Page 103 of Taloned Heart

Those green acid balls flashed in his vision and he remembered the pain of them. Just three that had shattered through the ceiling of the great hall and sizzled through his wings.

This time, there were twenty. The first round was that many and Lore quickly threw up her hands, holding them at bay. But then another volley launched at the same time Margaret struck. She had twin blades in her hands, wicked and black, and were thosegrimdags.It wasn’t possible that a Darkveil elf had those.

Lore had no choice.

She could not allow her soul to be sucked up in those knives or they were all lost. She had to turn her attention to saving herself and, in doing so, her spell slipped.

The acid struck him hard. Countless strikes that rained down upon his head, his wings, his chest, his back. They sizzled and sparked and sank underneath his scales, that melted beneath the weight of them. At first, he did not feel the pain. He only felt the shock that they’d touched him, and his eyes widened as he met Lore’s stare.

“No!” she screamed and threw Margaret off herself as a wave of elves erupted from the ground and sprinted toward the castle. Elves. More magical creatures. So many powerful beings, so many he couldn’t count their number.

His breath rattled in his lungs that were dissolving as acid poured through him. He staggered, falling onto his belly on the ground.

He couldn’t get up.

Why couldn’t he get up?

Abraxas had always fought through the pain, no matter how bad it was. But he tried to lift a wing and shove himself upright, but there was no more wing there. Only bone and ragged flesh hanging from it.

He could feel himself dying. The darkness that seeped through his eyes and hovered there, waiting for him to let out one long breath and just let go.

Until it stopped. Death waited as though it were ordered to do so and he... waited. He waited, and he did not know why or how.

Abraxas only knew that he existed in pain and torment, with no relief.

CHAPTER40

Lore watched everything happen as if it was in slow motion. The elves appeared beyond her sight. She should have seen them. She should have expected that Margaret would have another plan if something had gone wrong.

And Lore was very wrong.

Margaret had expected her to be weak and essentially useless. She hadn’t expected Lore’s power to not only have strengthened through magic but also through the very people of Umbra. She’d clearly shown up with an army that Margaret did not want to fight. Or at the very least, was larger than expected.

And then she saw the flames. She saw the acid.

How could Lore forget what had happened the last time that acid had rained down upon them? It was the first time that Abraxas had attempted to save her. The first time that he’d looked down at her with eyes filled with a promise. A promise that she knew he would never break.

One she knew he wouldn’t break even now, when the threat of his death was upon them.

Her magic could hold the acid. She caught it in midair, twisting her hands as she tried to figure out where the largest grouping of elves were set. If she could put the acid right back on them, then she would take care of two problems at once. The anger in her burned. She wanted them to feel what they would cast upon another so carelessly. She wanted the elves to hurt, as they wanted to hurt others.

How dare they? How dare they even think to harm the people that were hers? She would destroy them, bit by bit, until they knew what it felt like for their flesh to rot from their bones.

Until she heard the sound.

The whispering.

The desire to take the blades from another and to use it upon the previous owner. Whispers that spoke of how powerful she would be if she would only take them and use them and run their sharp edges along soft flesh. It would be so easy now, they whispered, if only she would take them.

Grimdags. She swallowed hard and looked down to see that Margaret held two in her hands. Where had she gotten them? How had she gotten grimdags?

A flash of cold nerves poured over her body. Had the Ashen Deep betrayed them? Surely not. Draven wanted to be with her daughter, and no elf would go against blood like that. The Matriarch wouldn’t... couldn’t...

It was enough of a distraction. Lore flinched back, curving her body away from Margaret’s first strike. And her spell... slipped. It just fell out of her hands as though she had been holding onto the tiniest of threads and once it was gone, she couldn’t lunge forward for it.

Screaming out her anger, knowing that she had just cost Abraxas more pain and torment, she instead twisted for Margaret. She let her anger take control. Lore moved like a being made of light. She twisted and curved, grabbing at flesh and uncaring of what danger lay in the blades that Margaret wielded with deft hands. It didn’t matter.

The woman would die. She would weep upon Lore’s blades and then Lore would laugh as her blood ran out.

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