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I round on my father, who hadn’t moved, simply willed his power to toss my baby-faced heir like a bag of garbage. “Touch them again?—”
Malachi hops over the counter, blue flames at his fingertips. “Do not presume to threaten me, oh disappointing daughter of mine.”
“If Dove is a disappointment, then you’ve got your priorities wrong. I’d suggest looking into that,” Bastian says, arms crossed over his chest.
Malachi doesn’t even look at him. To me, he says, “Tell your pets if they stop wasting their breath, I’ll stop breaking their bones.” He lifts a hand to my eye level and squeezes it into a fist.
His knuckles crack, as do Bastian’s legs. He gasps, then falls to the ground. I don’t look at him. I can’t. If I do, I’ll want to go to him, and I’m not turning my back on Malachi.
Malachi steps closer, and I don’t back down as he reaches for me. I let him take the full impact of the protection ward around me, but he merely smiles as the ward sizzles under his hand.
“Did you really think these demons, hardly more than whelps off their mother’s teat, could keep me from reclaiming what’s mine?”
The ward sizzles, smoke curling off it in waves until it shatters under his hand.
Dashel moves to put me behind him, but I stand my ground.
I won’t hide behind him or under desks anymore.
“She’s not yours, you megalomaniac. She belongs to herself,” Axe says.
Malachi doesn’t deign to look at Axe or respond to him in anyway. To me, he snarls, “It is my name you carry, child. My blood runs in your veins, and it is my mantle you will help to reach its potential.”
“Do you hear yourself? I am not an extension of you. I am not here to help you hoard power.”
“Oh, but you are, Dove. Your mother didn’t want to accept it, either, but you absolutely are.”
Fire sears through me, raging at his filthy mouth speaking about her. “Don’t you ever mention her again. You don’t deserve to even think about her.”
Malachi regards me, brow creasing as he tries to work out my sudden shift in mood.
I more than happily enlighten him.
“I was there. The night she had her accident. I was there in the war room, hiding under your desk like I always did when the shouting started.”
Malachi’s eyes narrow.
“You lied to the counsel. You lied to me. She didn’t leave us for another realm. You killed her. You hit her so hard, she fell and hit her head on the floor and then you sucked out her essence, and…”
I choke on the words, not wanting to say it, to admit I know what he is. Saying out loud why he’s so powerful…
Malachi takes a single threatened step backward, and I match it with two forward. “You consumed her essence and added her power to yours. You weren’t happy with already being one of the most powerful in our realm. You had to bethemost powerful in order to kill your way to High Commander.”
Malachi, so tall and powerful, suddenly doesn’t seem that way.
“You disgust me. And I won’t be part of your plan. I won’t return. I won’t let you fatten me with your dogma and your knowledge and the magic you think I should have.
I step closer, looking square in his vicious eyes. “And I won’t spread my legs for an ancient, impotent Elder, just so you can take my life and gorge yourself on my power.”
To his credit, Malachi doesn’t deny it. He doesn’t seem outwardly surprised, which isn’t as gratifying. “You knew?” he asks quietly.
“Of course I knew!” I scream up at him. “And I kept your secret from the counsel and the other hosts. Now just let me live in peace outside of your barbarous, inhumane plot. Leave me be, Malachi.”
He stares at me, a raging inferno of flames in his eyes. “I can’t do that, Dove.”
“I think you better figure out how to do it before this gets violent,” Enzo says, perfectly whole again and bouncing on his toes. “Because I really like making shit bleed.”
Bastian grunts as he rises, and Malachi’s eyes widen.
