Page 42 of Hers to Keep

She’d meant what she said to Cisco and Rio and Dante.Ashdei belonged to her.But that didn’t mean she trusted him.He was definitely holding something back from her, and she needed to figure out what that was before going too much farther with him.

She wasn’t paying very much attention to her surroundings, but then a tree moved in her periphery and brought her up short.

No, not a tree.

A towering being with branches for horns and bottomless black holes for eyes that stepped onto the pathway in front of her.Malevolence poured from the Old One in waves and buffeted her.

“You are the one who freed the creature from his cage,” he said in a voice like an avalanche.“I can smell him on you.”

Mari tried very hard not to let the fear shivering through her show.She had no idea if she managed or not.“Yes.”

“Why?”The question rang with condemnation.

There was no reason she could think of not to be honest, and in any case, she was too fucking scared to make up a lie.“He didn’t deserve to be held captive.”

“What he deserves is death.”The anger in the Old One’s voice shook the ground around her until she thought she’d lose her footing.

In that instant of abject fear, all of her men realized she was in danger and charged toward her.

Shadows raced toward her from every side, streaming in from the trees around her.

Dohal took form between them in the blink of an eye.“Your quarrel is with me and not her.She has nothing to do with this.”

Rustling flames.Wings rending air.Hoofbeats on stone.Silent churning paws.Each of them moved at their top speed toward her, but they were already too late.

Because she understood without question what Dohal meant to do, and her heart broke.He would give himself up to save her.She’d always known that.She wanted to fall to her knees and wail, but there was no time.

Ashdei was there next, his hand rising to put up a shield, but the Old One was already in striking distance of his prey.

A huge, clawed hand wrapped around her dragon’s neck.Dohal didn’t struggle against the grip.Instead, he walled Mari off from him so that she didn’t feel the pain that wracked him the next instant.His body convulsed, but he didn’t make a single sound as agony rippled through him.

With every second that passed, Dohal weakened in front of her.

Ashdei’s shield sprang up around Mari as she yelled for the life of her dragon.She charged forward without thinking, plunging through the blue fire toward them.

Around her, the rest of her men arrived.They shouted for her to stop.But she couldn’t listen to them, because if she did, she might doubt what it was she had to do.She had to save her dragon.There was no other choice.No other possible outcome.

Power spun out from her in a spiral from a well deep within her that she didn’t understand.This wasn’t arousal or lust or any of the magic that she usually channeled.This was something else, scathing and pure.

Her men all tried to approach to stop her, but only Ashdei could withstand the sparking chaos of her magic at full force.He was nearly within range to grab her when the power exploded from her, sending even him reeling backward.

Mari rose on the currents of energy pouring from her, lighting up the night around her in green and gold.Lightning arced from her and struck the ground around the Old One over and over.Her wrath made manifest.

She understood with a portion of her mind that the power blazing through her would eventually be her undoing.The strands of matter that made her came unspun little by little, because this much energy couldn’t be contained by a mortal body.

“YOU CANNOT HAVE HIM!”she screamed with her entire being.

The Old One bellowed in pain, his form vibrating with magic as she continued to bombard him, until he finally let Dohal go and stepped back from the onslaught.

The driving rhythm of the cosmos moved through her like a heartbeat.

She was the beginning and ending of all things.

She was everything and nothing.

She was the void and all that ached to fill it.

The Old One raised both arms to the sky, and with a concussive boom that she felt rather than heard, he vanished.She wouldn’t have been able to best him, she understood that now that she’d been able to feel his power for herself, but she had managed to surprise him.She relished the momentary victory of his retreat.

---