Page 33 of Queen of the Wicked
Their eyes that once softened with every look in my direction are wide with something I haven’t seen in them before.
Fear.
Rowan, ever the braver of the two, slowly gets to his feet, brushing dirt from his trousers. His voice is low. Cautious.
“We should stop.”
I stagger back. “No. I didn’t mean to…I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine,” Kaius says.
That hurts more than I can say. I know he doesn’t mean it cruelly, but something inside me recoils like a wounded deer. I feel a snarl rising in my throat, not from anger, but from terror.
I didn’t mean to.
I didn’t mean to.
I’m sorry.
Before I can speak, a branch snaps in the woods.
Rowan’s head jerks to the side. Kaius steps in front of me immediately. Then the shadows move. Figures emerge. Lean. Fast. Armor blackened with soot and old blood.
“Demon hunters,” Rowan hisses.
The leading hunter pulls down his hood. “Well,” he says, eyes flicking between the three of us. “Isn’t this a lovely little gathering of monsters.”
Another dozen step from the woods behind him.
Rowan drops into a crouch beside me, wings unfurling. Kaius glances back. “Run.”
But it’s too late. The air split open with steel and screaming.
Demon hunters rushed from every direction. Some had whips laced with silver. Others, curved daggers meant for splitting bone from muscle. Some with crossbows loaded with wooden bolts.
And in the center of it, I stand, heart hammering, power still pulsing in my bones from earlier. I don’t want to hurt anyone. I don’t want to be the monster the magic wants me to be.
But I can’t just watch Kaius and Rowan fight this battle alone.
I close my eyes, grit my teeth, and grab a string of magic deep within my soul. It erupts from my palm, slicing between Rowan and a charging hunter just in time. The man falls backward, his armor crawling with angry, hungry shadows.
Behind me, Kaius lets out a grunt of pain. My eyes snap to him, where a blade slashes across his ribs. His blood hits the forest floor, dark and thick.
And suddenly, I don’t care if the magic consumes me whole.
I turn, calling it again, summoning it from the deepest part of myself, from the place that always burns. It comes too fast, too violently. My hands tremble.
But before the magic can explode, a whistle cuts the air.
A stranger dives into the chaos from the trees, cloak billowing like smoke.
I blink. No—not a stranger.
“Saddiq?”
Thirty
Adelasia
