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Another man in my path. Another corpse of ash. A Draconian’s assault from the sky. Left falling from the air in a block of ice. Shattering to the ground like broken glass.
I was close now. The last legion of Ricon’s army marched to join in the carnage on the southern road. The Day Court army wouldn’t fair well against the addition of another two-hundred men.
But they would never make it there. A slow, sneaking smile spread over my mouth. I raised my arm to set flame to the men, and gasped, the wind knocked from my lungs at the ferocity of the blow to my thigh. I cried out, releasing the hold I didn’t realize I’d had on my Graces.
A torrent of wind blasted out from me, visible as it swept out over the land, knocking every soldier it hit to the ground. Leaving most unconscious and unmoving. Not what I had planned, but I’d take it.
The arrowhead jutted out from the pale skin on my inner thigh. Gritting my teeth, I snapped off its head. Sucked in a breath as I dragged it back through the way it came, my healing Grace working fast to stitch the skin closed. Erase any damage done to tendon and nerve.
And then I saw him.
Beyond the dead or slumbering bodies strewn around me like fallen flies. Silas charged for him, alone, his sword raised. His eyes shining with insatiable bloodlust.
For the smallest second, I had hope. I thought he would be able to do it. That I would watch Silas end the life of Ricon once and for all.
But I was wrong.
Silas stopped as though he’d hit a wall. His sword fell to the earth. I watched the captain of my armies’ eyes widen and chest sharply expand before the Mad King lifted his sword and swung it over his head, ending Silas in one fatal cut.
His headless body slumped to the ground.
The fire burned hotter in my core. Stretching and growing.
Time to die.
My heart pounded. My blood sang in my ears.
And I moved. Feeling weightless as a feather drifting in the cold afternoon breeze. My body came back to itself all at once—heavy and weak. A taste like ashes coated my tongue. Had I… had I traveled by smoke?
There wasn’t time to think on it, Ricon stood with his back to me and I had but a second before he’d sense my presence. I pulled the chain from my pocket, surprised to find it intact after resting so long against my molten skin. I supposed it had something to do with the clenched fist of bindstone clutched in the crude silver setting.
Lunging, I cleared the four running steps to him. He turned. I sprang from the ground, dropping the necklace around his head.
I had the satisfaction of watching his expression open in shock before I crashed to the ground. He raised his hands to remove the amulet, but I was faster. Freezing his hands into twin blocks of ice, the weight of his new manacles so great he crashed to his knees. His encased hands immovable as stone on either side of him.
A tingling of malice ran down my spine, alerting me to the attackers just before they could reach me. I blasted them with fire, then drew a ring of it in the sand around us. Coaxing the flames high.
Ricon’s sea-glass eyes shone and his shoulders shook with silent laughter until he was gasping uncontrollably, his head bent and breaths heaving. The cackling laughter echoing all around us, mingling with the hiss and pop of flame.
“Enough,” I said, and he raised his head, a tear falling from his left eye and a crazed smile on his lips.
“What are you waiting for?” he spat, his expression instantly changing from one of hilarity to one of a coarse, fury-laced growl, “Go ahead. Kill me. Become the murderer you believe me to be.”
“Youarea murderer.”
His gaze flicked to the corpses at my feet, smoke still coiling up from their charred bodies. “And you aren’t?” he asked me, tilting his head, his silver hair falling over half his face.
The dead man at my feet bore a ring on his left hand. I knew what it meant. That he was bonded—in their ways of the ritual. Somewhere his mate would wait for him, but he would never come home. Had he had children.
“Yes,” Ricon hissed, “Murderer…”
All the emotions I hadn’t granted entry before came crashing over me in great white-capped waves. How many had I killed? How many families had I broken?
No. No, they had hurtus.They came to destroyus.
Murderer…
I realized what was happening at the same time Alaric tumbled through the ring of flame. Batting out a lingering fire from his tunic.
