couldn’t see as the ancient magic tore apart, cleaving through the forest like a scythe.

“Stay down,” I screamed, sending another wave of starry power over Raz’s fraying shield seconds before a second explosion rent the air apart.

I saw nothing but blinding light. I vaguely felt my numb body hit the dirt, tasting rich forest soil before I spat it out. I tried to crawl, to get away from this crushing pressure, but it kept pressing me deeper and deeper into the ground.

Oh gods, I was going to die here.

“Stay down, godsdamn it,” Tristan hissed as golden skin turned to iridescent scales, ink-black talons sinking into the soft ground around my head like an impenetrable cage, a long, spiked tail wrapped gently around me, shielding me from the brunt of the collapse.

Somewhere, I heard Raz yelling, but I couldn’t answer, too firmly cocooned within Tristan’s body, his head flattened on top of me so all I could see was one red eye, gleaming like a ruby. He made a sound between a hiss and a purr then put more of his weight on me, clearly not interested in letting me up.

Overhead, the forest came apart as blood trickled down my face, my neck. Everything was muffled, a blessing, perhaps, given the cataclysmic storm around us. This was worse than before. So much worse, chunks of ground floating up into the sky as if the magic would take the earth right along with it.

I worked one arm free, running my fingers down Tristan’s throat, and sobbed. “You’d better not die, you stupid wyrm, or I will hunt you down in the afterlife. I swear I will.”

But he was steady as a rock, not so much as a shudder, even though everything around us was being torn to pieces. Whole trees whirled through the air, spinning upward until the entire world was a maelstrom of shredded debris, the light blocked out.

I kept sending out bursts of magic to shield Tristan, sending my shadows slithering in the direction where I thought I heard Raziel. “Protect them. Please. Whatever you can do, please help them.”

We were fools. Complete and utter fools to do this.

I was the biggest fool to let them come.

But would they have fared any better back at Ravenswood? Somehow, I doubted there’d be anything left of the castle by the time we returned. If we ever did.

And then, finally, the storm around us stopped, trees and rocks as big as houses crashing back to earth, the ground trembling with every impact as I waited to be crushed into dust.

Then the blinding light flickered and waned as if the magic was finally winking out.

“Anaria?” Raziel’s desperate plea came from somewhere to my left. “Help us. Please.”

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