Page 102 of Taloned Heart

It was a sad day when he realized the elves had fallen so far from what they once were.

As he strode past the elf, who was still struggling to get the fire sprite out of his armor, Abraxas shook his head in disappointment. He’d thought to call the creature off. Perhaps it would be more useful in the battle below, but... Now he just wanted the other elf to suffer. This man had stood between Abraxas and Lore and all that honor and respect for their kind disappeared.

He hated how he felt this way. But the dispassionate view of this elf could not be shaken, no matter how hard he tried.

And so he left the man there. Boiling alive in his own suit of armor as he moved away toward the door where Lore and Margaret had slipped through.

Their scents were still strong in the air. Lore’s like a sea breeze and a warm summer day. Margaret’s reeked of fear. The bitter tang of her scent had always bothered him, but now it almost smelled acidic. Like she was leaking the very substance they used to harm Abraxas all those years ago.

He wanted his retribution.

He wanted to take her neck in his hands and squeeze until she could no longer breathe. He wanted her to look him in the eye as she felt her life draining out of her body, so she knew even in death who had killed her. He wanted that satisfaction to know without a doubt that she was wrong, she had died, and that he could be certain she would not come back.

The halls seemed different as he stalked through them. He was used to more silence in a castle like this. But he could hear the tiny scrapings of little creatures moving through the stones. As though the hidden passageways hadn’t been used for months on end. The rats were already taking this place back.

And though the areas where he and Lore had walked before had been pretty and clean, this area of the castle was falling apart. No tapestries remained on the walls, dust had settled in the corners, even smudges of dirt and growing moss on the ceiling. It concerned him. The elves were always so clean.

They surrounded themselves with beauty. That was their greatest vice. They’d always loved things that were made carefully and that proved how much they adored their talents. Margaret and her people should not have been living in squalor.

None of this made sense.

None of it.

Margaret should have at least given her people somewhere clean to rest. Or were there not that many elves here left? He knew that wasn’t true. He could smell them. The hours of time that had passed were not enough to hide the scents of hundreds of people who had walked this very corridor. So why were they subjected to living like this? Why had theyagreedto live like this?

Fear reeked. He could smell it, coating his skin like a thick slime. They had all been afraid in these walls for such a long time that the emotion had bred a monster. It was now a living creature within all the elves.

He tracked them through the castle and saw a splash of blood leading to one of the servants’ corridors. Bursting through it, he ran as soon as he scented it. Elf blood. That’s all he could tell, but the metallic scent sent him surging through the halls in fear of what he would find. Lore was stronger. Lore was faster. She had more power than Margaret had, and surely that meant something.

One door had a bloody handprint on it, and so he burst out into the sun in human form to see two elves locked in battle. Lore’s blade flashed in the air, and another arc of blood splattered upon the grass.

There was no one here but them. No one but Margaret, who eventually ended up on her back with Lore crouched above her. The sword flashed again, but this time it was interrupted by the bitter sound of laughter erupting from the Darkveil elf.

Even Lore paused. She held her blade over the other woman’s throat, hovering there.

Lore spat, “Why are you laughing? You are defeated!”

“Am I?” Margaret asked. “Or have you fallen into my trap? Did you think I was so much a fool, so doddering and old, that I would sacrifice my entire army in a courtyard full of weaklings? You have led them to a slaughter,goddess.”

Margaret spat the last word as though it was a curse, and Abraxas’s mind tried to catch up. What did she mean she hadn’t sacrificed her army? That was all they had expected. Surely they would know...

Except, he’d smelled hundreds of elves in that castle and they had been there just hours before. Where were they now?

Shit.

His eyes met Lore’s as she glanced over her shoulder as though she’d felt him there. They stared at each other, both of them realizing the danger they were in and how much more they were going to fight.

Their people were far behind them in the castle. He had to...

“Go,” Lore shouted, and he knew what she meant.

The change rippled through him again. He was too close to the castle and bumped up against it until the stones rocked against the blast of his change. He was fine, but he needed to lumber forward so he could take flight. Hyperion and Nyx would shield their humans while he doused the courtyard in flames.

But Margaret swung her legs, knocking Lore off and standing. She pointed at Abraxas and he saw the rage in her eyes. The rage that threatened him and sent his blood running cold.

“First, I will take your dragon!” the Darkveil elf screamed. “And then I will take all the rest!”

He smelled it first. The bitter scent of acid that had seemed to surround Margaret. It swelled in the air like a wave that threatened to overtake him. Then he saw it. The flames that scattered sparks of green and blue. They launched up from the ground behind Margaret, where he realized they’d dug trenches. Deep into the earth where countless elves waited.

---