Page 50 of Bride to the Fiend Prince
“If it does, it’s for a worthy cause.” He was already changing, his form thickening, muscles swelling beneath his skin.
He had swallowed a tiny dose of ichor, the thing that was killing him. And I held a second dose in my palm.
The Dreadlord’s bodyguards tightened their formation around us, although they seemed unsure what to do without their lord’s orders. Before they could decide to stop me, I put the gemstone in my mouth. It began to dissolve immediately, the ichor slipping over my tongue and down my throat. My body began to hum, my cells churning and heating.
“She has broken me, ruined me!” Andreas was screaming, staggering from the bathing room. “I need the cure! I need it now! I’ll kill her!”
The Fiend Prince rose from the bed, his body now a solid mass of muscle, decorated with the savage twisted scar along his side. The skin of his face had begun to peel away, flaking like burnt paper, and I remembered how he’d looked on that terrible night, without his mask. The idea of his magic-rotted face did not scare me now; I was more terrified of what would happen when the ichor wore off. In his weakened state, he wouldn’t be able to survive the after-effects.
“What did you say?” He stalked toward Andreas and his father. “You need ‘the cure?’ But you told me there was no cure. You told me there was no chance of getting my magic back.”
“There is a cure,” panted Andreas, clinging to the edge of the dresser for support. “Your father wanted to keep it from you—” He broke off as the Dreadlord’s gauntleted hand closed around his throat.
“So many failures, Andreas,” said the Dreadlord. “And I have kept track of each one. I kept you at my side only because of your traveling magic and your research skills. And now, you think you sense the balance shifting, and you would betray my confidence?” He threw Andreas violently aside. The sorcerer’s head struck the bedpost and he went limp.
My brain was a red blur of change and magic, but through the haze burned a single thought—there lay Galanrae’s only chance, unconscious—maybe dead. I rounded on the Dreadlord, feeling the thrum of unfamiliar energy through my body. I felt taller, broader—my limbs pulsed with power, and sparkles of red and white magic crackled across my knuckles.
But at the center of my chest, my flesh was turning raw and rancid, rotting away. This was the locus of my energy—my indomitable heart. When I looked down, part of my left breast was gone, the rest of it was exposed muscle, and tendons stretched to my fleshless breastbone. A grotesque sight, unnerving, but I forced myself to ignore it and look up again.
“You have doomed your own son to death,” I snarled at the Dreadlord. And I lashed out with all the unbearable pent-up energy inside me.
Ribbons of red-and-white fire shot from my hands, from my eyes, from my exposed thumping heart. They crashed into the Dreadlord’s armor, blasting him backward. His bodyguards leaped into action, slicing at me with their own magic, throwing bolts my way—and I would have been incinerated had the Fiend Prince not leaped in front of me with a broad shield. The magic crackled helplessly against its surface.
“Where did you get that?” I shouted.
“It was under my bed. And so was this.” He raised his other hand, brandishing a mighty sword nearly as long as my body—a sword with a handle of carved black bone and a glowing scarlet blade. “You take the shield. The sword is enough for me.”
I gulped, barely able to look at his corrupted face, the bulging eyeballs and rotted skin and the leaking hole that used to be his nose. Worse still was his forehead, where the brain matter showed through the chewed-looking gap in his skull.
Another explosion of magical energy shook the shield. I tucked my arm through the straps and held it up, peering around it to blast my own magic toward the guards.
“You’re untrained in this,” called the Prince to me. “But since it’s your first time with ichor, you’re more powerful than they are. Use that advantage!” He ducked a magical blast and rolled across his bed, coming face to face with his father.
43
Dimly I was aware of the Prince and the Dreadlord battling each other, roaring like a pair of demons, blades ringing and screeching. But I could not watch their fight. I had enough to do, fending off the Dreadlord’s four personal bodyguards all at once. Every bit of training I’d ever had, all the hours I’d spend building my strength, developing my agility and resilience—it was paying off now. Yet I wouldn’t have survived a moment without that magic-resistant shield, or the power boost from the pill I’d swallowed. I could see why the Prince and the other Terelonians kept taking the ichor, even if they had misgivings about it. The sensations it awakened inside me were thrilling, addictive—I was unconquerable, all-powerful, the most magnificent warrior princess to ever live.
I smashed into one bodyguard with my shield, slammed my bare foot into another’s throat. Magic blasted from my toes as I kicked, and the guard fell, shaking and choking, hands locked to his neck, blooding spewing between his fingers.
Razor blades of magic sliced across my back—not deep, but I screamed as the phantom memory of the whipping resurfaced. I whirled, more uncontrolled magic rocketing from my chest, punching against the bodyguard’s breastplate. Their armor was magic-resistant too, apparently. If only such equipment had been developed when Galanrae was eight, when he killed that guard. Or maybe only the elite soldiers were allowed to wear it.
I would have to aim for the weak points of the armor, the joints and crevices. Too bad I couldn’t aim my magic very well. Like me, it was impatient, ferocious.
Pain from my wounds lanced across my back repeatedly as I twisted and kicked, blasted and blocked. I used the shield as both a defense and a weapon, but I was being crowded backward, near the fireplace. I seized the poker and threw it with all my might—and while my magic might have been untrained, my muscles remembered years of spear-throwing practice. The poker sank straight into the shoulder joint of one guard’s armor, and he cried out in pain, bowing over. I followed up with a kick to his head, harder than I meant to—his neck snapped with a sickening crack, and he collapsed.
Two down, and two to go. With ichor flooding my body, I could fight forever. I had unlimited magic, unlimited strength. Using it was a joy—killing was a delight. I couldn’t remember why I had thought it was wrong.
I fended off another onslaught of magical bolts and risked a glance at the Fiend Prince. He was still battling his father, their two great swords clashing thunderously over and over.
The door to the suite sprang open and in rushed the two sentinels assigned to guard the Prince’s chambers. They had probably been listening anxiously to the noise and only just got up the nerve to enter. “Are we needed?” shouted one of them, his voice probably shriller than he would have liked.
“Yes!” I yelled. “Help me! Defend the Prince! The Dreadlord is trying to kill him!”
One of the Dreadlord’s bodyguards turned away from me and slashed a whip of magic at the two newcomers, clearly unwilling to give them a chance to join my side. And while his back was turned, I threw every bit of energy I had against him—unsportsmanlike, maybe, but with my husband’s life and mine at stake, I had no time for foolish courtesy. Cords of my magic sliced the armor joints behind the bodyguard’s knees, and he fell with a shriek—but not before his fiery whip had split the skull of one of the Prince’s sentinels. The second sentinel cried out in fury, ripped the helmet off the Dreadlord’s hobbled bodyguard, and plunged a sword through the wounded man’s neck.
Three dead, one to—
Agony seared my body and I looked down to see a large steaming hole through my stomach, where the Dreadlord’s fourth bodyguard had sent a bolt of magic. Bits of scarlet energy sparkled at the burnt edges of my flesh. A chunk of my gut was simply—gone.
