Page 44 of Wrath of the Fae Queen
I put on my helmet, pull my sword from my back and allow my raw power to visibly crackle along its surface. “I challenge you as the leader of the Assassins of Belladonna to a duel to the death. The winner takes ownership of the order, as are the rules.”
A burst of black light erupts from her hand, followed by a crack of sound, forming a tall staff. Its center is the deepest, darkest void, a blackness without end, but the strangest glow of silvery light ripples and thrashes around its outline like flames. “You, Aldrin of the Spring Court, challenge the leadership of the Assassins of Belladonna, and I accept.”
In a flash, she charges across the fighting floor and her staff collides with my sword. Sparks fly off both weapons. The starlight falling off hers burns with a frozen intensity wherever it finds my skin between the cracks in my armor. I grunt with effort as I thrust her staff wide, and she skips back with a dancer’s grace.
Belladonna launches forward as I bring my sword in a powerful blow toward her neck. She plants her staff into the ground and drops her entire body low, swinging it around the pole and under my attack. Both her legs slam into my stomach with momentum and I stagger backward, half hunched over. She swings herself in a full circle to land gracefully on her feet,facing me once more. I have seen professional dancers use such a move, but never anything like it in a fight.
We clash again in a series of brutal blows, getting a feel for each other’s fighting style and weaknesses. I slide to my knees as her weapon of starlight and blackness takes a swing for my head.
I erupt the purest white light of raw magic from the blade of my sword as I try to take out her legs from beneath her. Shadows cover her skin entirely and she somersaults away, landing in a handstand while her tail catches the staff she tossed in the air. In that position, she jabs the spiked tip toward my face as she lowers one leg to the ground, followed by the other, in a fluid motion. I am forced to bend my back almost parallel with the ground to dodge the attack.
Belladonna has the advantage, on her feet while I am spread back on my elbows. I roll out of my position as she stalks toward me.
I sense thin, mostly dead brambles climbing up the exterior walls of this room and feed my magic into the little life left within them, making their essence surge. Within a heartbeat, huge, spiked branches shatter the glass panes of the ceiling and slam down into the floor right where Belladonna stands, just missing her as she backflips away.
A rain of glass shards falls upon us. I throw up an air shield to protect myself. One large piece penetrates halfway through my defense, its sharp tip stopping inches from my face.
I pull into motion the many branches that now reach from the ceiling into the floor, having them sweep through the air to pursue my enemy and slam together in attempts to catch her. She is too fast, darting away a fraction of a second before those immense woody bodies can pulverize her. Not even their long spikes are able to get close enough to slice her. The ground heaves and shakes as each of my attacks slams down against it.
Wild laughter rings out.
It is coming from Belladonna.
A vortex of shadows erupts out of her, sharpened to a thousand blades. I hurl myself to the ground and put all my power into an air shield and a woody barrier. Her attack slices through the brambles until they are nothing but splinters. My reinforced shields take longer to fall, then the lessened impact of that explosion cuts across my armor, digging rents into the metal.
I shake my head to clear the fog of pain blossoming across me, then leap to my feet and charge Belladonna before she has a chance to make her next move. With my sword raised high, I bring forth the power reservoir within it. I will stab her in the chest, then illuminate the inside of her body with that purest white light her kind cannot take. Deep where her shadows cannot protect her. That tail of hers tells me she is not completely high fae.
We clash in a series of strikes, my blade getting infuriatingly close but never quite connecting.
Belladonna slams her staff into the ground. Magic distorts the air around its length, pouring out of her hands where she grips it, then that infernal rain of silver light falls around us in a heavy torrent. I let out a long string of curses as I pour all of my power into my sword and use its reservoir completely, throwing out an air shield to protect myself against those needles of the most toxic poison and lightning. Sweat drips down my face as they cut through the many layers of the barrier and I work hard to patch them up again.
This fight is a losing battle.
I have gone up against this rain before, but it has never been this torrential. It takes all my focus, all my magic, just to survive it.
I am left wide open.
Belladonna’s magic flares a second time. Blackness covers the skin of her hands. The scales of her armor ripple and shift. Long, ribbon-like whips shoot out from her palms and each notch of her spine. They wrap around me, catching me like a tiny sprite in a spider’s web.
I expect to be squeezed to death.To feel my ribs creak then snap as those whips constrict around me.
Instead they start to…undress me. The tip of one black appendage flicks off my helmet while multiple others unbuckle the straps of my armor.
I have no idea what horror she has planned for me, but I don’t intend on waiting to find out. I am going to fucking die here if I don’t take a huge risk. I can sense Keira’s heart hammering painfully, so gods-damned fast it might burst, while she watches on helplessly.
I will not abandon her to her fate. I will not leave her a widow.
Belladonna’s eyes have become moving quicksilver now, and black runes thrash across her skin. Her legs shake ever so slightly as she holds onto both wields, the rain and whatever else she is preparing. I hope for my sake that she is overextending herself greatly. That she cannot manage a third burst of complex magic.
I suck the energy of my shields back into my sword and burn raw magic to let out a beam of intense light. The wield devours all the power left at my disposal. It is enough to scold my skin and burn my eyes. My unshaped magic disintegrates the fall of rain, and the white light has Belladonna falling backward, screaming as the skin of her face cracks and peels away. The scent of burning flesh fills the air.
She drops her wields. The toxic needles stop falling and the whips constricting me turn to smoke. I am left a heaving, shaking mess, doubled over my knees. My power is almostcompletely gone. A heavy fog of fatigue settles over my mind and for a heartbeat, I can’t hear anything over the ringing in my head.
Aldrin! Look behind you!Keira shrieks, her whole body jolting with shock, the waves of it slamming into me.
I whirl around to find a tall high fae stalking toward me, brimming with violent tension. He has black hair with thick streaks of blue pulled back into a knot, the sides of his head shaved and long tendrils escaping his messy bun. Matching runes swirl across his temples and over his neck. It is his piercing violet eyes that capture me, eyebrows slashing down over them and sheer hate burning within.
“I’m guessing no one told you that the Assassins of Belladonna are led by a MistressandMaster of Death,” he growls. “And I don’t like the way you just hurt my mate.”
