Page 60 of A Reign of Roses
That noise sent my blood to ice as I peered up at the face looming above me.
Not Kane.
Maddox.
16
Arwen
Maddox snarled as he tookin my wounds. My undoubtably pale face. The dead guards and toxic flame and glass-strewn chaos reigning over the atrium. “What the fuck happened?”
“We were attacked.”
He knelt, his eyes narrowing. Flames crackled behind his thick head. “Lying whore.”
“No,” I pleaded. Tried to stand.
Mistake.
Wobbling on bloodless limbs, I fell to the floor, palms barely extending fast enough to catch me. My body screamed in pain.
“You did this.” His voice sliced through my dizzying thoughts. “You fucking did this.”
An unstable balcony in the hallway clattered down in a crash of smoke, sending nurses and handmaidens screaming. A column followed suit. The palace was collapsing.
Unbothered by the disintegration around us, Maddox graspedmy shoulders and yanked me up with his meaty hands. I scratched and tugged away to no avail.
“Stop.” My voice was too hoarse to hear over the shouts and pleas and screams.
Then I got a decent look at him.
Maddox’s face was covered in ash. His ear, blown clean off. His nose was bleeding. “You’re going to be sorry.” Maddox swore, wrapping a single hand around my throat and squeezing, eliciting an involuntary whimper from me. “I am going to make you so,” he said, grunting and tightening his fist, “sosorry.”
I clawed and choked, my limp legs dangling, leaden beneath me.
“Let her go,” someone called. “Let her go, Maddox!”
But Maddox was too rageful. I could see it in his beady eyes. His grimacing, blocklike face. Nothing would stop him from ending me. And it would be easy. I already had no air. A concussion, I thought. Some spinal injury, and burns. So many burns…
I could barely process Wyn as he barreled into Maddox and sent the three of us flying toward the stiff, unforgiving stone floor of what was left of the atrium.
My entire body wailed with the impact. I cowered—none of that brave, last full-blooded Fae left in me—as someone delivered blow after blow after bone-crunching blow beside me.
Please let it be Wyn.
I pried one stiff, blurred eye open.
Soft dark hair plastered to his head, face contorted with real, true conviction, Wyn knelt over Maddox and pummeled him with more fury than I’d seen from anyone in a long, long while. Years of fury. A lifetime’s worth. And something in my smoke-filled chest broke at the tears that slipped down his face as he raged and drove fist after fist.
“Wyn,” I croaked eventually, crawling toward him. “He’s dead.”
But Wyn did not falter. He slammed one bloodied, ashy hand after another into his rival until teeth scattered across the floor. I was never squeamish, but even I couldn’t bring myself to look at what remained of Maddox’s face.
“Wyn, please.”
Finally, some vengeance-spell broken by my ragged plea, Wyn released Maddox and stared at what his hands had done.
Eventually he climbed off his fellow guard and lifted me to stand. I swayed on my numb legs and Wyn course-corrected, allowing me to lean into him. “Arwen.” He sounded worse than ragged. “We have to get you to—”
