Page 32 of Obsidian Prince

Unlike a doe frozen in headlights, Liliana dodged nimbly to one side, danced past the massive lion and trailed the tip of her sword across his upper left arm, leaving a scarlet path.

If the contest had been to first blood, Liliana would have just won. But she had no illusions this battle would end in anything but her death or the death of Tray Bradley.

Bradley turned on his toes, faster than she expected. He struck at her with the massive mace.

Liliana turned her shield at an angle, so the mace struck it a glancing blow. The force was still enough to throw her back hard against the triangular bars of the dome. She blinked, dazed, her whole body aching.

Her enemy wasted no time following up his advantage. The mace came at her head with crushing force.

Liliana ducked just in time.

The mace CLANGED against the bars, catching some of her hair.

She felt the strands yank free as she danced away from the restricting bars, toward the center of the dome.

Bradley's clawed foot flew out, trying to trip her or strike her legs.

Ha. Don’t think so.

She leapt up and over, spinning around in the air. Her dodge turned into a driving thrust toward the lion's body.

Bradley bashed her sword aside with his shield hard enough to rip it from her hands. The sword clattered across the concrete cage floor.

His mace followed up the defense with a powerful attack, spiked head swinging toward her body.

Liliana barely got her shield up in time. She took the full force of the heavy mace driven by the werelion’s superhuman power squarely on her shield.

She heard a snap under the crash of metal against metal as the mace connected. Her arm went numb. Her shield, smashed concave by the force of the blow, was ripped off her arm. The blow flung the light spider-kin through the air clear to the other side of the Dome.

Liliana tucked, touched the concrete floor with her right hand, and flipped herself to land on her feet.

Her weapons were gone so she flicked her wrists to pop out her arm blades.

Sickening pain flashed up her left arm as the blade came out on that side. With her second eyes, she could see that both forearm bones were broken. Her arm blades were much tougher and more flexible than bone. The spider-kin staggered a step, steadied her left arm with her right, and flicked the left blade back in, unable to stifle a groan.

More blinding pain hit her, but the unbroken blade stabilized her arm like a living splint. She couldn't use the blade, or the arm. She felt like vomiting.

Tray Bradley bore down on her again from the other side of the circular cage, slowly this time,. His smile grew as he walked. He had all the time in the world.

Seeing his mass, his skill, and assessing her weaponless petite self, down to one functional arm, she felt a wave of hopelessness. She wiped sweat off her upper lip with a hand that shook.

Liliana didn’t want to die, but she’d already seen where this path led. An image of her own smashed corpse flashed in her memory.

Behind Bradley, the Fae prince stood, hands white-knuckled on the bars, his fear bare on his face for any to see, his control shattered. If she died today, he would mourn. She saw that on his face. Beyond that, he would die, too, very soon.

She didn’t want that beautiful, complex soul to end.

Liliana straightened her back. In order to survive, she couldn’t keep going down her current path. She had to change her fate.

I am making a fatal mistake.

She’d fought the lion-kin as if she were a lion-kin. If she had been a lion, she would be a tiny weak lion in a hopeless battle against the fiercest lion in the pride. But while she was her father’s daughter, she was also her first mother's daughter.

She was not a tiny weak lion. She was a spider.

As the gigantic werelion accelerated his stride with a wicked fanged smile on his scarred face, mace drawn back for what he expected to be a finishing strike, Liliana leapt up and to the side, left arm hugged into her body to protect it.

She caught one of the bars of the cage with her right hand. She flipped up, body extended and toes pointed, in a one-handed handstand on the side bars. When her feet went through one of the topmost triangles, she hooked her ankles in the bars. She swung forward, popping out her arm blade to slash Bradley across the shoulders as he charged under her.

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