“Foresight?” she asked, confused.
“It’s the ability to predict what could and is likely to happen in the future and proceeding accordingly. You ensured your death long before today,” I explained.
“I know what foresight is!” she screeched.
“Really? Your actions suggest otherwise. And you parroted back the word like you had never heard it before,” I said, unable to help the way the corner of my lip tugged upward. Lydia was always the easiest to tease growing up. Despite her being my senior by five years, I could summon a tantrum out of her from my first memories of her. She was barely noble. Clinging to aristocracy in her name alone, marrying another nobody—but at leasthehad a recognisable name.
“Why can’t you see that you’ve lost for once? The great Selene Borealis has fallen from her pedestal!” Lydia shouted.
“I’m quite taller than you,” I reminded her. “I won’t be toppled by a nobody.”
The tantrum I had been summoning bloomed.
Lydia charged me.
Whoever she had hired to protect her protested, swearing in annoyance, and a group of rebels ran out of the room behind her.
I wasted no time—reaching out and batting Lydia away by the head, sending the side of her skull smashing off the wall beside me. I did not hold back. And despite the crunching sound of the blow and the blood that stained the wall, Lydia was a pureblood and such damage would not kill her.
There wasn’t time to deal further with Lydia, before the first rebel reached me.
I knocked his rifle from his hands with a sweeping arm block and stepped forward using the heel of my opposite hand to cave in his nose, crushing it. I turned to the rebel next to him and gripped their jumper delivering a violent headbutt that made my own eyes water.
I hated close-quarters fighting. I was well-trained, but there was too much risk of weapons. I was fast and strong but not bulletproof. Enhanced healing would not save me from a bullet to the head.
With two rebels momentarily handled I turned my attention to the third.
He was different.
I was struck in the chest with the butt of his hand gun. The cold steel bruised my collarbone, a wave of pain spreading over my chest and through my shoulder. I grabbed his forearm before he could pull away and was immediately struck again above my right eyebrow, causing the skin to split and blood to spill.
Still, I refused to allow him to back away.
He was strong—his yellow shifter eyes glowing. A pureblood undoubtedly.
I couldn’t risk him shifting.
Not this close to me.
I yanked him off balance and into me, enduring repeated blows to my head until I had sank my teeth in his neck and tore his throat free. He fell, limp to the ground, gun discarded, both hands clutching at his bloody throat, desperately trying to stop the spurting blood.
“Ma’am!”
I turned at the sound of the Royal Guard.
It was a mistake to take my eyes from the enemy.
Interestingly I felt the sharp intense pain accompanied by the sensation of having the air knocked out of me. Instinctively I gripped my upper flank side and held up my hand to see it stained red. Blood.
I turned, looking for the cause and found Lydia had stabbed me.
She wobbled on her feet away from me before leaning against the wall clutching her head with one hand and the knife her other.
I had not known she was armed. Too concerned with potential gunshot wounds to consider a blade.
Her aim was terrible, of course, and she had hit what I thought was a rib, given my ability to still breathe. But the pain burned through my entire chest.
Lydia stumbled away from the wall towards me again.
