Page 151 of Vicious Is My Throne

We landed together, gripping our keystones, magic flooding the palace courtyard. Bexley scampered out of the way the second his feet hit the ground.

“I’ll be right over here,” Bex called. “Waiting for your signal when it’s safe.”

I hardly blamed him.

We didn’t look like much, dressed in tattered clothes and foppish hand-me-downs, but magic flayed the air around us, the front of the palace shuddering against our combined power.

Tavion froze in place, his nose held high in the air. “I smell blood. Anaria’s blood.” We thundered through the front door like a pack of feral wolves, because beneath our queen’s clean, flowery scent lay another one—ancient and reeking and utterly bankrupt.

We stormed past Bexley’s former laboratory, embers still burning in the fireplace, where Anaria’s scent was strongest, poisoned with the overpowering stench of blight.

Tavion charged toward the room that spanned the gorge, boots sliding through broken pottery and glass and wood. We fought against a frozen wind howling with the scent of Anaria’s blood, black, rotten blight, and something evil.

Were we too late?

The question built with every echoing boot fall, every panicked breath, that smell growing stronger the closer we got to the blown-out cantilevered room.

Tavion went through the door first, Zor beside me as we breached the threshold together, one of his deadly-as-fuck wings nearly putting my eye out.

Anaria and Tristan lay tangled together in the center of a dried pool of blood, looking for all the world like they were floating on a crimson cloud, surrounded by long, sword-like slivers of glass.

They were both smeared with blood, pale beyond measure, and half dressed in the still-freezing room, though magic sealed the room off to the elements, a ward that tugged at my skin like soft, inquisitive fingers.

My heart cracked when Anaria lifted her head and smiled.

A tired, exhausted smile, but the most beautiful thing I’d seen in my life.

“Fuck,” Zor muttered. “Fuck, I thought…” He stopped and scrubbed his face. “She’s alive. That’s all that matters.”

“I know,” I muttered. “I know.” I blew out a long, shuddering breath, clenching my hands to stop them from shaking.

Tavion swept her out of Tristan’s arms, leaving the wyvern alone on his back, whiter than I’d ever seen him, probably because most of his blood was spilled across the floor. While I wanted nothing more than to get my hands on Anaria and make sure she was alright, Tavion wouldn’t let any of us close until he’d checked her over first, the jealous bastard.

I offered Tristan my hand to lift him to his feet. “Give me a minute,” he muttered, breathing hard, squeezing his eyes closed. “More than a minute, actually.”

“You look like shite.” My gaze flicked to the long shards of glass, tips stained red, testament to the Oracle’s sadistic cruelty.

“Lucky for you we brought something to help.” I crouched down beside him and slapped his keystone into his open palm. Tristan’s body torqued up off the floor, light glowing from between his clenched fingers, his muscles shuddering as magic thundered through him.

Overhead, the already-cracked ceiling rattled, bits of plaster raining down, and the shield keeping the wind out faltered, a cold wet gale shrieking through before the air settled back into place.

Tristan opened his eyes, red flames burning so brightly they canceled out the green.

“Yeah, welcome to the keystone club,” Tavion called from the doorway. “It’s a real rush, isn’t it? Wait until we all use them together. We are going to fucking kick Corvus’s arse.”

“What is this?” he asked, his jaw clenched tight, tendons and muscles straining against the influx of power.

“Don’t fight it. The truth is…we don’t know. Except, when we’re all touching our stones at the same time, there’s some kind of power exchange that happens. We get stronger. Faster.”

I grinned up at Zor. “Apparently, we can tap into our past selves and learn to fly.”

“This all yours?” I studied the blood, calculating how much Tristan had lost. The numbers didn’t add up, so despite the fact his magic was off the charts, I blanketed him with a layer of healing magic, color flooding back into his face when my magic took hold, the light from the stone ebbing to a soft glow.

“Yeah, it’s mine.” He took a deep breath. “That bitch pierced every major artery and vein, nearly bleeding me out. Then she vanished.”

“She’s gone? You’re sure?” Zorander scowled at the blood, the glass, and the blown-out windows, those wings rising up behind him. Those would definitely take some getting used to.

“The bitch got what she came for,” Tristan said slowly, his eyes narrowing on those wings before slipping closed. He’d lost an incredible amount of blood. Enough he shouldn’t be talking. Shouldn’t be alive.

---