Page 55 of A Reign of Roses
He did not want to kill me. All this time.
Furious breaths heaved in and out of his lungs.
But his labored breathing—I’d never heard my father pant. Notwhen using his lighte, not ever…This…it seemed difficult for him. Something was wrong.
With a bracing breath I stood and lunged for him once more, throwing my body into his. We slammed into the floor with too much force—my chin rebounding off his sternum, his head smacking the stone with awhack.
I braced for the ice. For his power—but nothing came.
Instead, pain bloomed across my face as his fist—the iron fist of a true Fae—collided with my jaw.
My vision blurred, my ears rang…and yet…
I laughed.
He hadpunchedme. My own father.
Because he was out of lighte.
I reared my fist back and delivered an answering blow. My father’s nose crushed beneath my fist, and the feeling—the sensation—was so cathartic I did it again. And again.
He sputtered blood.
And then pain cut through my side. My ribs, my kidney—as his fist slammed into my body.
Across the floor my knuckles grazed a candlestick. One that must have fallen in the hail of ice spears. My fingers wrapped around the pewter and before my father could slam another fist into my face, I brought it down across the crown of his head.
Thecrunch—and his pained groan—sent adrenaline into my bones.
“Where are my Gods-damnedguards,” he bellowed. “Guards!”
I wondered the same. We’d been making enough noise to raise alarm bells. I could only hope something had stalled them. And would continue to.
“Guards!” he screamed again.
“Scared to fight me like a mortal man?”
He didn’t answer as blood leaked from his nose, brows furrowed in both fury and concentration. He’d never looked so old to me. So tired.
My nails dug into him, scratching across his wrinkled face, the paperlike skin of his ancient neck, drawing blood—
His blow to my liver was like being run over by a stallion. I hadn’t experienced physical pain such as this in my life. Mortal pain.
But our brawl—
We’d landed within grasping distance of the Blade of the Sun. My eyes cut to its glinting face on the thin, gray rug beneath that leather chair, bathed in darkness, mocking me—
Another blow from his fist smashed across my face.
Pain sprang behind my eyelids and in my shattered jaw.
His fist collided again and the world expanded and pinpricked around me. Nauseating and unfiltered. Time slowing. Something wet spilling from my nose and down the back of my throat.
I swung with my free hand, but each punch of mine was weaker, and weaker still.
Until I blinked through swollen eyes to find him brandishing my own sword above me. Double-bladed, vicious point hovering just over my throat. That steel an oath of death.
But my fingers…
