Page 110 of Her Dreadful Will
She breathed on her bronze combat ring and spun, catching him in the chest with a flying kick. He crashed to the ground, the tie flying from his hand into the grass.
For a second she held her breath, worried that she’d hurt him badly, even though she hadn’t yet activated the Viking ring. But he climbed to his feet, his sharp jaw set, and straightened the cuffs of his jacket with precise little jerks. “And you thinkI’mthe violent one.”
“Fight me!” she screamed. “Stop talking out of your ass and come kick mine!”
“I will not!” he yelled back. “You are the one person I refuse to hurt.”
“But youhavehurt me.” Her voice was throttled with tears as she remembered. “You said once that you hadn’t used your magic on me, but you lied. You used it on me that night, when my tooth rotted—you made me come to you.”
“I didn’t have a choice. I tried to arrange an encounter on the night you literally ran into me, but we both know how that turned out. You were killing yourself, Sol, and you wouldn’t stop using magic. I had to connect with you, to make that first meeting happen so I could gain your trust and help you. I wanted to save you before you killed yourself for these wretched humans.”
“You could have just told me the truth, right from the start. Without all the lies and machinations.”
“And you would have turned me in to the Convocation, immediately.”
Soleil gritted her teeth, hating how right he was. If she hadn’t witnessed the murder at the market, and if Achan had rushed to the revelation instead of easing himself into her life, she would have turned him in blithely and gone on her merry way. She’d have felt justified and pleased with herself, continuing to spend and spend her magic until she drained herself too low and caused permanent damage.
“I wanted to explain everything, so many times,” Achan said. “But I didn’t know how to get out of all the lies I’ve woven around myself—lies that protect me and my coven from danger. What if those lies, those shields, collapsed when I let you in? And then what if you left me?” His face was dead white, but hectic color emblazoned his cheekbones. “Are you going to leave me?”
“Fight me,” she hissed. “And maybe you’ll find out.”
He shook his head. “No.”
Soleil allowed her face to relax, her mouth to curve. His features softened in response, weakening with hope.
She moved forward, inch by inch, and he let her approach until she was touching him, undoing the buttons of his suit coat, sliding her hand beneath it. Through the thin dress shirt, his chest surged quick and eager.
Then Soleil slammed her palm over his heart with all the force of the magic inside her. Achan roared with pain, bowing helplessly over her hand. His fingers closed reflexively around her wrist, but he didn’t activate any magic—only groaned, a sound so full of bleeding, bone-deep pain that it broke her open inside.
She felt the mandala splintering under the pressure, and she let go before it shattered. It would be horribly, irreversibly wrong to use the power he’d given her to break that frail shell of protection, his only defense from her dreadful will.
When she backed away, Achan stayed bowed over for a minute, clutching his heart with both hands. Then he writhed free of his suit jacket and tossed it aside. With his wrist, he wiped away the sweat that had broken out on his forehead.
He took a deep breath.
When he looked up, his face was deceptively placid. He canted his head aside, and his smile drove ice through her veins. “You want to fight?” he said. “Fine. Let’s fight.”
She waited for him to move.
He didn’t, besides the twitch of his hand.
A rank smell spiraled into her nostrils, the stench of mildew and rot. She looked down, dismayed as her clothes blackened and disintegrated before her eyes—the cotton T-shirt melting away, bra straps thinning and snapping, her jeans popping holes that widened and widened until there was nothing left to hold them together. Within seconds, she stood utterly naked before him, surrounded by the rotted fragments of her clothing. Jaw clenched, she braced her legs, keeping her arms straight at her sides.
“That’s not fair,” she gritted out.
“It’s actually an advantage for you.” Humor shone in his eyes. “Now it will be much harder for me to concentrate.”
“You destroyed my favorite jeans.”
He waved away her protest. “Don’t you see? This is only the beginning of what we can do together, Sol. Imagine what we could do to Highwitches who might attack us, or humans, for that matter? I could shred their talismans and weapons—you could slip into their minds and turn their will in our favor. We’d be unstoppable.”
“You have an over-inflated view of yourself,” Soleil snapped.
“Not at all.” He gave her a savage grin. “Do you know what my radiance level is?”
“No.”
“Neither do I.”
