Page 51 of Commanding Chaos

Ember drew her daggers, assuming a fighting stance. “The hell it is.”

Chaos stood in front of me, his arms to his sides like he was about to summon hellfire. I rested my hand on his bicep, hoping to calm him. His muscles tensed even more.

“Don’t,” I whispered. “You’ll blow your cover.”

He growled, but the fire inside him simmered. “How did you know to look here?”

“How did you?” the man asked.

“It doesn’t matter.” I moved beside Chaos and pointed at the shattered jar. “We’re all too late.”

“You’re the cursed one, aren’t you? We know your secret.” The woman looked from me to Ember to Chaos. “Do they?”

Of course they knew. Why else would we be there?

“How do you know who I am?” I slowly slid my hand into my satchel, hoping to grab a freezing spell, though, honestly, I’d have taken anything. The confrontational energy building between the four of them was about to hit critical mass, and I had no doubt Chaos could wipe them out…and us in the process…with a flick of his fiery fingers.

The man scoffed. “You’re part of the wrongfully ruling family. Everyone knows who you are, no matter how much you try to hide.”

“We don’t have time for this.” Ember flipped a dagger in the air, catching it by the handle before flipping it again…like she did when she was about to throw it. “Turn around, walk away, and we’ll pretend we never saw you. Otherwise, you can join the goblin pinned to the wall.”

My fingers curled around a potion bottle. The woman snapped her head toward me, and before I could get the spell out of my bag, she grabbed a bottle from the strap across her chest, opened it, and hurled the contents at me.

Green slime splashed across my arm, burning through my sleeve and clinging to my skin. It sizzled, the intense heat and scent of burning flesh making my stomach turn.

Ember threw her first dagger, embedding it in the woman’s shoulder. She yelped and thrust her knife, but my sister darted right, roundhouse kicking the woman’s arm and knocking the knife to the ground.

Chaos’s sigil heated on my arm, fighting against the poison trying to eat my flesh. He grunted, the energy in the chamber shifting as he called on his fire.

“Please don’t.” I bit the inside of my cheek, making it bleed.

He looked at me, his nostrils flaring, and returned his menacing stare to the dark witches. Without moving a muscle or doing anything at all to indicate he’d called on his other power, he sent out a pulse of magic.

The woman’s eyes widened, and she turned away from Ember to shove the man. “This is your fault. We’d have been here sooner if you didn’t have to take a shit before we left.”

He pushed her back. “We wouldn’t be here at all if I hadn’t told you about it. Typical Cami, riding on my coattails and blaming me the second something goes wrong.”

“How dare you?” Her expression was wild, a dozen different emotions crossing her features, mixing and melding, her mind no doubt a garbled mess of chaos.

“How dare you?” The man threw the first punch, hitting her in the stomach. Cami recovered and went for his throat, slamming him against the wall.

Ember sucked in a breath, looking at Chaos like she wanted to scold him. Instead, she pointed to the storm drain. “Think we’ll fit through that?”

The guy made choking noises. Cami’s hands tightened on his neck. He grabbed the dagger still protruding from her shoulder, yanked it out, and slammed it into her chest. She sputtered. Blood ran from her lips.

My arm screamed with agony. If I didn’t apply an antidote soon, the poison would eat through my flesh and dissolve bone, but I couldn’t let these two kill each other. I used my teeth to uncork the freezing potion and threw it at them. “Standing tall or on your knees, in the name of the goddess, I force you to freeze.”

The man went still as a statue like he should have, but the woman dropped to the ground, limp. Lifeless.

Fabulous. Yet another death was on my hands. Maybe the curse was already happening. Maybe I wasn’t meant to go on a murderous rampage, but I’d be indirectly responsible for the destruction of my coven, witch by witch.

Crap.

Chaos scaled the wall and slammed his fist into the storm drain cover. It cracked, sending powdered concrete raining onto us.

“Wait!” No telling who might be walking by above us. With my good arm—the other was paralyzed—I dug through my bag in search of a shadow spell.

“Here.” Ember sheathed her dagger and peered into the satchel, snatching the potion and activating it, turning the world grayscale. “Get us out of here, Chaos.”

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