“Hell, yeah I do,” she retorted.
I laughed.
“If you want to finish your father yourself…?” She let that question hang.
I smiled. I did. I really did. But something was starting to dawn on me. Life could be easier when you had help. Maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t a weakness to ask for help, but a strength.
“Let’s do it together,” I said.
She smiled.
I had to admit, she looked damn good as a titan. I tore my eyes off her and back to my father, who’d recovered and was charging back at us.
And in that instant, I saw him for what he was. The man was unhinged. He’d always been a pretentious blowhard. A lot of that came with being a titan and literally the strongest of the strong. He’d bested all challengers over his long life. Yet his arrogance blinded him, unbalanced him. He wasn’t the stalwart king I’d thought him to be as a boy. He was a scared little man, afraid that one day someone stronger would come along. Despite all his power, he still feared everyone around him…
…just like Valnea.
Maybe that’s why the two of them had hit it off.
It didn’t matter anymore. Here and now, I’d end him,we’dend him, Izzy and me. It was time for the titans toreturn to logic and rational behavior. Time to end the tyranny.
My father summoned earth to launch himself at me.
“Jump forward!” Izzy shouted and I did. At the same time a massive rock wall shunted up in front of my father mid-leap. He crashed into it, shattering the stone, slowing his advance. And I hit him a second later, driving him back, down to the ground, landing on him.
He grunted but was already trying to roll over and throw me off.
I blocked his elbow strike with a kick of my own, even as stone surged up over him trapping his legs in place while half rolled over.
My father shouted as his earth magic surged.
The stone didn’t budge.
Izzy strode into view. Proud and strong and sexy as fuck.
“He’s all yours,” she said.
“Elven whore!” my father shouted. “You’ve befouled my son! All of titan kind-shall?—”
My foot landed so hard on his neck, his spine snapped and his head rolled away, still looking startled.
“—revere me as their queen?” Izzy finished. “Yeah, that’s what I thought you’d say.”
She held out a hand to me and I took it, raising our joined hands above our head as Izzy — surprisingly — surged the stone beneath us and raised us up a few hundred feet for everyone to see.
“You remember you’re naked, right?” I whispered out of the side of my mouth.
“Let them see their new queen in all her glory,” she whispered back.
Fuck yeah. Right answer.
The crowd didn’t seem to know what to do.
“Trust me?” I whispered.
“Not entirely, but right now, sure.”
I used her hand in mine to pull her close then bent her back in a vicious dip of a kiss, one hand reaching up to crush her breast as I did so.
