Page 84 of Crowned By the Fae King

My swordmistress would eat you alive, I thought, distantly. I could almost see the flat disdain in her eyes; the way she had looked at me when I'd tried to tell her the stance she'd put me in didn't feel right. "You are used to being lazy. If you cannot even stand, how can you hope to fight?"

With the thought, my mind latched onto the movement of my soulmate—to his stance and the way the blood slicked the marble floor under his feet. Rougher, I thought, and the palace answered, the ground turning from polished stone to coarse sandpaper.

His surprise tightened my chest, then was replaced by the vibration of a snarl, vicious with pleasure. My blood heated.

Ithronel's feet were bare. She was a goddess, but that didn't preclude pain, and any distraction could give Cass what he needed to close with her. Like glass, I commanded the palace. It didn't even hesitate. The ground under her feet shattered and reformed, paper-thin slices of marble lancing through her feet. Her shriek of pain shook the walls.

The Clement Palace was mine, not hers. Fae called the gods patrons of the Courts, but they were siphons, feeding off the wild magic so that people could live in peace without growing tails or facing down monsters.

We don't need you anymore, I thought, my teeth bared with bloodlust. We have him.

Cass drove her across the floor, keeping her away from me. Under her feet, I turned the floor to glass-sharp knives; with every step, Cass' feet met the perfect footing, exactly where he needed it. I couldn't fight like him—but I sure as fuck could fight with him.

The goddess redoubled her attack with an enraged shout, moving fast enough that Cass had to cede ground. He held his wings hunched forward, shielding his head and chest, stepping back, back, back—

With perfect footing, he feigned a stumble, and went down to one knee.

Ithronel didn't see it for the trap it was. She reared back, greatsword held like a spear, and drove it for his heart.

Cass took it in his arm.

He took it on purpose, teeth bared in rage and eyes glowing gold, capturing her blade with his own body. The steel ran between the bones of his forearm without any pain at all, blood painting it red, and he surged to his feet, reaching for her.

Ithronel screamed in stymied rage. Her arms twisted, wrenching the sword to the side. Bones cracked, flesh tore—

—and then his hand was on her throat, and all movement ceased.

Power raged through me, pulled with such force that my vision streaked and danced. My heartbeat roared in my ears. I could feel his hand like it was mine, gripping so tightly on Ithronel's neck that the tendons screamed for relief, the force of that tension making his arm tremble. Half a million square miles of Court arrayed himself against a goddess, like a river fighting a reservoir.

The green leaves in her hair turned golden. They fell, one by one.

She fell, her skin breaking apart and body dissolving like a stone into sand, turning into autumn willow-leaves. Her sword slipped from leafy fingers and slid out of his arm like an eel out of a cave.

Cass' fingers met and closed into a fist. Her whole body fell in a rustling rain of leaves.

The thunder of Mercy's power through me fell suddenly silent. All I could hear was the harsh rasping of Cass' breath and the slow drip… drip… of his blood striking the stone floor.

I pressed my hand over my mouth, trembling. Cass had… he had…

"She's not dead," he said roughly. He slowly lowered his hand, and didn't turn to look at me. "Her memory still lives. She's one of the Deathless, Quyen." Cass' wings started rattling. They were scored with bright bronzy lines, the marks of her star-iron sword. "All it takes is time. Soon – maybe very soon – she'll take solid form again. Perhaps she'll step out of a cave, or a willow grove, or a spring, and then—" His voice cracked. "I have made a terrible enemy."

There were sharp feathers piercing the cloth over his spine. He'd channeled all of Mercy to defy her, and he would wear the marks of that power forever.

I didn't know what to say to him. What was there to say? "Guess the Cassites aren't so stupid, after all"? I didn't have any comfort for him, and I didn't think trying to plan for an uncertain future would read as anything but petty and cruel.

His wings and shoulders slumped. His blood dripped down his fingers to splash on the floor.

A dark shape moved in the winter wood.

Cass had Ithronel's greatsword in his hands and his wings spread in a guard position before I could even focus my eyes on the creature moving through the trees. He growled a predator's warning, the very ground underneath us trembling from the sound.

"Keep your wrath behind those sharpening teeth, Merciful King," a deep voice said, coming from everywhere and nowhere. "I am no starved and desperate maiden."

Snow crunched underfoot, and a massive beast stepped out of the dark forest.

It had the shape of a gaunt wolf but was the size of an SUV, with ice-blue eyes and a near-black coat. Glossy black spikes speared up out of its dark ruff, running down its spine like something on a dragon, and instead of a wolf's fluffy tail, it had one made of what looked like knife-sharp obsidian vertebra, as long as a lizard's and snaking through the air.

"Faerqen," Cass breathed. He started backing up, hands shaking, all his feathers slicked down.

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