Page 143 of Crowned By the Fae King

—using a siphon in battle against a glamor-mage, a weapon more powerful than opals if you could get it jammed against the skin of your enemy and rip out their source—

—and veered at the last moment, flinging a satchel onto the ground and whipping past Ithronel.

She snarled at him, swinging her hand-cannon to track him through the darkness. Trees tore up from the ground all around us, sharp spears of deadly rage.

I took advantage of her distraction and scrambled towards the bag. It had fallen open, spilled its guts—fuck! I pawed through the snow, trying to find the siphon.

Cass' heavy wingbeats slashed through the air. Ithronel started laughing, her bright voice cutting through the predawn light.

My numb hand hit something hard, and pain chewed up my arm. I let out a harsh sob, yanking my hand away, the sense of bleeding so powerful that terror gripped me by the throat. Cradling my arm against my chest, weeping, I dug into my pocket and came out with the opal-studded gloves Tech had worn.

Metal flashed, Cass taking another swipe at Ithronel, baiting her like a songbird attacking a crow, keeping her eyes on him and off of me. The air around her started to glow, a pale dawning light that cast a faint blush across the snow.

Tech's hands were so much bigger than mine, but I managed to get my stiff fingers into the glove. It wasn't around my throat, cutting me off from all magic – I could still feel the strain of Cass' wings and the sharpness of his adrenaline – but my magic shattered against it, making it harder to direct my attention towards him.

When I reached for the siphon again, it didn't bite.

Cass dove a third time, dead on. Ithronel set herself, teeth bared and every shifting black tattoo across her skin turning from branches to jaws.

"No—!" I screamed, in the same instant that the hand-cannon roared into life.

The blast stole my voice and left my vision dancing. Cass hit the ground, hard, leaving a red smear across the snow. He tried to push himself up and collapsed. I could hear his wheezing from thirty feet away.

Ithronel sauntered towards him, her weapon dangling from her hand. "Too easy," she purred, laughter still brightening her voice. "It's such fun having inventive friends. Talien assured me that this delicate mix would be able to take down a King who can defeat an army, and now look at you!" She laughed again, a vicious sound.

I started crawling towards her, my body shaking from cold and anger.

"F—fuck you," Cass choked out, the words wet with blood. He started shoving himself away, one wing hanging like it was broken. His eyes darted towards me, the pain and terror plain on his face. Go, he mouthed, before his eyes darted back up to Ithronel.

Fuck that. I kept belly-crawling.

"Faebane to steal your strength, monk's-tongue to silence your magic, lead shot to break you, and iron filings to drown you in your own blood," she said. "Clever, don't you think? I never would have even known such a thing as this 'cannon' existed, were it not for dear Talien. He has been such a treasure."

With casual malice, she flung the hand-cannon at Cass. His femur snapped with a sound like a gunshot.

"Cass!" I cried out, the sound torn out of me without any chance of holding it back.

Her eyes snapped over to me. "Poor little thing," she crooned, her eyes lighting. "Would you like to take his punishment instead?"

I didn't even have time to move. The slender willow sapling speared through my gut like an arrow, sending sharp agony through me. It hurt so badly I couldn't even scream, curling up like a beetle pinned to a board.

Cass snarled and flung his broken wing at her legs.

Ithronel caught his wing with one hand, the blade of his feathers biting deep but his strike too weak to cut through her palm. "Now, now, Merciful King," she said with deadly menace. Blood dripped off her fingers. "Whatever made you think you could stand against your goddess?"

She put her foot on his back, fingers closing around his wing to wrench it off.

I drove the siphon into the soil of the Court of Flies.

A Court is a living thing, and its lifeblood is the same power that makes monsters and feeds gods. The siphon in my hand had been made to drink from a Court. It didn't care what Court.

In a heartbeat, the ground under me went from belonging to the Court of Flies to belonging to no one. That circle of unclaimed land spread like wildfire, an expanding ring of no-man's-land, the magic devoured by the siphon.

Ithronel whipped around as the dead spot flooded past her, letting go of my soulmate. In the same heartbeat, I yanked the siphon back off the earth.

The land remembered being the Court of Flies, but it remembered being the Court of Mercy, too, and the Monarchs of Mercy were sprawled on it, their blood and tears wetting it. Power flared. The ground beneath us remembered its masters.

Every pain vanished as the Court of Mercy flooded back into me. The sapling through me crumbled into nothing. Blood wet my clothing. I fought my way to my feet, swaying.

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