Page 240 of The Doll and The Domination

The beast is working toward a deadly blow, twisting the energy of this battle into heartbreaking loss and sickening anticipation for what comes next. Because our men do everything. They try everything. This thing is unkillable. A cockroach that lives through a nuclear explosion.

Knightingale! PLEASE!

She appears in front of me with the grace of a shadow, at a height of five feet and eleven inches. Radiant bronze skin, long coffee-colored hair, and white paint drawn in intricate streaks across her face. Her red leather corset is decorated with gold buckles and belted straps from her neck to her ankles. And those pointed ears that are clearly not human.

“I am not the right Knightingale that can help him,” the elven queen says with a voice of gilded iron and expensive silk. Her wise eyes bore into me, waiting for me to understand her meaning.

“What?”

But there’s a figure off in the distance, staring, like a lighthouse calling a ship home. There’s a sensation creeping over my body as I let that magnetic energy pull my gaze away from the elven queen through the sea of the dead and the living, the bloody swords, and the dismembered limbs.

My eyes land on Knightingale, the Ginger Wrathbull, standing a few hundred paces away from this massacring carnage. She stares at DaiSzek with those doe black eyes; the fur spiking in a strip down her back as she witnesses the leader of her pack being beaten down and annihilated before her very eyes.

And though she’s an animal, I can see a potent idea rising to the front of her mind. A decision. She swipes her focus to the pile of explosives that are being used in the cannons. A hollow pit forms in my gut just as my mouth falls open.

“Knightingale!” I shout in terror.

Those dilated eyes switch over to me, then to DaiSzek in his slow death, then back to me.

I shake my head.

But it’s the way she’s looking at me, like she wants me to understand. She will bear no other options. The pain of watching her alpha, her only friend, be pummeled in a slaughter, is something she cannot stomach.

“Wait!” I scream to her. “Just wait!”

Dessin scrambles to his feet to set his sights on who I’m yelling at.

Knightingale lifts her snout proudly in a quick posture of honor. And her decision is made; her legs shoot into action, and she’s sprinting like an award-winning racehorse toward the pile of bombs. Without missing a beat, she picks one up with her mouth, the size and weight of a brick, and swipes it through a sweltering torch. She huffs and snorts in pain as the fire ignites the outer shell, licking at her snout and tongue.

But my brave, misunderstood Ginger Wrathbull doesn’t let that stop her. She barrels toward the Dralutheran, picking up speed with her pointy ears pressed back and the fire eating away at the sides of her lips and fur.

I screech and cry like a dying banshee, but Dessin holds me back. Arms wrapped around my waist, I can feel him shudder against me as I thrash and fight to stop her.

“Wait!” I scream through rivers of tears pouring down my cheeks.

DaiSzek looks up at the commotion through slackened eyes and the ache of his broken limbs. She chuffs and barks as he spots her zooming through the crowd, taking damn near flying strides like a cheetah before she reaches the grand beast.

And it…it happens too fast.

The Dralutheran lowers its head to the ground to greet her, opening its jaws wide and welcoming to enjoy a quick meal of this small, yet heroic animal. There’s a gap of a few seconds as she takes a hurried dive into its mouth. Those jaws close around her. Her copper-furred figure disappears into that darkness.

Dessin and I freeze with gaping mouths.

The Dralutheran has but a moment to blink its reptilian eyes. It implodes from the inside out, spraying everyone in a fine, pink mist. The skies weep with its disintegrated fragments, skin, innards, and, of course, DaiSzek’s friend, Knightingale.

68. Scorned

Skylenna

The aftermath leaves me in the form of a block of stone. Frozen. Muted. A human vessel of nothingness. Dessin’s arms go slack around my waist with my sharp nails still biting into his forearm.

We blink through the cloud of pink smog and floating ash. My ears ring, tuning out the war. My chest shrivels in on itself, warping my spine, beating against my soul with bony fists. The shock that takes over is a cage that wants to lock me down and protect my mind from irreversible trauma.

But I still see her running like an angel, flying on the wind with purpose. I can feel the swell of determination she emanated wanting to save her best friend. I smell the outcome of her demise.

“Skylenna?” Warrose’s face fills my vision.

There are so many sounds. The cries of death are like an untuned violin. Wind and rain. Metal puncturing meat. Teeth snapping at limbs.

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