Page 349 of The Daughters of Avalon
Air!
She needed air!
“You’ll have to kill me first!” said Cael, as Rhiannon gasped for breath.
Her mother laughed, delighted. “So be it, Dragon Lord,” she said with the silkiness of a cat, stretching her terrible silver wings.
Without warning, both dragon beasts erupted from the ground in a flurry of feathers, rising above the mist now grown so thick that Rhiannon could scarcely see. She tried to move but couldn’t. She could only watch helplessly as Seren struggled to free herself, and then suddenly there was Elspeth.
“Rhiannon!”
Hands tugged at the bindings of her throat, loosening them so she could breathe again. More hands joined the struggle, but Rhiannon could only stare haplessly into the heavens as cold rain pelted her face, a downpour so violent it stung her cheeks.
“Cael,” she whispered hoarsely, brokenly, but there was nothing she could do. Nothing she could say. No spell she could weave. No sword she could wield. The one she’d born inher hand now lay in the mud. Overhead, both dragon beasts vanished into the storm, and Rhiannon could see little as twilight turned to dusk, and the sound of thunder reverberated throughout.
Now they appeared, then disappeared, their tussling forms visible only in glimpses. Over and over the winged creatures spun and turned—one black, one silver—whirling about through the lowering skies, like a maelstrom.
Feigning, then advancing and parrying, they were half man, half beast, entirely mortal now without the crystals. At last, Morwen tumbled down, then surged up, lifting her sword with the speed of lightning, stabbing Cael with it as he fell into her, straight through his heart.
Roaring in pain, mortally injured, Cael somehow managed to raise his own sword and slashed it down across Morwen’s throat, severing her head in one fell swoop.
Like Mordecai’s, her soul withdrew from her body like smoke, then dissipated into the storm, and all at once, Cael’s body plummeted to the ground.
The sound of fury died in that moment, and a rush of black wings darkened the sky as Morwen’s birds took flight.
Chapter
Thirty-Eight
Rhiannon was the first to reach Cael.
Desperately, she knelt by his side, tears streaming down her cheeks as she scooped his bloodied head into her lap. “My sweet love,” she said. “My dearest, sweet love.”
He smiled weakly. “It’s only a flesh wound,” he said, and she nearly wept with joy, because, indeed, the spot on his tunic where Morwen had stabbed him was free of blood. His cheeks were still full of life, high with color. Retracting into his body, his wings had vanished by the time everyone else arrived. With Morwen’s death, her soldiers fled. All her Welsh kings retreated into the woods. The mist vanished as well, and once the field was visible again in the waning daylight, only a few dozen bodies remained—mostly Welsh, though a number were allies. Their bodies lay twisted amidst a veritable sea of dead birds.
Later, they found Jack, trampled and dead.
Marcella was alive, though barely.
Rhiannon’s sisters rushed the paladin into the castle, prepared to do what they must to save her life. Thankfully, everyone else survived.
Giles, unharmed.
Wilhelm, unharmed.
Edmund, unharmed.
The wolfhound, his left-back-leg injured, and limping, but healing.
And Rhiannon… only her heart ached… ached with love for the man who lay resting in her arms, his face so painfully lovely that it made her heart hurt only to see it. “You arenota Shadow Beast,” she said, a hard lump forming in her throat.
His answering smile was as beauteously radiant as his face.
He wasSylphkind, pure and true.
A terrible, beautiful, fallen angel… like her mother.
Only better, kinder, stronger.
