“But how? I had never even heard of them until the witches…” Her eyes widen as she puts it together. “How long have you been working with them, Marik? How long has this been going on?”
I shake my head. Too long. There was no stopping this. If I hadn’t agreed to it, Cora would have found a way to use Asmo. My brother is too good, too strong, too pure. But that wouldn’t have stopped her. She would’ve done exactly to him what I’m doing to Elle. Bile threatens to rise, but I tamp it down.
“You don’t…I’m sorry that happened to you,” Elle whispers across the table. “You know, you could use your strengths to do good. You didn’t have to…” She trails off, searching for the right words.
“Become the devil?” I ask with a snort. Because that’s what I am. To her, at least.
Her brow furrows. “No. That’s not what I was going to say. It’s a different kind of strength, isn’t it? To continue to live, even when the world seems unbearable?”
It’s my turn to look at her pointedly. “You tell me, Elle. And then tell me that if I subjected you to the same horrors, would you still be who you are today? Would you turn into a shred of the person you were supposed to be? Or would you be forced to become something entirely different to survive?”
She doesn’t have an answer. I float the bottle of wine to her. She snags it from the air and downs the rest, draining it in three gulps. She sits there, staring at the table until she finally whispers, “None of that changes anything you’ve done.”
I lean back in my chair. We sit in silence until the waitstaff returns with the next course. I rise from the table and take the two plates from them. I set mine on the table, then walk to Elle. Her head snaps up as I send a breeze toward her, carrying the scent closer. Her face pales again, then flushes red.
I walk behind her and lean over her, catching a whiff of rosemary-scented shampoo. I set the ivory plate delicately in front of her, the gamey scent of venison wafting toward me. “No, it doesn’t change a thing. Dinner is served. Enjoy,” I whisper into her ear.
The moment I step away, she hurls the plate at my back. I figured that was coming. I let it slam into me, the plate shattering into pieces as it strikes me.
I stride from the room and don’t look back.
Don’t forget who I am, little fawn.
Chapter 29
MAE
My punchbarely grazes Asmo’s cheek, but it’s the closest I’ve come to striking him in the last hour of training. To my irritation, he gracefully dodges the blow. To my satisfaction, he takes the bait and doesn’t see my follow-up strike coming. With my knee.
He stumbles back, one hand clutching his groin.
“Fuck,” he swears. “Watch it.”
I roll my eyes. “Males are so weak. If your dick is so valuable, maybe don’t leave it exposed.”
His eyes darken. “I could’ve sworn you loved it when I?—”
I strike again. I summon wind and aim it at the ground, my magic brushing against the dirt-packed floor as the wind travels over it. I summon earth—the dirt mixing with the wind—and aim straight for Asmo.
He throws up a barrier to block the blow. My wind dies and the dirt falls to the floor as it hits his shield. I huff a sigh. “What am I supposed to do against that? How do I break a shield?”
He drops his hands, and the shimmer of the barrier disappears. “It depends.” He walks closer to me, running his hand through his hair to restore some sort of order to it. “The more a barrier is attacked, theweaker it becomes. You could continue to strike it, or you could fight smart.”
I raise an eyebrow. “Meaning?”
“Think about it.” He flares his hand once more, and the barrier reappears. “It’s not possible to hold up a barrier to protect yourself and continue to attack your opponent,” he says, firing a burst of black flames that die when they reach his shield. “It’s also not possible to hold a barrier forever. You could wait your opponent out and essentially be in a stalemate.”
He pulls me through his barrier. He steps outside and summons his flames, creating a controlled fire on the ground. “Or you could use your environment to see what else you could do to entice them to drop the barrier,” he says, coaxing the flames higher. I resist the urge to adjust my clothing as sweat begins to bead along my back. “Then, you could quickly attack when they drop it, or they’ll attack you, in which case, you should be prepared to provide a strong counter-attack.”
“So, in that instance, what could I have done?”
“Hard to answer, since we’re not in battle,” he says. I cross my arms and glare at him. He continues, “There are a number of things that would have made me drop my barrier. Don’t forget, although the barrier protects against strikes, it does not make the user immune to their environment. You need to get creative. You have to make the environment around them unbearable.”
“Like what you did with your fire?”
He nods eagerly. “Yes, exactly. You could surround them with fire or burn things around them to create smoke and make it hard for them to breathe.”
My brain swirls with possibilities, with images of me surrounding Marik in a wall of wildfire. I grin. “Again.”
