Page 175 of Vicious Is My Throne

So far, everyone else was untouched.

But Tavion…I sucked in a sobbing breath and parried. Again, my arms so sore I could barely hold them up. Again. I was nearly burned out, those intermittent punches of power fading until they finally stopped.

We were almost out.

Which meant even if we did manage to kill Corvus, we’d never get off this mountain alive.

Anaria. Listen to me. Raz’s voice was steady. A commander’s stern order, not a lover’s request. The crevice is ten steps to your right. You can make it.

Light flared when Raz stepped off his symbol, and Corvus turned as Raz spread his arms wide. “She’s going to end you. Even if I’m not around to see it, she’s going to fucking bury you, and your sister too.”

“No, Raziel. No.” Light spluttered at my fingertips, the barest spark, then fizzled out.

Run, Anaria. While he’s focused on me, you run.

Corvus rose up, shadows spearing as he slithered toward Raz. Who retreated. One step. Two. Drawing him further away from me, toward the mouth of the cave.

Everything happened too fast for me to see, or maybe that was the shock, because one minute, Raziel was standing there, powerful and defiant and raging.

The next, Corvus rose over him like a black, devouring wave.

Then Raz was gone.

74

ANARIA

Zorander’s horrified gaze locked with mine, then he was moving, heading straight for me, a blur of feather and shadow.

He never got there.

Corvus knocked him from the sky, slamming him against the cave wall with a hideous crack of bones and wings. Zor crashed down, limbs askew, head lolling, neck broken.

Tristan shifted in a flash of gold and molten fire, turning the cave into a furnace.

Then the flames faded as fast as they’d come.

Tristan’s magic gone, the attack had only been a diversion to get closer.

Out of fire, both of us out of magic, Tristan wrapped his mighty body around me. A wall of solid muscle and sinew, teeth snapping, deadly tail lashing as he flattened me down to my hands and knees. I shoved at his immovable mass, couldn’t stand that he was putting himself between me and Corvus.

Couldn’t stand what the outcome would be.

Stop, Tristan. Stop.

Beneath me, the silver tree still glowed brightly, illuminating the belly of the wyvern rumbling against my back, talons scraping across the floor as he maneuvered to keep me protected.

But the entire mountain shook beneath Corvus’s approach.

His malevolence crept into my blood like poison, bile clogging my throat, tears flooding my eyes. I crawled like a fucking rat beneath Tristan, hands and knees skidding across the smooth floor.

Get off me. Fly out of here and get free of this, I keened, but the stubborn beast ignored me, his body jerking as Corvus’s reeking scent wrapped around us. This was my fault. We could have run.

We should have run.

Please, Tristan. You are the last of your kind, I pleaded. You have to survive.

Tristan grunted in pain, his body shuddering beneath whatever Corvus was doing to him.

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