Page 75 of House of Mages and Raven

“Amon, don’t engage with her,” Grace snapped. “She’s poison. She has no respect for anything.”

“Except smut,” I offered.

“Go eat dirt!” Grace shouted. She’d really had enough.

The Princess of the Underworld pumped more force into her hellfire wind, battering at my defenses. This time, her hellfire wind was mixed with another power; she had more up her sleeve. It clicked in my mind: she’d studied me. She’d prepared.

Her power punched a hole through my shield, smacking me in the face. It felt like acid eating away at my skin. I yipped in pain and staggered back two paces. Sy hissed while she lunged to take the pain into her.

Grace smiled smugly.

I reached out to grab her magic to rip it away, even though her Underworld power was preventing me from siphoning it. Unlike the demons’ hellfire, hers carried something else that I couldn’t make out. As soon as I got a grip on her magic, it slipped through my fingers like an eel. When I tried again, it bit me before slipping away. It dawned on me then that I couldn’t really harm her; it would be like harming myself.

For a flicker of a second, I saw through her genetic magical makeup.

She shared my DNA, but she didn’t have a monster like Sy within her. Sy growled at my definition. It was like Grace was my identical twin who carried a different type of magic from our mother, whereas I’d inherited my magic from our father. A dark light sparked in my mind as I wondered whether Grace and I had been made from the union of Ruin and Queen Lilith. I shook off the absurd concept.

Grace’s power locked with mine, as did our gazes. Her eyes momentarily turned a brilliant green. I swore that Queen Lilith was peeking out through the eyes of her ward.

Shit, could Grace be her familiar?

Grace winked, as if Queen Lilith was goading me to give it all I had and use the darkest flame on her. Not only that, I felt herpower trying to draw out my dark flame. It slid under my skin, challenging me.

Sy perked up.Burn the bitch and take back our man.

He isn’t our man and never will be,I snarled.

Sy pouted.

Some chicks might go after the other woman, but I held the man accountable first. Yet I’d be lying if I told Sy that I wasn’t tempted. But if I let my flame consume Grace now, the best-case scenario was that I’d be charged with murder. There was no denying that everyone now knew the unholy dark flame belonged to me after it’d wiped out the first wave of the Legion of the Brotherhood.

Medea’s death still hung over my head. I wasn’t found guilty thanks to the protection of Killian and the rest of the heirs. If my flame went after Grace, Killian would condemn me.

The worst case? I could lose control and burn everything down, which went against my most solemn vow not to harm but protect the realm, its magic, Underhill, and every living thing in Mist of Cinder.

Grace was baiting me and egging me on to use my darkest flame. Could she really survive it? I tilted my head and regarded her, and my heart skipped an icy beat. I was sure now that it was not Grace but Queen Lilith who peeked back at me.

The demon queen could do what my father did—possess their vessels and see through their eyes. And she was willing to throw away her ward to test me.

Why?

A good question,Sy offered.

A blink, and Grace’s eyes returned to her usual honeydew green. Her queen receded. For a breath, though no one else could tell, Grace appeared disoriented, her hellfire wind halting before stabilizing again. To make up for her slip, she overcompensated by tossing more firepower at me.

An idea hit me then. I’d approached this the wrong way. I was so afraid of losing myself by siphoning magic in this realm that I had conditioned myself to constantly be on the defense unless I wanted to kill my opponents. To my own surprise, I didn’t want to slay Grace, not exactly.

Why the hell not?Sy asked.

Sy had no issue at all killing my doppelgänger. She was even eager to eat Grace, so she could brag that she consumed Barbie 2.0 and tell me about the taste next time we got into a fight. My other half might’ve evolved at a rapid speed ever since we’d come to this realm, but at the core, she was still a savage. Beautiful, yes, but a savage and a monster nevertheless.

I spread open my arms. Instead of keeping Grace’s hellfire wind at bay, I let it through, then sucked it into me, only to regret it as I gasped at the taste of black magic.

The unholy union between Heaven and Hell.

I staggered back and tried to spit out the remaining terrible taste.

Grace smiled viciously. “You can’t do to me what you did to others.”

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