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I plunged into the carnage. The bastards thought to kill Mac, thought to take our world, had been torturing and killing our people for two long years unchecked.
In the periphery of my vision I could see The Nine slashing their way toward Winter-born, leaving slaughtered Fae in their wake. She was precisely who we needed to kill, to buy time before another princess would be born, and I knew what Ryodan was thinking: kill her before she became lethal to me. The Sidhbha-jai is my kryptonite. If turned on me at full force, it shorts me out, renders me helpless. We’d had no idea new royalty were being born. Not a bloody clue. We’d been cut off for too long.
I spun, I stabbed, I whirled, I battled. I came back to life in Elyreum, being what I needed to be, doing what I was born to do.
Fae after Fae fell beneath my blade. Then Ryodan was behind me and we moved into flawless formation, fighting back to back.
“I told you to get the fuck out of here,” he growled over his shoulder.
“Tell the sun to leave the sky,” I growled back.
“It does when night moves in. I’m night.”
“Scientifically untrue. The sun remains, you just don’t see it.”
“We’ve accomplished our objectives. Retreat.”
“Not the boss of me.”
“Bloody hell, don’t I know that. Something’s wrong. The bitch is losing Fae left and right and doesn’t care. She’s waiting for something. I’m pulling the plug. Now.”
But it was too late. I’d argued too long.
The debilitating, soul-searing burn of the Sidhbha-jai slammed into me and charred my insides to useless ash. “J-Jayne,” I stuttered. “He m-must be h-here s-s-somewhere. F-Find him. K-Kill him!” That bastard! He wasn’t in hiding with his family. He’d been working for the Winter Court, likely offered amnesty, if he brought them my sword!
“I will. Get out!” Ryodan roared.
But I couldn’t. Nothing was working
right. I thudded down into slow-mo and crashed to my knees. Then Ryodan had me and was flinging me over his shoulder.
“Don’t touch my left hand!” I screamed, rearing up on his back like a cobra, desperate to keep the ungloved, lethal appendage away from him.
A prince sifted in directly behind us, blasting me with staggering sexuality and, as he reached for me (I ached to go to him, burned to be his slave, hungered to worship my master!) I managed to retain a grip on a single shred of my mind, smiled sweetly at him with utter adoration and offered him my left hand, silently begging him to seize me from Ryodan’s shoulder and take me to Paradise.
Dark, unholy promise burned in his gaze. Blood pooled in mine as I proffered my deadly hand. Take me, take me, I willed.
He accepted my submission as his royal due and reached.
As our fingertips met, an explosion of high voltage stabbed up into my head, shot down into my body, and as it flared to lethal life, the Fae prince exploded into a thousand fragments of pale white flesh and paler, sharp bone.
Bits of him rained down on the club and, as the killing grip of the Sidhbha-jai released my mind, I caught a glimpse of Winter-born’s pale, incredulous face in the crowd.
Then Fae began to scream and trample each other in their haste to escape.
I kicked up, launching myself like a rocket from Ryodan’s shoulder, vaulting high into the air, desperate to get away from him because the voltage was still arcing and crackling inside me.
Off-balance, I missed the slipstream entirely, slammed into the floor, rolled and sprang to my feet.
Whatever I’d set free inside me wasn’t done yet, not nearly exhausted, it was still building, building, and I had no idea how to control it.
“Dani, get back here!” Ryodan roared.
I had to do something with it before he grabbed me again. Before I sent it shooting into him. I was not killing Ryodan. I’d done it twice before and hated it both times.
I spun on Winter-born and flung my hand at her, at the precise instant she thrust two pale, slender, icy hands at me.
Bolts of lightning exploded from my fingertips, one after the next, shattering her ice-summoned weapons, blasting a path through them, as I sent my power gunning for her—
