Page 83 of Catastrophe

“I’m not just going to follow you to my doom,” I told her.

“I don’t need you to follow.” She laughed. “I have magic that can force you into a cell along with your titan, and you can both die a horrible death so I can finally get what I’ve been working for.”

“A dragon. I heard,” I raised a condescending eyebrow, a little more confident, since she hadn’t immediately attacked me. “But so cliche. I hoped that the woman who murdered my witch, her lover, might have something more ambitious to aim for, but no. You just want to fly. You know there are planes now. They sail across the sky, taking humans to new places.”

“Who are you?” She shook her head, a bewildered smile on her face. “The Clawdia I knew wouldn’t have dared to speak to me this way.”

“Wouldn’t I? You couldn’t hear my thoughts as Winnie could, but believe me, I had some choice things to say about you,” I sneered.

Mary picked at some lint from a clean shirt on the airing rack. “Ah, Winnie. She was a terrible witch, but I miss her.”

“You don’t get to say that,” I growled and all the pain, anger, and questions I had came spilling out. “She was an amazing person. She was everything to me, like my sister, and you took her from me. You can’t miss her when you’re the reason she’s gone. Why? How could you do that to someone who loved you?”

“She was a loser.” Mary shrugged, as though the answer should have been obvious. She looked at me with dead eyes as she said, “I couldn’t have her dragging me down anymore and I found a better use for her. I’m a winner.”

“The winner of what, Mary? From what I can see, you have lost half your family, you’ve lost your freedom. Fafnir has thrown you to wolves who won’t hesitate to kill you when they tire of you, and you are a traitor to your people. You are sad and pathetic and I’m glad Winnie’s dead because if she knew what you were really like, what you were really about, she would have been mortified. She loved you. Truly. You were, and are a bully. A selfish, cruel, and nasty bitch who never deserved the affection she had for you and you destroyed her. You are a monster. And if you think you are going to escape punishment for the murder of my witch, for torturing Zaide and for taking Savida’s fire, then you are sorely mistaken.”

I was shaking, my hands clenched as righteous rage consumed me.

“Who’s going to punish me? You?” She threw her head back and laughed in the crazed way only a villain would.

A snarl curled my lips as a flame of fury burned brighter inside me. All thoughts of kindness, morality, forgiveness left my mind as though they had never been there. A red mist of pure anger clouded my eyes and flashes of Mary, all the wrongs she’d committed, a word in my mind.

She doesn’t deserve forgiveness. She doesn’t deserve kindness. The moral thing to do would be to make sure she could never hurt anyone again. So she can no longer aid Fafnir. She needs to die.

“Yes, me.”

I charged toward her while her head was thrown back in a laugh and she didn’t see me before I tackled her. We fell to the floor, Mary smashing her head against the tiles. I punched her. I’d never thrown a punch before in my life and from the throbbing in my thumb and knuckles, I probably didn’t do it right. But Mary let out a pained moan and desperately tried to unseat me from her chest.

Her wiggling was for nothing, though. I had her arms pinned beneath my legs and her legs waved wildly, trying to reach me, but I remained heavy like stone and stared down at her smugly. She tried to whisper a spell. I could feel the stir of magic in the few syllables she managed to whisper before I slammed my hand over her mouth.

“No. You aren’t going to win this one because you are too arrogant to truly know your opponent. It’s embarrassing.”

She screamed against my hand and tried to form words beneath my firm grip. Magic stirred again, and I looked around for something to gag her with. If her lips were separated, then she couldn’t speak. But my distraction caused me to lean too far back and her legs heaved up, wrapped around my waist. I hit the ground hard and tried to disentangle myself from her and scoot away, but as she got to her knees, she got a better grip on me.

Words like bullets poured from her mouth and magic ripped at me again, this time pinning me to the floor with my mouth shut. The tables had well and truly turned.

And this time, there would be no punishment from my men to go home to. Mary had killed before and would happily do so again. My situation wasn’t just a risk, it was dire. I let my anger overtake me again, and I rushed to avenge my witch, but couldn’t do it. I failed her. And I failed my men.

My eyes welled with tears I couldn’t let fall as Mary smiled cruelly down at me. “I always win.”

Her hand wrapped around my neck, squeezing so tightly I could feel the strength of each finger as they blocked my airways and blood supply. I wasn’t surprised she decided to kill me with her bare hands. It was clear she’d taken a liking to killing.

But in that moment, suffocating on air as I did the first time she attempted to kill me, I remembered I wasn’t powerless anymore. I had the power from my soul pair, the strength from my soul mate and witch. I wasn’t alone and I can take away what I can give.

I focused on her threads and as I suspected, they were green, healthy and twirling around her like a cute grass snake, but I didn’t want health. I wanted poison. I wanted the green grass snake to turn large, heavy and red, to wrap around her like a boa constrictor and take the air from her lungs as she tried to take mine. And the threads, as I hoped they would, responded to my wishes.

Her grip on my neck weakened as her thread turned from green to orange to red in three blinks, and I gasped for air. She coughed and her hand touched her heart like she couldn’t understand why she suddenly felt so unwell, releasing me from her hold altogether. I didn’t immediately move. I caught my breath and watched as she panted with wide, frightened eyes over me, but I was not sympathetic.

In my red haze of fury and fear, I felt inhuman, my morals tossed aside. I pushed her away and scooted back to watch her fall and writhe on the floor. She clutched at her chest and clawed at her throat, until she stopped moving and with the sound of her hand falling limp against the floor, the red mist fell away like a drop curtain revealing the gory picture and mind came back to itself.

“Oh.” I moaned. Nausea rising in my throat, I gagged as tremors shook my whole body. “Oh, no. What have I done? Mary.” I crawled over and shook her. She didn’t move. I shook her again.

I didn’t want to check her pulse; I didn’t want to check her threads; I didn’t want to know that I’d taken a life.

The door opened behind me with a squeak, but I didn’t turn, I couldn’t. My mind clouded as I stared at the lifeless eyes of my former witch’s lover.

Someone hissed my name and then I was wrapped in someone’s arms. Not someone’s. Baelen’s. I could smell the iron and wood scent of him and I immediately turned into it, burying my head in his chest.

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