Page 113 of A Dark and Lovely Devastation

My fists balled. “You treated Morrigan like a slave. You thought your bloodlust wouldn’t have consequences? You thought you could treat me like shit and still keep my love?”

“What about you?” Badb said. “Abandoning this world? You would have let this world burn if not for Dagda. Admit it, that is the real reason you came back. You would have let everyone else die in gore and pain if not for him. You are no better than me.”

I stared at the glowing stone shoved into my chest. “What of now, Badb? Do you have any love at all left for me? For anyone?”

“There is only death in my heart.” She pressed harder. “Goodbye, sister.”

Illya was wrong. I was going to die. My muscles locked as fear and helplessness gripped me.

Dagda rammed into Badb from behind, knocking her off me. They fell to the floor struggling over the scepter. Badb rammed the end of the scepter into Dagda’s face, stunning him. She climbed to her feet, but Dagda quickly recovered, lunging upward and throwing himself at Badb.

Fire and smoke radiated from the room as his molten monster fought off Macha’s vines, ripping them, melting them, melting stone and curtains in the process. Keelin was completely confined by the vines, the guards that remained in the room moved toward him, swords at the ready. Dagda’s faerie guardian got between them forcing them to scatter as the curtains went up in flames.

“Chels,” Dagda said, his eyes wide as he struggled with Badb over the scepter. “Run.” His eyes flicked toward the door.

“Dagda?”

Badb sneered. Her gaze remained locked on me as I looked toward the throne room door, my escape route wide open. Dagda, without a sword and still trying to protect Keelin with his faerie guardian, wrestled with Badb.

“Macha,” Badb said.

A vine shot through the open window right for Dagda. It latched around his throat.

The grotesque snapping sound that followed rocked through my whole body.

Dagda’s eyes locked with mine before he fell unmoving to the throne room floor.

His faerie guardian vanished.

Screaming. Someone was screaming. I was screaming.

Badb smiled, the scepter again pointed at my chest.

I rushed forward, needing to get to him, needing to touch him. He wasn’t dead. He couldn’t be dead. Faeries couldn’t die from this…he couldn’t…

A wild streak of blue shot out from the scepter, it struck right between my breasts, like a bolt of lightning entering my body. The light consumed me, filling my vision and I tipped forward, my face making contact with the ungiving marble floor.

A harsh ringing grated against my ears, and I tasted blood and ash in my mouth. I must have bitten my tongue when I fell.

I wasn’t dead. Far from it.

Something moved through me, under my skin, electrifying me. A humming through my very veins. I felt like I could speak one word and the very walls would crumble to dust around me.

My ability. The affinity that the Chimera spoke of. But stronger, more intense than I’d ever experienced it. I was the word. If I spoke it would be so. I was more than alive. I was power.

And Dagda…Dagda wasn’t dead. No, he couldn’t be.

Badb nudged me with her foot and I rolled with the movement holding my breath. “And so it ends, sister.” But something must have bothered her because I felt her hot breath blast across my face as she leaned low over me. “Why did she not turn to ash?”

I felt her presence move and I risked a peek through slitted eyes. She raised the scepter over Dagda and terror slashed through me.

Dagda couldn’t die from having his neck snapped.

But Badb could destroy him with that scepter.

“I shall try it on you,” Badb said.

The stone on the end of the scepter began to glow. Dagda’s skin became an ashen color.

---