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Arrows flew, some swatted aside by giant paws, others missing their marks, others sinking into furred hides. Swords and daggers and axes and even pitchforks clashed as males and females fought in their Fae form, and others arrived from the city.
And across the river, surrounded by those who’d managed to break through the line of beasts, was the king.
The king and Prince Bron.
Dade held him with a blade to his throat, barking orders at Bron’s soldiers that I could not hear. A circle of his fire flared—its harsher glow and heat separating it from that of the manmade flames everywhere else—and surrounded them both, keeping the soldiers from their prince.
Then his eyes flicked up, and there was no mistaking the flash of fear in them when I circled lower.
An unearthly whine erupted, the ground shaking. The line of beasts broke, soldiers swarming around the river toward the city.
Toward the king.
I flapped my wings harder, shooting to the sky while sca
I flew some yards away from the swarm to the ground and shifted.
The smoke was dense, crawling everywhere and making it hard to see. So I didn’t see him coming until he was already before me with his sword raised. “Stop,” I warned the helmeted soldier. “I am Princess Opal of Sinshell. We are not enemies.”
The man smiled. “You are of faerie blood, Princess.” The smile dropped. “We will always be enemies.”
He swung, and I ducked, rolling to the ground and smacking my cheek on a rock. I grabbed the rock, blood pooling in my mouth from a cut, and rolled again when his sword came down near my head.
Again and again, he struck, ensuring I could not get to my feet. I shifted, losing the rock and then shifting back in time to use his shock against him. The rock rose from the ground before I could bend for it, smacking into my palm and then into his head.
Blood spurted from his nose, through his fingers as he stumbled back and dropped his sword. “You fucking faerie bitch.” I snatched the fallen sword, then lifted the armor of the large man and buried it in his gut as one of his friends raced toward us.
He gaped at his fallen comrade, then charged for me. I didn’t bother trying to use my title this time. Not when the hatred in his green gaze burned hotter than any understanding they’d all reached with my mother.
Her words came back to me as I dodged and ran, turning when he least expected it to send him to the ground with a kick in the leg. Perhaps this was not about Dade and his crusade of revenge any longer.
I didn’t have time to contemplate that further after slicing through the soldier’s neck. I had to hurry before anyone else decided to wade through the smoke to find out who I was and what I was doing. I backtracked to steal a small knife from the man’s holster, then raced into the smoke and into the throng.
I nearly stumbled over a log when I realized what I’d just done.
I’d murdered two people. Two men who were probably going to kill me, but even so, I’d killed them and without hesitation.
I gritted my teeth against the surge of guilt, remembering those females who were left in pools of blood inside those pens, their families forced to run and leave them behind.
The first soldier didn’t see me, his blade dancing toward a wolf’s head then falling with his severed hand. He screamed, blood spraying the wolf’s face as he fought off another assailant, and I was gripped by the hair.
On the ground, I wheezed, the air rushing from me too fast and returning too slow. My scalp and lungs burned, and I lifted the dagger in time to avoid a sword to the face, pushing with strength I didn’t know I possessed and then rolling to slice at my attacker’s ankle.
I rose as he fell and left him to bleed out on the grass before slamming into a boulder of a man and thrusting my dagger into his stomach. It clanged over metal, unheard to regular ears, and I launched to the side as his fist slammed into my eyebrow, his axe following and skidding over my shoulder.
I bit back a moan, searing heat entering my skin.
Iron. Their weapons were not only steel but manufactured to slow our healing and any chance of survival should they strike a vital organ.
Hissing, I ducked as his next blow came, and then I ran at his chest.
Close combat. You stab instantly.
Dade’s voice was everywhere and nowhere as I charged, somehow managing to throw the giant of a man to the ground.
If they’re armored, find the gaps and use them.
Wheezing and shocked, his hands lifted, but they were too slow to stop the blade from inching between his breastplate and helmet—to keep it from sliding into his throat.
I released the blade and rolled when I felt an advancing soldier behind me and rose with the dead human’s sword to meet his. Steel clashed, his teeth bared as he pushed, then retreated and swung at my legs. I jumped back, then forward, nearly slamming into a furred body.
A brown wolf tore into the soldier’s throat, then raced onto the next while his blood still spurted.
I did the same, cutting and dodging and earning myself another slug to the head and a sliced stomach. Then he was there before I could reach him, furious and evidently frightened. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“Where else should I be?”
“Where’s your armor?” He threw a knife, hitting a man in the eye, then met mine as he screamed and fell. “You’re not even wearing shoes.”
“Where is your armor?” I fired back and dodged an arrow.
His throat bobbed, his face bloodied and blackened with soot, and his wedding attire in shreds. Deep gashes could be seen in his abdomen, blood still racing from them. He wasn’t healing fast enough to withstand an assault of this magnitude—and the chances of surviving and eliminating the numbers of this army were already slim.
“Dade,” I warned, and he turned away, taking the shield from the advancing soldier and slamming it into his face three times. He went down, his four companions surrounding Dade before he could move.
I’d barely broken into a run to help him when a male’s voice shouted, “Get down.”
A ball of fire arced over my head, barreling toward Dade. He ducked as two soldiers launched over him with their blades raised.
Panic scorched my throat, but then a knife pressed into it, and a familiar voice crooned, “Princess.” I swallowed, the blade nicking my skin as I did, and was turned to face Prince Bron. “Or should I say, queen?”
A bandage was wrapped around his neck, as though Dade had tried to kill him when his army had rounded the river and he’d been overwhelmed.
“Do you intend to kill me?” I asked coolly. “I saved your rotten soul, helped your equally as rotten family, so that would make perfect fucking sense.”
Bron winced. “Yes, it is all so terribly convoluted, isn’t it?” He waded closer, fingers tipping up my chin to meet those brown eyes I’d once dared to consider handsome. They flicked back and forth between mine, assessing, unblinking, then he stepped back. “No, I don’t think I shall, but I will use you.”
I didn’t need to ask what for, though I was about to anyway to give myself time.
“Release her, Bron.”
My mother and Silver warped into the little circle he and his soldiers had made, and the former walked straight to me. “If there is so much as a drop of blood on her skin, I will peel yours from your flesh.”