He seems fixated on the blood dripping from her wounds.
“My claws can cut through anything,” I say, shaking my head firmly. “It wasn’t my intention to—Oh, fuck!”
With a snarl, Daddy Assassin launches himself at me with all the fury of a protective beast.
I’ve learned a lot about combat from Anarchy, but I realize just how softly the woman was approaching me when Daddy Assassin strikes in a storm of movement.
The air moves around me as I leap and dart and duck and dart and leap and try to evade his every hit, and then?—
Smack!
A fist that feels like a boulder collides with my face.
My jaw shatters.
Black blood sprays the ground.
The leafy forest floor rears up at me, and my chest fills with the scent of copper and soil.
I mentally scream at myself not to go down, but I’m already down, and now the world is threatening to go dark.
Fuck, fuck, fuck!
I can’t even process the pain. I’m horribly aware of Mommy Assassin throwing herself toward Daddy Assassin. She’s coming at us from one direction while Rebella rushes toward us from the other.
“Stop!” Rebella screams.
Daddy Assassin doesn’t seem to be paying attention to either of them.
He drops to a crouch beside me while I desperately try to figure out which way is up and how the fuck am I still conscious?
Rebella’s voice screams, as if from a far distance. “Do not kill her!”
But his fist is already crashing down.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
The air rushes out of my chest as the male assassin smacks my spine right between my shoulder blades.
It isn’t a terribly hard hit.
My bones don’t break this time.
And I’m surprised when he jumps away from me so fast that I’ve barely registered the contact of his hand before he’s several paces away from me again.
A second later, pain rips across my shoulders, and then I’m screaming. Even the pain of my jaw shattering didn’t hurt this much.
My wings shoot out far faster than I can tolerate, extending the full five paces to each side of me, every long, jagged feather raking across the ground, some of themramminginto it.
My scream of pain is a mangled sound.
My jawbone is healing, but not fast enough.
Oh, please.
I struggle to push myself up to my knees, all the while trying to retract my wings because they’re even heavier lying flat on the ground than they are when I’m standing up.
I spent the last month trying to increase the strength of the muscles in my back to be able to hold them up—let alone use them, but I’ve never had to try to stand with them fully extended.
