Page 108 of Calling of the Crown

And that death had already started.

As I blocked an attack by Bella—the Water Fae girl who’d turned against us with her family—I sent her falling over a still body on the ground. When I made the mistake of looking at it, my chest constricted.

Blake, the troubled, lonely Fae who’d finally come back home after years of struggling to fit into the human world. He lay there, a slice across his neck, seeping red and black.

A wound made fatal for our kind because of the Nightbloom.

“Ha!” Bella laughed, seeing the horror on my face. “He was an easy kill from what I saw. Weak. A pussy. He’s better off as food for the maggots than—”

I sent water crashing around the woman and squeezed my fingers closed, instantly encasing her in ice. She stood inside, frozen mid-word, as still as a statue.

“That was for Blake,” I hissed through gritted teeth.

Just as I started to step around her, a disc of water darted past my face. I watched as it severed the head of a Fae near me. Their body crashed to their knees before falling forward, blood instantly pooling around the decapitated form. I whipped my head around to look at the source of the attack, only to be clocked in the cheek by a fist. Spit and blood sputtered from my lips as pain burst along my jaw, and it took everything inside me to ignore the throbbing so that I could focus on the deliverer of the blow.

Dax observed his red knuckles before turning a smug grin on me. “Miss me, wifey?”

Chapter Forty-Seven

CATCHING MY BREATH, I NARROWED my eyes on Dax. “Not particularly.”

“Right, right,” Dax said. “I’m sure you were too busy sucking Fox Fae cock to even care about me and the cell you left me to rot in.”

Ignoring the taunt, I argued, “I wasn’t intending to keep you there forever. Others called for your death after what you did, but I said to give you a chance to change and learn from your mistakes.”

“Oh, I learned,” Dax chuckled, gathering water in his hand. “I learned that Morardia is full of imbeciles who support a shit ruler, and the best way to wipe the slate clean for my rule is to let Elias do all the killing for me. You don’t deserve to be Queen, and the Fae following me agree. So, do us all a favor and just fucking die!”

The water in his hand elongated and hardened into a sword, which he aimed right at my chest. Too bad water was just as much my element as it was his.

Gritting my teeth, I grabbed the blade, knowing that as soon as I touched it, it would turn back into water. The sword melted into liquid in the blink of an eye, making his eyes widen as his empty hand swung toward me. I grabbed his fist and punched the underside of that arm. There was no mistaking the sickening crack of bones as his arm bent at the wrong angle or unhearing the pained cry that left his lips. Not letting go, I yanked him closer and reared my knee up at the same time to slam it into his balls. He doubled over, and I took the chance to kick him hard, sending him rolling back.

He cried and huffed where he landed on the ground, but the sound changed as he began to chuckle. “You—You’re too weak to actually kill me, Bria.”

I held my head higher. “I am not a killer.”

A figure stopped behind Dax, and the Water Fae looked over his shoulder at the sudden presence.

Rune leaned down with a wicked smile. “I am.”

Rune knocked Dax sideways, and he landed hard on his back. Rune planted his foot in the middle of Dax’s chest, and he pressed down. Dax sputtered as he tried to inhale, but Rune’s weight kept him from breathing.

Sneering down at the flailing Fae, Rune said, “I wanted to draw out your death so badly for touching her. For degrading her. For threatening her. But, lucky for you, I don’t have much time on my hands to deal with just you. So I’ll make it quick. But not painless.”

Rune shoved his claws into Dax’s gut and shredded him from his abdomen, all the way up to his chest cavity. Dax’s scream mixed into the sounds of the chaos around us, and the smell of his blood permeated the air with the rest of the fallen warriors’. Tears streamed down his cheeks from his gaping eyes, and saliva and blood dripped from his mouth as Rune’s furious fists lit with flames and tore him to pieces.

Unable to stomach the sight, I turned away just in time to see two Fae closing in on me. Vines burst from the ground, encasing my limbs to hold me captive. I yanked on them as the second Fae poised her black tar covered dagger right at my heart.

With a gasp, I looked at the lake and jerked my chin. The water barreled forward just in time to swarm around me like a mad, watery tornado. The vicious water snapped the vines and hoisted me high into its spiraling current, carrying me away from the Land Fae.

When I landed, I found myself beside Dallas, who had just run an ice blade through a man. Her green eyes narrowed on me as she hissed, “I saw that, and it was too close for comfort.”

“You don’t have to tell me,” I agreed. “I don’t want a repeat of that, either.”

I tried looking back to make sure the two Fae hadn’t jumped Rune with their Nightbloom weapons, but, as if on cue, five Fae closed in on Dallas and me. We swatted, ducked, punched, and wielded our water so that we managed to come out mostly unscathed. Dallas had a nasty cut along her upper thigh from a thorny vine that one Fae had used as a whip, and my forehead was split open at my hairline from some debris made when a failed rock attack exploded.

I’d just gotten a grasp on my bearings when a handful more closed in on us. Just as panicked sweat broke out on the back of my neck, a wave of water blasted through half of them, courtesy of my mother, who joined Dallas and me. At the same time, a plume of hot fire consumed the other Fae trying to get close, and I turned to see Rune throwing the massive flames at those nearest us.

“Where’s Angus?” I asked my mom.

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