Page 123 of Wings of Destruction

She slices for my exposed forearm and the veins there. One good hit and I’ll bleed out.

The tip of the dagger drags from the crook of my elbow to the bone at my wrist. The pain is sharp, fleeting, before it settles in with claws.

“If I’m a disease, then you’ll never be rid of me. I will infect you until there is no way to separate the two of us.”

I push the agony aside and punch out above her hip with my opposite hand. Morgan yelps and her fingers loosen around the handle.

Okay, I’m done playing around. As fun as it’s been to test her.

Yet disarming her is difficult even with my training. If the cost is the scratch on my arm, then I’ll take it. At least I’m not dead. A second decisive punch to her ribs marks the exact path Evie must have taken. The redhead yelps and I go for the dagger while she’s distracted.

The pain gives me the necessary edge to take back the upper hand. I spin her around and grab her, pulling her flush to my chest and banding my arm around her midsection. Grabbing her dominant hand, I angle the blade to a spot between her ribs and keep it there.

Easy to slide it into her heart this way.

Her lungs bellow like a trapped animal, her body vibrating.

“What are you waiting for?” She inhales deeply enough to send the tip into her skin. “Do it. Kill me. Do it now.”

The moment stretches between us. The intensity takes my sanity away. She’s waiting for me to stab her, wanting me to. And I’m wondering what that rage tastes like on her perfect lips. How easy it will be to spin her around again and capture her mouth with mine and swallow her yells. To take them in my body and absorb them.

She’ll taste like blood, coppery and rich, but what else?

Morgan shivers, bringing me out of my body and into the present moment. Those kinds of desires get you killed. They are a weakness and a liability, and it doesn’t matter what kind of fire she has, or how she uses it. It doesn’t matter that she fights like fire over water, as Astrid claimed, an appropriate description. The moment doesn’t matter.

If I try to kiss her, she’ll kill me. I have no idea how she’ll do it but if anyone can find a way, it would be her. This fierce creature the others should be scared of. Mountains should move for her.

And the moment shatters, irrevocably interrupted, when Evie wheezes. The choked, clogged sound of her desperate inhalation should make me worry. Why hasn’t Astrid gotten her to a healer yet?

It only reminds me that we’re not alone.

We’re standing in the middle of an audience, a crowd, and still lost in a sea of tension and want and loathing.

Twenty-Six

Morgan

Kieran’s grip is tighter than any noose. He locks his arms so there is no way for me to wiggle out of this, the bastard. And Evie’s little friends are watching us all aghast like they can’t understand how any of this is possible.

I yell out until even that sound is pushed out of me. Kieran squeezes. His heartbeat thumps through me, through his skin to mine.

I hate him more than I hate his little girlfriend. Both of them, really, because the silver-haired menace is watching us as well. I was so close to beating Evie to a pulp, so close to decapitating Kieran, if my muscles had stopped screaming for one second.

It was almost over.

“I like you like this,” he whispers into my ear. “I like you fighting me. It makes things… interesting.”

Something dangerous unfurls in my chest, something I refuse to name. I only know it’s dangerous. And if I dare put a name to it, then there will be no going back.

I’ll be lost. I’ll like it.

“Get your hands off me.”

The words fall flat and provide the spark to ignite his laughter. “Why would I? It seems we both like my hands exactly where they are.”

I shiver, glance up at the rest of the students watching us, but none of them seem to see my reaction. If they do, none of them care. Astrid helps Evie limp to the door and then the bodies close behind them again, blocking the exit.

Kieran isn’t letting me go.