“I’ll go first so I can engage him if I need to,” Elodie volunteered. “That way, you can focus just on the device.”
I nodded, liking the plan. “Just remember, he’s never really alone. He can call for help without saying a word. So watch your back.”
“Got it.”
She crouched low and ran, faster than I’d ever seen her move before, and I followed close behind. As we ran, it finally clicked what she’d said. It had requiredbothswords. My gaze dropped to the broadsword in her hand that I would have recognized anywhere, because it was a near mirror image of mine, only slightly smaller.
My girl was a guardian. She’d bonded with the sword to save me.
Triumph rose within me like the sun in the east, burning bright and beautiful. I followed her across the field, renewed energy in my steps.
Let’s fucking end this, indeed.
As we approached the general from behind, she swerved right, and I cut left. She dove forward with a mighty yell, sword raised, intentionally drawing his attention instead of simply cutting him down from behind, as she could’ve. The general spun toward her, drawing his own sword, the magic imbued in it dancing before my eyes.
He held it in a two-handed grip, making my job harder, even as he shouted for the nearby enforcers serving as guards for him and the king. But Elodie knew what I needed, and my girl always delivered, even under pressure.
She spun out of his reach and danced back in, putting her whole body into a downward slice toward his left arm, and heinstinctively snatched it back, switching temporarily to a one-handed grip on his own sword to avoid the blow.
It was the opening I needed.
I grabbed his arm, ignoring his shout of surprise as I wrestled against his attempts to yank it free from my grip and worked his sleeve up at the same time.
There it was. Mind-control device, this one a cuff just above his wrist. Snatching the removal tool from my pocket, I clamped it on, reciting the spell I’d memorized that released the collars. Elodie disarmed him while I worked—being one-armed and held back was a disadvantage you couldn’t overcome against a swordswoman as talented as Elodie—and turned to charge his guards, giving me the space I needed to finish the spell.
It was nearly done when a pixie flew into the side of my face, nearly making me trip over the last sentence. But I couldn’t do that. We didn’t need a dead general; we needed a sane one who could call off this attack.
I gritted my teeth, shaking my head and swatting the pixie away before I spat the last few words precisely.
The cuff on his arm sprang free, and I immediately grabbed it and chucked it away. The general stared dumbly down at his arm, jaw working uselessly for a few seconds before his shrewd, steely eyes met mine.
“Thank you.”
He turned back to the battlefield, raising both hands almost as if he were praying, letting his eyes fall closed.
But before I could call Elodie away from his guards, the pixie returned, spreading his vile glitter and slashing at me with needle-sharp claws.
I swung and backhanded it, knocking it to the ground. A puff of pink and purple glitter flew into the air.
But as quickly as one fell, another was in its place. And another, and another, until I could barely see for all the pixies swarming me, tearing at my hair and clothes.
I roared, drawing my sword and slashing through the cloud of them. An answering roar met me, but this time, it wasn’t Elodie coming to the rescue.
The general had released his troops from their orders to attack us, and he was going after the pixie king.
I hacked my way free of the pixie storm their king had sicced on me, just in time to see the general grab the pixie king by the throat, and Kane bounded through a group of confused enforcers to stop, snarling in front of us.
“You have enslaved me and mine, you have damaged our honor, and for that, you must die,” the general seethed, squeezing the king’s throat tighter and tighter. The pixie thrashed, and I saw the flash of steel.
The general let out a wordless scream, grabbing the bloody stump of his wrist as the pixie king freed himself and hovered a few feet away. The general’s men swarmed him, hopefully to tend to that arm.
“No! I will not stop until they’re all dead,” he screeched at the general, too furious to be aware of the giant black wolf stalking ever closer, crouched to leap. “I am the last of my line, and the wolves will pay for the destruction of my mighty lineage with rivers of blood?—”
His words were cut off as Kane crunched his jaws around his head. Kane landed with a thud, shaking the pixie king’s lifeless body like a rag doll, then spat him out.
He reared back as if he were going to chomp down a second time to makesurethe job was done, but I couldn’t let him do that.
“Wait! He has the controller.” I dropped to my knees next to the mangled corpse of the pixie, patting his pockets until I felt a small lump.
