Page 208 of A Courage of the Chosen

“It’s not over,” he spits, aiming a kick bound by shadows at me. A small slide out of his path and he almost falls, his stocky frame causing him to tumble.

Tavish whips round and lowers in a crouch, powerful thighs bunching steadily. “FIGHT ME!”

“It’s over,” I repeat, and clasp my hands behind me.

He straightens, calculation passing across his features as he sends small darts of shadow blasting across the space between us. “I can still take it. Still carve you open and draw your magic out. Can walk into that palace and force them all to bow to me.”

I shrug, his magic met with tiny shields of light that make those arrows wither away into nothing. “You can try.”

Tavish pounces, one arm cocked back, ready to land a vicious punch. I track him through the air and stand my ground, my arms still behind me.

Two inches. That’s how close I let him get to my face before my light wraps around his wrist and quickly engulfs most of his body to keep him suspended mid-punch. The tendons along his arm twitch and pop, his hand trembling as he uses all of his strength to continue his trajectory.

Darkness comes for me next. Barbed bolts of it that would rip through my skin and lungs if they reached their location. It’s met by my own. Just as dark. Just as cold. But far superior to the unnatural thing he carries.

Tavish roars as I keep him cocooned. “Some queen you are, hiding behind her magic. Just like that battle a few hours ago. Lets others do the dirty work for her.”

He’s saying whatever springs to his mind to goad me, but his words drift by like a cloud floating through the sky; fluffy and harmless.

“How many died before you got there?”

Not because his seething remark has landed, but because I’m tired of his vitriol, I free him as my fist connects with the soft part of his belly under his ribs. The spot Reyne drilled into me would knock the wind out of an opponent if I hit them hard enough.

Since this blow is bolstered by a strand of each magic that lives within me, it does more than force the breath from Tavish’s lungs. It sends him soaring ten feet into the air, and he lands at the lip of the pool with a heavy thud.

He tries to get up, but my light is already there at his wrists and ankles, across his thighs and over his abdomen. A position he had me endure for hours on end, while he cut me open and prevented my body from healing.

I draw the dagger from my belt, and Tavish’s eyes follow it carefully as I twirl it between my fingers.

“It was the first thing you showed me, when you found me in the palace wearing the pendant.” I place the tip against my finger, rotating the silver knife a few times.

“I remember,” Tavish replies. The sharpness to his tone has faded as reality begins to trickle in.

“Ironic, isn’t it? That this will be the blade to end you.”

He fights the hold I have on him.

I add my own darkness, let him feel the iciness of the rage it contains as I lower myself to my knees on his left side.

His mouth remains still, and though his one hazel eye darts between mine, the other half of his face is obscured by shadows. Tavish won’t plead for his life, not with words.

And in truth, there’s nothing left for either of us to say. He could beg, but it won’t save him. He could apologize for what he’s done to me and so many others, but it will never make up for his crimes.

Balance—true balance—will only return when he’s dead, and I claimed his life a long time ago.

I position the tip right over his heart, while his pulse thunders above his collarbone. Tavish tests the bonds holding him a final time as he watches the dagger poised to strike, and I let them bite enough that he hisses.

He eventually stills, exhaling harshly through his nose.

Summoning a single strand of light and a single strand of darkness to wrap around the short length of steel, I flick my gaze to his for a final time.

Tavish’s head thumps back as his lids close, and the connection that exists between us whirs with his presence.

“I’m glad it’s you, Elsie.”

Mind to mind, he isn’t the Seelie who just tried to fight me. He isn’t the former Prince of Elfayne, or someone steered down a path as a child that set him on a course of destruction. He’s only a man, about to meet his maker.

“Long may you reign, my queen.”