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I’d known that Malyr couldn’t be completely trusted with her, yet I’d left her alone with him so I could… what? Undo the mistakes of my past? Protect the dead instead of a living, breathing woman?
I’d fucking failed all over again!
Fury ignited within me, creeping beneath my skin as if it wanted to peel out of it. But it wasn’t aimed at Malyr, it was aimed at myself. Too bad he just so happened to stand right in front of me…
My fist connected with his shadow-streaked face. Knuckles crunched against cheekbone. Blood rushed in my ears, drowning out Asker’s shout to “Stop this insanity!”
Malyr staggered back, shadows wrapping around him like a shroud. “You fucking dare!?”
A choke of darkness lunged at me, winding around my neck, squeezing, forcing the air from my lungs. With a roar that echoed through the shadows, I hurled myself at Malyr, my body slamming against his.
We stumbled across the room and crashed into his desk. Wood splintered. Parchment scattered. An inkwell shattered. The desk groaned under our weight until, with a loudsnap, it caved. We collapsed onto the cold, hard floor, landing in a thudding of limbs as dust swirled out around us.
I dug my elbow into Malyr’s ribs, ripping anoomphfrom him before I struggled myself out of his shadows. “You fucking backstabbing bastard!”
Another inky attack shot at me. Senses heightened, I ducked and rolled away, but it still grazed my shoulder. Hundreds of icy fingers scraped a path across my skin beneath my shirt, leaving a trail of numbness in their wake. They seeped into my flesh, strangled my bones, infested my blood.
“Stop this at once!” Asker shouted as he grabbed me by the arm, pulling me onto my feet, just as Malyr jumped back onto his, which sent a wave of shadows toward me. “In the name of the goddess, stop!”
Shadows wrapped around my neck, but it was the rising panic in my throat that choked me. Malyr was too strong for me, his shadows too relentless and twice as vicious. I couldn’t beat him and win.
But I could fucking beat him to pulp before he took his victory. And beat him, I did. My fists swung as wildly as my feet jolted, landing a punch here, a gut-twisting kick there. Bone connected with bone, skin slapped against skin. Iron seasoned the air whenever my crimson fist hit Malyr’s face. His blood? Mine? Didn’t matter.
My fists kept pounding on him with unrelenting force, each hit an echo of my rage, my grief, my regret.
I didn’t protect her.Punch.
I didn’t save her.Punch.
I failed. Again!Punch. Punch. Punch.
Malyr’s groan snapped me out of my fury, making me blink until red washed over my vision. Blood. Blood was fucking everywhere. Dripping from his lip. Smeared across his cheek. Webbing across the whites of his eyes, above a gushing cleft that cut across his cheekbone.
So much blood.
Not a single shadow.
I hadn’t realized I’d grabbed him by the collar until I let go and stumbled backward, my lungs heaving hot air, my muscles drained from exhaustion. The fact that I had managed to beat him into such a bloody state, where he had to grab the damn cage to keep from falling on his ass, could only mean one thing…
“It’s hardly fair if you stop defending yourself. Not much fun, either.” Wiping my bloodied fists on my breeches, I stared at him, searching for his shadows, but there was not a single one. Had hisanoaabandoned him? “Where are your shadows?”
Malyr laughed, the blood gurgling that accompanied the sound lending it a generous tone of impeding hysteria. He wiped the back of his hand over his mouth before he spat a blob of pink-tainted saliva through the wires of the cage. It landed in the straw, speckling the white feathers of Galantia’s bird.
And there, right beside her, sat Malyr’sanoa…
… preening her damaged feathers.
ChapterThree
Galantia
Present Day, Tidestone
Frigid air seasoned with brine and ice bit at our feathers, the nearby clash of waves against the cliffs rumbling to our faltering wingbeats. Muscles, bones, sinews… every part of us ached with a fierceness that sucked the strength from our wings. Yet, still, we flew.
Beneath us, the land stretched out in a cerulean blanket, with purple conifers that dotted the colorful meadows here and there. How beautiful it was, how rich in color, as if a painter had dumped his thickest oils across the entire realm.
Until an updrift slapped our wings.
