Page 162 of A Reign of Roses
But my body healed before I could voice the agony. Instantaneously,gaping holes in my sides and gut fused themselves. Bone rebuilt. Skin stitched closed.
The blade’s power—we were one. It could not be destroyed, and neither could I.
Even as Lazarus read my mind, anticipating my every strike—as he swept my leg from underneath me and sent me careening into the ground, the skin of my knees ripping under my leathers—I swiped my blade, flung my lighte, and darted past his blows.
Sweat dripped from my brow, stinging my eyes, my arms and legs wet with blood, the torn skin rippling as I moved, flesh weaving back together. Despite the tears that welled, I hurtled toward Lazarus and swung my blade with a heaving grunt. Each blow sent gentle rays of illumination wending through the glade. Like the reflection of a hot summer sun off a clean mirror—blinding and softly radiant.
A sword of pure ice materialized in his grasp—not a broadsword, but a heavy claymore—a punishing piece of weaponry. Stronger than any I’d ever encountered as it crashed against my own. We snapped together and sprang apart, primeval ice and sacred stone twisting and flashing in utter darkness.
The force of his blow knocked me down, my knees bending against my will, my blade arcing from my hand and skittering across the snow.
Ears ringing, pain cresting so acutely—
I could barely erect a shield around me once more as his next blow landed in a tree trunk, directly where my head would have been. Still, even under my shield, the impact made my jaw ache, and I fought to stand on trembling legs.
My blade glinted in pale light, only a foot—maybe two—from me.
But Lazarus was already there, scooping it up. He swung that blade,my blade, at me until I found myself dodging back and backand back, between trees and scrambling over rocks, until my spine slammed against the bark of an oak, bones screaming with the force—and I sagged beneath my own weight.
“Strike me,” I pleaded. “Do it.”
Lazarus narrowed his ruthless silver eyes. He, too, was winded. “You think it’ll end me? That’s not what the prophecy says.”
But there was a chance the blade could work both ways. And that was all I had left.
My lighte was dwindling, and my lungs stung from exertion. I could taste the blood—
My limbs ached. And my skin, everywhere, raw and fresh and new.
And he was massive and so much stronger, and a very small, scared part of me was beginning to doubt I could physically best him.
With one last furious glare, fast as a viper, he drove my own blade toward my heart—
Stopped only by my trembling, outstretched hands, wrapping around the mighty Blade of the Sun, even as it sliced easily through my flesh, blood surging into my palms and onto the steel. Even as Lazarus bore down, pushing harder, wringing an agonized shout from my lips.
But my hands were healing—healing as theyripped—fueled by the power ofmyweapon, even held withinhisgrasp. And with every step Lazarus took, forcing the sword closer to my chest, I lifted the blade higher, higher,higher stilluntil Lazarus’s own proximity—that gleaming, grinning hubris—condemned him. I wrenched the weapon clean from his hands.
The Fae king’s pained groan might have been the most beautiful, victorious sound I’d ever heard.
A blink of horror in those insidious silver eyes, and then he retreated.
My heart hammered. And not from fear or all the pain or the adrenaline.
But fromtriumph.As I knew it in my bones—Ihadhim.
“Almost,” he admitted, before fishing through his own silver armor leathers and pulling out a small, glowing glass vial.
A vial that called to me.Sangto me.
“That’s mine…” I breathed, before I could even articulate the meaning of the words.
Lazarus smirked, all his teeth lit by watery silver shadows. Then he downed my lighte like a shot glass full of spirits.
I squirmed against the sight. Like bearing witness as someone ate your flesh before you. The violation rent through my entire body.
Bolstered by my own traitorous lighte, the Fae king shifted in a whirlwind. Gray, veined wings crested open, his gaping reptilian jaw snapping as he bellowed so loudly the half-frozen river cracked behind him…and he lunged up, up,upinto the night.
Dread oozed in me as I watched him fly away through blurred eyesight, carried on an icy, unforgiving wind. Away from me, and this blade. Away from the Shadow Woods, away from his fate—
