Page 88 of Wicked Warlock
“When you see my message, fire your magic toward me and read these words.” She handed me a slip of paper. “Go now. We need to end this.”
I gave her a single nod, but Beckett was already moving. He grabbed my hand and a moment later we were only a few rows from Nylore. Unseelies surrounded us, and I knew we were going to have to fight our way to him. I envisioned a sword in my hand and my golden power flowed from my fingertips. I closed my fist around the sword and jabbed it forward, running it through the first Unseelie that I saw. Beckett held his dagger in one hand and his magic in the other. He threw one Unseelie into the electrified water wall, then spun around and stabbed the other in the throat.
I ducked under another attack and spun to the side, trying to find my balance without ever taking my eyes off Nylore. Ophelia’s voice boomed over the battle, like she had a loudspeaker. “NOW!”
I didn’t hesitate. I turned and fired my power right at her. She held the cauldron high above her head and her hands looked like they were burning as all six queens threw magic at her. Silver, gold, yellow, red, purple, and Ophelia’s gray all mixed together, making the cauldron bubble and smoke.
Something caught me around the waist and threw me across the bridge. The air left my lungs as I smacked into the chest of something hard and unyielding. Beckett was there in an instant, plunging his blade into the chest behind me. It was so close that it nearly nicked my ear. He grabbed me and yanked me behind him. “The spell, Astrid!”
Blue smoke seeped from Beckett’s body and shot up toward the sky. It swirled around us like a tornado, knocking back all the Unseelies. My hair whipped around my face, and I struggled to hold my balance in his tornado of magic. “Now!”
I pulled the paper from my pocket and read the words: “I call the one who creates it all; Give us strength, no feat too small. Take these words and potion haul, to protect our realm with a barrier wall.”
The potion exploded from the cauldron and drifted up toward the sky. A moment later, a heavy fog rolled across the water and pulled around what was left of the bridge. It sat there for a moment, so calm and so still, just swirling. The Unseelie faltered in their attack, watching the cloud-like power settle over all the area in a blanket of thick fog. I sucked in a breath, feeling my heart race in my chest and the panic of needing to know if it worked or not.
Without warning, the fog lifted, rising up in the air so fast that I felt myself go weightless. The cloud glowed a bright white and spread across the sky like a dome being put back together. It remined me of how sheets of rain looked as they fell over my windows during a summer storm. Ophelia whooped and threw the cauldron down the hill. She pulled two blades from her back and ran full speed into the fray. “DIEEEEEEEEE.”
My thoughts exactly.
This thing had kidnapped Logan to get close to us and find our weakness, killed innocent people, attacked my home, my planet. And now it was time for the bastard to die. Beckett threw out his hand, clearing a direct path to Nylore.
He stood there so smug, so sure of himself, with his creepy red eyes and multiple horns. He even rested his sword across his shoulder. “Until next time.”
He turned and slashed the sword through the air beside him. Nothing happened. Again, he slashed it. No tear appeared for him to escape through. The walls were up, and he had no place left to go. I held my sword at my side, and Beckett took a few steps away from me, giving us both room to attack.
“How’s it feel to be trapped?” I stopped a few feet away from him.
He hissed in my direction and his eyes darted around to the queens killing his entire army, and the giant that was down drowning in the sea, and the electrified walls that no man nor beast would survive.
“It’s over.” Beckett tapped his dagger on his leg. “You lose.”
“It’s over when I say it is.” Nylore swung his sword toward me, and I blocked it with my own.
Metal clashed and hissed as he hammered down at me again and again. Beckett threw out his hand, knocking Nylore to the side. He leapt toward him with his sword lifted high over his head. Nylore blocked the attack by swinging his sword up. He leaned back and kicked Beckett right in the chest, sending him flying across to the other side of the bridge. His attention went right to me, and he charged forward. I flicked my wrist and asphalt from the bridge shot across and smacked into him. His sword cut right through it. I threw piece after piece, yet each one he blocked as he charged forward.
He lifted his sword, ready to bring it down on me, when Beckett leapt from his own portal and dove for Nylore, knocking him to the ground. And then it hit me—a perfect vision. I was knocked from this reality and shoved forward ten minutes. I saw it all. They would struggle, one turning over the other. Beckett would reach for his dagger just as Nylore pressed the tip of his sword right into his chest, plunging it deeply as I watched in horror.
I was sucked back out of the vision just as quickly and only seconds away from the deadly blow that would take my soulmate forever. Beckett reached for his dagger as Nylore hovered over him. The general raised his sword, and I dropped mine, calling on everything that I had.
“STOP!” Magic charm speak laced my every syllable.
The general froze.
“Rise.” His sword clattered to the ground and he rose off my soulmate.
“Wh-what are you doing? You don’t have this power.” He snarled at me, unable to control any of his movements.
“I’m a queen, bitch.” I walked over to him, and I remembered something I saw in Giovanni’s workshop.
I pressed my hand to his chest, and my power flowed into his body the way I wanted it. The way I envisioned it. I pictured a metal ball in my head. His ribs cracked, and he let out a sharp breath. I felt his stomach puff out. “This is really going to hurt.”
“Do your worst.” He glared at me, still unable to move.
I opened my hand and a thousand spikes shot from the inside of his body. They looked like silvery ice cream cones dipped in Unseelie blood. They stabbed outward, tearing him to shreds from the inside. I dropped my charm speak hold on him. “Can you move now?”
Nylore dropped to his knees in front of me. Blue blood trickled from the corner of his mouth. “They will come for you. They will come back to avenge me.”
Ophelia strolled up just behind me. “No, they won’t. The walls are up. We’ll never see your kind again.”
