Page 84 of The Curse of Golden Blood
It lifted its head. It was not blind. It sensed heat and motion and power the way a hawk senses a vole under snow. When it found me it stilled and then it smiled. The mouth had too many teeth and all of them were wrong.
The first guard who tried to bar its path died before his spear finished rising. The creature moved with a lurching grace, as if every limb had to learn its own steps with each yard of ground. It took the guard by the jaw and pressed until bone gave. It would have done the same to the next and the next, but I stepped off the walk and fell the distance in a breath, wings cutting the drop into a glide that ended in a spark of lightning where my boots hit stone.
"Enough."
The thing turned toward me with a sound like breaking glass. It leaped.
I met it mid-air, hands slamming into its shoulders, driving it down. Impact cracked stone and threw up granite chips. It writhed beneath me but I grabbed one wing and tore. Membrane parted like wet silk while it opened its mouth in a soundless scream.
Lightning through the throat should have ended it. The bolt severed every nerve that kept it breathing. Its back snapped in convulsion that rattled my wing bones.
It did not die.
Gold poured from the sockets, and where it hit stone, granite bubbled and pitted. I could hear a child crying somewhere in the wreckage. The creature heard it too. Its head swiveled toward the sound with predatory focus.
No.
I launched myself into the air with one wingbeat and came down behind it, both feet driving into its spine with enough force to crater the flagstones. Vertebrae cracked like dry wood. It spun faster than anything broken should move, claws raking across my ribs, parting leather and finding flesh beneath.
Blood ran hot down my side but I was already moving. I caught its wrist, twisted until bone snapped, and drove my knee up into the elbow joint. The arm folded backward with a wet pop.
It tried to rake me with the other hand. I caught that wrist too, spun the creature around, and slammed it face-first into the courtyard wall. Stone cracked. Its skull held.
The thing pushed back against the wall and launched itself at me again, moving with broken-doll jerks. I sidestepped, grabbed it by the back of the neck, and hurled it across the courtyard. It hit the opposite wall with a wet thud and slid down, leaving a smear of gold and something darker.
Still it climbed to its feet.
Thunder loves weight more than lightning loves precision. I called down the storm that had been building above us, not as a bolt but as a hammer of compressed air and sound. It hit the creature square in the chest and drove it through the stone wall behind it. Granite blocks tumbled and dust rose in choking clouds.
In the sudden quiet, I heard it trying to speak from the rubble. Its mouth worked through shapes that meant nothing until one word came clear.
"Miralyte."
I let the next bolt rise with no restraint. The sky above the dome had been hoarding white fire, and I called it down with a flick of thought that tasted like copper. It struck the creature clean through the sternum and opened a hole in the chest big enough to put a fist through.
It climbed back to its knees. I had broken the body but not the will, and the will here was not human, not fae, not anything.
I changed the angle. Lightning loves distance and straight lines, but thunder loves weight. The next strike hit its temple in a wave of force that broke the skull and drove it back to the ground. The mouth had not stopped moving, even when the jaw was shattered and the tongue was split.
"I'm sorry," I said, as I drove my foot down on the head and crushed it. The body twitched once and went still. The flesh fell off the bones in long strips that flared and died.
When the body finally crumpled, there was nothing left of it. No blood. No meat. Not even ash. The last traces of the creature burned to a fine powder that blew away like a cloud of silver flecks on the night air. I stood there for a moment, my breathing heavy, my hands clenched at my sides.
Healers edged closer when they saw that I was not moving. One bowed so low her forehead nearly touched the stone. Another could not stop staring at my hands. A third signaled to the guards to lift the bodies and carry the living inside.
“Quarantine this yard,” I said, and my voice felt like it had to travel up out of a well to be heard. “No one in. No one out. Runners to the domes. All patients treated with sun touched blood are to be kept under warded lock.” I pointed to the body. “Wrap it in cold iron weave. I want it sealed so tight its shadow cannot find a gap.”
The smell sharpened as they lifted the dead. I inhaled through my teeth and tasted the truth that had been chewing at the edges of my mind since I saw the first glow in those corrupted veins. Mira’s blood had bought hours and days and a handful of nights where there would have been none. It had also fed a fire that did not belong in this world and should never have found a spark here.
twenty-three
The Key
Miralyte
Ilookedatthestack of books on the table, and my stomach lurched. I was sure the information was here somewhere. After all, where else would it be but in the ancient books about fae magic?
I chose a table near the back where the ceiling dipped and the sound of footsteps were muted. Tomos settled himself in a corner nearby. Time flew. My fingers were stained black by the time I’d cracked a quarter of the tomes, and the words were a blur before my eyes, endless theories and conjectures, histories of what came to pass and predictions for what was to come next.
