Page 157 of Master of Storms
I willnotlet this bastard kill my child.
I will not let him harm my husband.
Freyja took her first step toward him, her hand curling around her knife as she gave a shiver and shed the compulsion to crawl. “Put your own knife on the floor and kiss my boots, and I might just let you live.”
Tyndyr stared at her, his eyes widening. “How did you—”
And then his gaze shifted to hers, and his jaw dropped open, a wild light filling his eyes.
“Well, isn’tthisa pleasant surprise,” the creature said with a laugh, and then its features blurred, and the perfection dripped from his face.
Freyja hesitated. Thealfarwarrior was still blond and homicidally good-looking, but there was something wild and savage about him, and his eyes, his eyes were just like hers—
“Stop it,” said a voice to her left.
The elf stiffened, his glee souring a little before a strange light came into his eyes. “Oh, now this is perfect.”
Freyja’s heart kicked into her throat. “Ishtar,” she whispered as her sister-in-law walked slowly toward them, Chaos energy turning her eyes a violent green. “No! Don’t get too close!”
But Ishtar kept walking.
“You lied to me,” Ishtar whispered, a single tear sliding down her face. “You said you were my friend, and that if I opened the portal for you, you’d go home. I wanted to help you, because that is what friends do, and youliedto me.”
Tyndyr held his hands out. “What can I say? This is war, Princess. And war is brutal and bloody. But we can still be friends.” He moved toward her. “I do want to go home. And you’re going to open another portal for me, now that your bitch mother is useless to me.”
If he got his hands on Ishtar—
“Princess,” Draco warned. He fought against invisible chains. “Stay away from him.”
Freyja hurled her whip of lightning at him.
Light exploded in front of her. Tyndyr burned as white-hot as phosphorus for a second, and Ishtar screamed as he waved the lightning away from him.
It all happened at once.
Heat rolled over her. Light. Freyja waved it apart, catching sight of the elf in the midst of that burning supernova.The shining ones, her mother had called them. And though the light revealed Draco on his knees and screaming with his hands over his eyes, and Andromeda clutching at her own face, it glanced off Freyja as though it reflected from a mirror.
She drew the knife at her hip and lunged forward, driving it into the elf’s shoulder. They were plunged into a darkness so absolute it seemed as though night had swallowed the sun, until she blinked and realized it was only the absence of light after such brightness.
The elf snarled and kicked Andromeda forward into Draco’s arms. He moved faster than Freyja could imagine, grabbing her wrist and hauling her into his arms.
The stink of burned metal singed her nostrils.
Freyja yanked herself back, slightly off-balance, and then she cracked her forehead into the bastard’s nose.
He staggered back, clutching at his face as blood spurted between his fingers. But he didn’t let go of her.
Agony suddenly lanced through her.
She clutched at her chest, staggering forward, the knife dropping from nerveless fingers.
What was happening to her?
Had she been… shot?
No. Not her. Her heart. Her soul.
“Rurik,” she whispered.
