“We’re with you, Your Highness,” Ivan says, shoulders back and stance wide. Steady.
“Etta?”
She smirks. “I may have lost my magic, but Basil has been teaching me a thing or two since.” She nudges him, and a gleam shines in his yellow eyes. Holly’s mouth twists into a frown, but it’s gone just as quickly as it appeared.
“We will protect you, my queen,” Amaris says, dipping her head in reverence.
“Who said I need protecting?” I ask.
She offers me a flash of a smile, then pulls a third dagger from her vest. Once I’m back on the throne—because I will make it back—I need to ask our seamstress to create something like that for me. Or two. I know Elle would lose her mind to have something like that.
My heart squeezes in my chest as I think about her. My friend. My sister. If she were here now, she’d be the first to jump at the opportunity to slay witches.
“Let’s do it, then.” I turn back to face the forest and raise my voice. “I am the High Queen of the Woodland Kingdom, Queen of the Deer, and Protector of the Forest. You have destroyed what is Mother-created and Mother-blessed. You have slaughtered innocent animals and desecrated their homes. This is your chance to leave now or forever be silenced.”
The cackling stops, replaced by an eerie silence. For a moment, I question my choices. But then I remember the male beside me, and my friends behind me.
Dark figures emerge from the forest and stand in between the trees. I spread my hands and summon my magic, feeling it warm my very bones as it rises to the surface. It spreads through me like a living thing, desperate to be released.
And then all hell breaks loose.
The figures surge toward us, witches and cambions and a small army of the Cursed.
I summon wind and water, flinging a wave of ice to meet them. Several witches yelp, but they don’t go down. Asmo splays his hand toward two incoming witches, black auras writhing around them. Hisquicksand freezes them in place. Tree roots jump from the ground behind them and bind the witches’ arms behind their backs. Their screams are cut short by Amaris’s daggers finding home in their throats.
I summon the daggers, blood spurting as they’re yanked from the witches’ necks. Asmo hurls black fire at them, burning them alive as they writhe in his quicksand. I return the daggers to Amaris, the witch’s blood still dripping from them.
Over her shoulder, a witch beelines for her exposed back, one hand raised with black magic swirling in her palm. She hurls it toward Amaris. I shove Amaris to the ground, but it just puts her directly in the path of the ball of magic. It collides with her vest and bounces off.Yeah, I really need to get one of those.
I leap over Amaris and summon my flames. They wrap around the witch like an old friend. She dies screaming. Another one jumps from a nearby tree, landing on her hands and feet. I don’t let her get up. I use my other hand to aim a ball of fire at her, catching her perfectly and turning her to ash.
Amaris sprints toward a Cursed bear that’s reaching its paw toward Asmo’s back. She splays her hand and the bear shifts its course, swiping toward a nearby witch instead. The witch screams in anger, then hurls a burst of black magic at Amaris. She chuckles as she dodges it.
“I’ve been waiting for my revenge for years,” she says. A grin spreads across her face as she leaps into the air and slashes. Her dagger draws a gruesome split down the witch’s face, from eye to chin.
Basil jumps into the air and shifts into his owl form, his feathers the color of smoke. He soars behind me and I turn as he embeds his talons into a witch’s ears and yanks, wrenching her head from her body.
Holy shit.
Feet away, Asmo is locked in combat with another witch, dodging blows of black magic and swipes from her deadly nails. The witch’s back is turned to me, so I pounce, shoving white-hot flames into her and incinerating her from the inside out.
Her body turns limp and I fall with her, my knees striking the ground. Asmo hauls me up with a frown on his face. “I was having fun.”
I roll my eyes. He grabs my arm and forces me behind him. I whirl, just in time to see him throw up a shield. Writhing balls of black magic explode against it.
Basil cuts through the sky, talons slicing the witch’s extended arms. She bats him away, but he dodges and soars directly toward her. And sinks his talons into her eyes. She falls to her knees with a scream, blood the color of the night sky gushing through her fingers as she grasps her face.
Holly’s roots snap the witch’s hands down to her sides and crawl over her lap, forcing her to the ground.
I survey the clearing. Ivan and Etta go up against two witches, back-to-back. Holly’s roots, sharp as spears, punch through the ground at the witches’ feet. Asmo fires black flames at a small group of cambions that sprint toward us.
I don’t see any other witches or any other impending attack.
The witch trapped by Holly’s roots looks to the sky with blackened, bleeding eyes. I walk to her and kneel. “I warned you, witch.” My voice is a whisper, but it shuts her screaming up all the same.
“You’ll never win,” she hisses at me. “The Sister has yet to come. She’ll wipe you off the face of your kingdom for the lives you’ve taken from her.”
“Maybe so,” I say as I place my hands over her mouth. She snaps her jaw open and closed, teeth seeking purchase into my skin, but they don’t land. I lean down and whisper in her ear, “Tell her I said hi when you go back to Hell.” I shove my flames into her mouth.
