Page 150 of Vicious Is My Throne

Her footsteps faded, then the air in the castle lightened, the thready light of early dawn spilling in, filling the room with rainbows everywhere light caught the curls of mist.

She meant for us to die here.

I crawled to Tristan, hands and knees sliding against the blood-slicked marble, the wind shrieking past. I reached for him…then curled back my hand.

I couldn’t help him until I was healed.

Without the Fae magic my insides were hollow. Black stained the ends of my fingers. My face, where the Oracle touched me, was swollen and hot, thumping with pain, and one glance at my leg showed dark veins spreading up my thigh.

I was fucked if I didn’t get this poison out of me.

Tristan was fucked if I pulled those slivers of glass out and couldn’t stop him bleeding out.

Everything was fucked if we didn’t stop Corvus.

I braced myself, grappling for the end of that cold, silvery thread, silence roaring inside me. There was no more starlight, no more shadow, nothing but an empty void where the Fae magic had been.

My darklings shifted, slowly unwinding themselves from their coiled nest, revealing not only the glistening silvery thread of witch magic, but the depthless pool waiting beneath.

The one I’d somehow, impossibly, managed to keep hidden from the Oracle.

One tug sent power roaring out of me, spilling through the room with a rumble, skating down my leg, instantly mending the infected, gaping wound, my cheek cooling as the cut healed.

Eradicating Corvus’s blight.

I sent up a new shield around the room, cutting off the wet wind.

This magic was different.

Like an avalanche barreling down the side of a mountain versus listening to a piano concerto. Witch magic snapped and snarled like a wild, untamed animal, and that was exactly what I needed right now.

No more shadows and starlight.

I would rend Corvus and Gelvira apart with my claws.

Wrapping the bottom of my shirt around my right hand, I firmed my grip on the first sliver of glass pinning Tristan down. I sucked in a breath and yanked, swallowing down bile as the sharpened point slid free. Cold, white magic danced over him, mending and fixing as if this power instinctively knew how to heal.

And maybe it was my imagination, but I swore that gleaming pool of blood at my feet receded.

By the time I tossed the sixth—and last—shard onto the floor, Tristan was pale as death, the puddle nearly gone. I knelt down and touched the dried, crimson edge.

“I never told you why wyvern blood is so coveted by the witches, did I?” I choked down a sob at the sound of his raspy voice, crawling the rest of the way over and curling up on top of him, blood be damned.

His arm came around me. “Wyvern blood heals the most grievous wounds. Along with your witch magic, you saved me.”

I poked him in the ribs. Very, very gently. “That’s a big secret to keep, Lord DeVayne.”

“Not as big as keeping your magic from the Oracle. How did you manage? I thought she took everything.”

“She was so busy gloating, she never thought to dig deeper. I gave her all the Fae magic, so technically I even kept my word.”

I opened up my hand and we both gazed at the ice-cold flame flickering above my palm.

“Now I have something different. Something the Oracle didn’t foresee, and she’s going to regret the day I was born.”

64

RAZIEL

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