He spun just as Quinn ran at him with a spear. Remo released a snarl worthy of atigrias he hopped to the side. The blade still nicked his waist, slicing right through his mangled shirt, reddening the cream fabric some more. Without missing a beat, he swung his machete into Quinn’s neck, severing the man’s bald, bearded head from the rest of his body.
Giya yelped and then retched, while Kingston grumbled a series of loudfucks.
The Daneelie disintegrated, darkening the sand. But that wasn’t the only thing he left behind. A liana wrapped around a skinned piece of meat fell like a snake in the puddle of Quinn’s blood. Confusion made the acid burning the lining of my throat recede. When gold and purple glinted in the shadows, I understood why Quinn had attached a piece of meat around his waist—to bait one of the monsters.
“Get Giya!” Remo grabbed the liana and hooked it around his wrist, and then he sprinted away from us, his wound making him falter over and over.
A crazed chuckle leaped out of my uncle’s mouth. “How convenient, these littletigri. Maybe I’ll bring one back with me as my pet. It’ll become the new Wood crest.”
Nails biting into my palms, I spun toward him and my cousin. “You are delusional.”
Giya shook her head anew.
“Stop squirming, bitch!” he hissed, attempting to squash the apple against her mouth, but the remnants of vomit and spit on her cheek made the apple skid from side to side.
Using his distraction, I pressed my palms together behind my back to fashion a weapon when I heard a dull crack. My cousin went limp in his arms but didn’t disintegrate. Had he broken her neck? Wouldn’t she have disintegrated if he had? His smile became a grotesque, gleeful thing. He thumbed her chin down, and her jaw went slack.
When he ground the apple against her teeth, my heart all but leaped out of my ribcage, and my dust funneled back inside my palm. I couldn’t risk flinging a handful ofwitaat Kingston when Giya’s mouth was wide open, so I rammed into them, sending both hurtling to the ground. The apple slid out of Kingston’s grip, rolling and picking up grains of sand. I rushed toward it, but so did my uncle. As I bent to grab it, he smashed his foot into my jaw. I fell over, stars exploding in front of my eyes. Among those stars, I saw a headful of unkempt brown hair and vicious brown eyes. And then a heavy weight dropped onto my abdomen, knocking the wind from my lungs.
The edges of Kingston’s body blurred and brightened as though he were wrapped in a string of lights. I blinked and blinked, until the lines of his body sharpened. I turned my eyes, looking for Giya, found her crumpled on the sand. Unmoving. She wasn’t dead, but I almost wished she were. I wanted her out of the psychopath’s reach.
Although my brain felt scrambled and sluggish, some primal survival instinct was screaming at me to get up. I writhed, trying to throw him off. He swore, and then he raised his arm and punched my mouth with the damn fruit. A trickle of warmth slid over my tongue—thick and coppery. I was guessing blood. Still I didn’t swallow it. As he reeled his arm back, I spit into his face, speckling it with red droplets. He blinked. Hopefully, it was burning his eyes. How I wished it was as lethal as Remo had touted . . .
I squeezed my mouth shut just as Kingston roared, and his fist smashed down. This time, I managed to twist my face, and he caught my cheek. My brain swam and the little starlight edging Kingston’s face became full-onlustriums. I heard my name tumbling on the breeze—raspy and deep. Was Remo coming back for me, or was I conjuring up his voice, wishing someone would save me?
Dust.I needed my dust.
I wriggled my fingers, desperately trying to coax it out one-handedly, but like every time before, the ribbons snapped right off my fingertips and cowered into their tracks. Without breaking eye contact with my irascible uncle, I raised my arms, dragging them over my head. When my palms met, his eyebrows jolted. He caught the wrist of my tattooed hand and ripped it off the other, severing the threads of magic.
He gasped. “Quinn was right. You can use your seized dust . . .”
I fought his grip, but his fingers felt made of solid bone. At least, he’d stopped smacking me with the damn apple. He shoved my tattooed palm under his knee, and then he punched me with the stupid apple again.
Anger rippled over my skin.
He thought my other hand useless. Well, he was about to learn that I hadn’t only been taught to use my faerie powers in fights. Funneling all of my adrenaline into my fingers, I clawed his face, my nails coming away with strips of skin. He sneered as blood beaded over his cheeks and nose, shifting his weight off my trapped palm. I yanked it out from under his knee, and then, calling upon the Neverrian Skies and the Gottwas’ Great Spirit and every Earthly god, I fisted my fingers. Karsyn’switaskittered and pulsed.
Please, please, please don’t break.
Honeyed threads shimmered between my fingers and palm like harp strings. Fighting his hold on my other hand to keep him distracted, I lifted the sparkling dust and clapped it over his nose and mouth. He froze when he caught a whiff of magic and then lurched off of me, gagging.
Before my next heartbeat, I pressed my palms together and shaped the strands into a bat. I rolled myself up and swung it into his ribs, flipping him onto his back. And then I straddled him and shoved the fat stick into his mouth.
Tears leaked from the corners of his stunned eyes. I ground the bat deeper into his throat until his skin blued. And then I plugged his nose and liquefied the bat so all of it would slide down his throat and poison his lungs.
He tried to fight me, but he weakened fast. His hands flopped like dead fish on the side of his body. Before it could asphyxiate him, I recalled Karsyn’swita. Perhaps it could kill Kingston, but what if it simply sent him back into the field of mud? I wanted to be done with this fight.
While he was passed out, I reached over to grab the apple, but someone beat me to it. I raised my gaze, meeting Remo’s brilliant green one.
“Looking for this?”
I wanted to throw my arms around his neck and never let go. Instead, I said, “Can you cut me a piece?”
Using the reddened blade of his machete, he sliced into the fruit, chopping off a bite-sized chunk. “Amara, let me do this. Killing someone, even someone who deserves—”
“No. I can do it.”
“I have no doubt youcan, Trifecta. I just—”
