“Fight or die,” I say.
I have no clue if I shouted or whispered my command, which is now directed at my father this time. “Orbow.”
His head snaps up where he stands at the edge of the dais. His focus was on the dead gargoyle king, but now it’s firmly on me.
“Bow?” he snaps, a word I make out from the movement of his lips. It’s easy enough to read it because he enunciated it with clear disgust. “Never.”
“Very well.”
I stride toward him, deliberately stepping through the blood. It’s not as if I can avoid it. It’s dripping from my hair and my shoulders, sliding down my chest, covering my burned palm. Hopefully distracting from how badly my left arm is shaking.
The leaders and their generals all back away as I pass their locations, and when even one of them stays a little close, the female gargoyle shouts something at them. They snarl and glare at her but quickly step away.
As I walk, I watch my father, knowing that this is the last chance I’ll have to say what I need to say to him.
“She died in my arms.”
He was already pale, but now he blanches.
“She spent years trying to breathe the stale air and survive on crumbs. But before she died, she taught me everything I needed to know.”
Not all the things I wanted to know.
But everything that has kept me alive and brought me here to this moment.
Where I will seize my vengeance or die trying.
“You put her there because of me,” I say. “And in so doing, you created the thing you feared.” I flick the blood off my claws again. “Behold, Father. A daughter covered in dark blood.”
Taiven’s golden eyes are full of hate. The animosity in them would have crushed me before, but now it makes my choice easier.
As I draw to the end of the table, I know what he’s going to do.
He’ll leap for one of the feathers I’ve tucked into the angel’s sash at my waist.
It’s the only way he can kill me—by using my own metal against me.
I jump from the table, landing at a crouch, not taking my eyes off him for an instant, rising once again to my full height.
“Choose,” I say. Maybe a whisper. Maybe a roar.
He sweeps toward me in a flurry of wings, his right hand outstretched. He’s moving fast, a blur, as fast as a dark angel can move, using his wings for speed, but they’re his undoing.
Oh, wings.
Always a fucking liability.
I sidestep his lunge and sweep my claws through his outstretched wing, cutting through the bone and sinew, sending feathers floating through the air around me before the lower half of his wing drops to the floor.
His eyes are wide as he whirls to face me. His mouth is moving, but again, bless my ears.
I ignore his mouth and watch his hands.
I leap up onto the dais as he rages at me again, this time with fists swinging.
When I first fought him, I didn’t have the combat skills that I have now.
I duck his swing and step inward, my claws ramming upward beneath his ribs and tearing into his chest.
