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“You bitch!” he snarled.
Before she could process his fist coming toward her face, he cracked her as hard as he could in the nose. Her head thunked back against the wall. Her nose shattered. Blood spewed everywhere.
Her scream was a small thing but still louder than she’d planned. It hurt like a bitch, but she’d endured worse. She remembered her first training exercises with Fordham. How he had refused to let her get a healer for her wounds. He believed that if you always had someone on hand to heal you, then you never learned how to fight through the pain. Well, his training was coming in handy now.
Because Myron looked self-satisfied with his hit. He thought it was over. What an idiot.
She moved through her paces, ignoring the flare of pain, and thrust out with a kick to his side. When she got out from the his guard and away from the wall, she blocked his flimsy hits, and then dropped his legs out from under him. The same step she’d used in the ring.
“Do you yield?”
Myron grabbed her foot, yanking as hard as he could and sending her tumbling to the floor. He rolled over on top of her, pressing his meaty hands into her neck. She gasped as her windpipe was crushed.
“You … don’t … deserve … to live.”
Her hands scrambled at his, as she was desperate for more oxygen in her lungs. She used her weight to shift him just enough that he moved sideways, releasing one of her legs. She nailed him right in the crotch, and he doubled over in pain. He slid off her toward the bed. She rolled away from him, prepared to rush for the exit, when it suddenly burst open.
Danae rushed in. Her eyes went wide as she saw Myron come up with the knife again.
“Stop!” Danae yelled, throwing a hand out.
And something propelled him backward with the force of a wind tornado. Myron slammed backward, his head cracking hard enough against the wall to leave an indent. The knife in his hand plunged into his stomach on impact, nailing him to the wall.
Danae’s hand flew to her mouth. “No.”
Kerrigan took a step toward Myron, as if she could stop the blood from his scalp or dislodge the knife that held him in place. His eyes were open. He gurgled as more blood flowed from his wounds and out of his mouth. Then, his eyes fluttered shut, and he slumped forward.
Constantine appeared in the doorway then. He’d only been a few steps behind her, and he’d been too late.
He crashed to a halt at Danae’s side. Tears streamed freely down her face. Terror wrought into every inch of the Andine princess.
“Day,” Constantine said softly. “Go back to your room.”
“But Father …”
Kerrigan wanted nothing more than to make the last few minutes disappear.
“I will handle it.”
“I didn’t mean to,” she whispered.
Danae had forced the truth into Myron with the power of just one word. She had used magic that was inconceivable, even to Kerrigan. And she had saved Kerrigan’s life.
“Go,” he told her.
Danae took one last look at Myron before fleeing the scene. A slammed door sounded at the other end of the hallway.
“You will forget what you think you saw,” Constantine said.
“Myron tried to kill me.”
“I’m aware. And he paid for his folly. You nailed him to the wall when he attacked you.”
She met his gaze. That was going to be the official story. Better to make her the winner of this attack than to ever let them know what Danae was.
“You should go to her,” Kerrigan said. “Talk to her.”
“She’s fine,” he said. “She should have never come in here.”
“No. But she did. She saved my life.”
Constantine looked as defiant as ever. Only like he deal with another problem heaped on top of his problems.
“If you don’t have someone train her, this will keep happening.”
“Don’t talk to me about things you don’t understand.”
“I say it for her sake. She needs help, or she’s going to do something drastic.”
“She is my daughter.”
“And because she’s your daughter, you need to help her,” she pushed. “The magic is going to kill her if she doesn’t get it under control.”
“They will kill her if she is discovered.”
“It’s all the same thing.”
Constantine stormed forward, getting in her face. His magic was hot at the tips of his fingers. She didn’t back down. She looked at him with pity for the circumstances he had found himself in.
“I did not ask for your opinion! Go get cleaned up. We leave for the tournament at dawn. I will handle this.”
He gestured to Myron’s dead body still nailed to her wall. She could barely look at it. Only earlier today, he’d been celebrating, preparing to go to the finals. He’d attacked her out of jealousy and stupidity, but he hadn’t deserved to die. Constantine had tried to save him from that, and it had been his fate anyway.
