Page 158 of A Promise of Peridot
I knew why it belonged to me.
The only thing on this continent that could cause such sickness and euphoria and turmoil in the same heartbeat.
Killoran was wielding the Blade of the Sun.
45
kane
Agony.
Not my lighte, drained through the lilium, taken from my body against my will like a relentless bloodletting for the last few hours on end—
Nor my throat, raw and shredded from roaring for Arwen. For her life, for her to wake, for her to fight, to run. Powerless and unable to help her.
No, the agony racked through me as I watched Killoran stride toward us, debased and menacing, blade raised, ready to cleave Arwen in two.
A rage I didn’t know existed within me—hadn’t known of for two hundred years—sloshed and jerked in my heart like a torrential storm. Until I couldn’t think, couldn’t see, couldn’t bark through my gag anymore at Killoran to stop, to leave her be, to take me in her place.
When the warlord stepped around the corpses that littered hisfloor toward Arwen, who had sagged in the arms of his thugs, I saw nothing but the pulsing, throbbing vein of his jugular.
His life force.
The only thing standing between him and the woman who could save our world.
Every realm.
Every human.
Every Fae.
I didn’t think as I lunged for him.
It was uncanny, feeling my dragon fangs pierce through my gums, through the leather gag, while my lighte was still suppressed by the chains. A feeling that my entire existence would say should not have been possible to experience. No Fae had ever used lighte while bound by lilium.
The pain was excruciating. As it often was, for the brief moment in which my body recomposed itself when I shifted. Only now the lilium chains kept me in a suspended state of anguish, unable to fully shift, and that rage, caged like a beast inside of me, shot free in the only way it could.
Through my very mouth.
I heard Arwen’s gasp of horror before any of the others in the room.
But by then Killoran was already dead on the floor at my feet, his gurgling scream as I shredded through his throat the last sound he’d ever make. Below me, that throat torn clean out, tendons and flesh peeled back and ripped apart in a gory, wet mass where his neck once was. I would’ve smiled.
But in my mouth—
I spat the bastard’s remains onto the ground before sinking tomy knees. The sharp enamel of my dragon fangs retracted back into my gums and at last offered some reprieve from the pain.
But then, the pain was elsewhere.
Burning, rippling, in my side.
I knew the feeling of steel lodged between my ribs. I sucked in a lungful of air.
Fuck.
Killoran must have landed one final blow in my side as I ripped his throat out. I just needed to maneuver my hands free of the lilium so I could dislodge Killoran’s blade before any of his men could finish what their leader had started.
My eyes snapped up as the two men holding Arwen staggered back like they had been burned. As if her skin had singed them, curiosity freckling the ugliness in their eyes.
