Page 176 of Vicious Is My Throne

Oh gods. I tried to crawl out from underneath him, but he kept me pinned down, my hands sliding…right onto what was embedded into the ball of roots at the base of the tree.

My palm met the slightly domed mark I’d assumed was part of the design…until I realized that’s not what the mark was at all.

I dug my broken nails in deeper and wrenched the keystone from the ancient silver binding it in place.

Power wracked my body, my teeth clacking together, bones splintering beneath the onslaught. For a moment, I wondered if I was dead.

Then pure power, cold and eternal, rocketed into me from the stone gripped in my hand.

This was…The air was knocked from my lungs as a new power unfurled, older somehow than everything that had come before.

Lightning ruptured through me, blazing around me so brightly I couldn’t see, the very air warping with enough power to rupture the world to pieces. I burned from the inside out, embers of fire that ignited, joined, and grew into an explosion that consumed me.

Whatever I’d thought magic was paled in comparison to this yawning power. Everything felt far away, distant, everything except my rage.

Tristan shuddered then collapsed, one eye fixed on Corvus, still growling as I slid out from underneath him even though he couldn’t lift his head.

I stepped in front of the fallen wyvern, my feet barely touching the ground.

Dragged my gaze over Corvus’s ruined, twisted shell.

This entitled bastard wanted to glut himself on this world?

I’d give him something to glut himself on.

I hit him with a crushing wall of light, my arms freezing, thawing, then freezing again, hoarfrost crackling up my neck as I fed every sizzling drop of power straight into Corvus’s writhing shadows.

Not Fae magic. Not even witch magic.

But whatever magic we’d brought to this world with us.

I shoved so much godsdamned magic into him, those dark, devouring flames shuddered, like a dam about to give way.

“How do you like that?” I hissed, magic flowing from my hands in a solid stream of frozen starlight. “You think because you were born to power you should forever have it, no matter who you have to thieve it from.”

His spikes were the first to go, curling and bending then cracking off.

Then the vines, writhing frantically until they curled into ashy powder, sifting to the floor around him in delicate little piles of gray.

“Before you die, I want you to know this. Your sister told me how to kill you. ‘A fire can be snuffed out just as easily by too much fuel as by not enough.’ Those were her words.”

Beneath the nest of blackened slime, shadows shredded, turning to ragged, tattered rags, twisting in desperation as if he was trying to piece himself back together from the inside out.

And still the magic flowed into me—out of me—as if this power was bottomless.

His dark corona crown flickered out, the rest of his ashy skin sloughing off like a snake’s. The creeping malevolence eased as he was faded away, clawing at his existence with the kind of wild desperation only the dying possess.

Until there was nothing left in the cave except me and the four bodies of the males who were my entire life.

Tristan was still alive.

Breathing, semiconscious, and I counted eight deep, gaping puncture wounds along his sides and back, blood running down his scales, dripping to the floor.

“For the record, this is probably the most disgusting thing I’ve ever done, and that’s saying a lot. But let’s not forget, you gave me the idea.” I dragged my hand through the blood and covered his gums liberally, his long, black tongue flicking out to clean off my fingers.

“Corvus is dead. Do not get up. Save your strength.”

Then I dragged my hand down his side and headed for Zor.

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