“Go on,” she said.
“I don’t really know him,” Kid said.
The corner of her lips curled upward, a perverse enjoyment of his words.
“But,” he continued, “I do love him. I don’t even think I knew what love was until I met him. I love him more than my own life.”
Vera’s lips formed a line. Her face flashed red and her eyes widened. She snatched Kid by his arm, dragged him from his chair, and threw him to the ground.
“What… is… this?” she asked.
Treycore swept down and grabbed his sword from the chair beside him.
He struck at her wing to rip it from her, to leave her wounded and incapable of using her talent to overpower them.
She disappeared.
“Yoo-hoo,” she said in an amused tone behind him.
As he started to turn, he felt a force push him forward and he tumbled across the floor.
He started to raise his sword, when—clang—Vera crushed her heel into the blade, wedging it in place on the stone floor.
“Just had to fetch my sword,” she said, raising her blade to his neck.
He released his sword.
She kicked it across the floor.
“We had an agreement,” he said.
“He’s yours… for the rest of his mortal life… which is about to end.”
She raised her sword, then disappeared and reappeared beside Kid. She swung her sword through the air, her blade glistening with the red glow of the room as she sliced at him.
Kid ducked and rolled beneath the blade, but she was quick in redirecting her sword, bringing it down over him.
CLANG!
Treycore’s sword clashed with hers just before it touched his love.
She vanished and rematerialized beside Kid, who was just a few feet away from her previous position. She jabbed at him again, and he dodged the attack so that her sword hit the stone wall.
He lunged at her, grabbing her arm that held the sword and bit into her wrist.
She screamed out and slammed her fist into Kid’s neck, bucking him off.
Treycore raced up behind her and jabbed at her.
As she glanced over her shoulder, he could tell she was about to teleport, so he grabbed onto her wing.
His vision blurred and he felt like he was flying through a tornado.
But he still had her wing in his grasp, and with a quick slice of his sword, the movement stopped, and he collapsed onto a hard surface, still holding the wing, which he could tell was now detached from Vera.
As his vision collected, he heard Vera unleash a pained cry.
She shouted like she was shouting for the Almighty to come to her aide.
