Page 85 of Brutal Fae King
“I could see you were struggling!” she snaps back. “Now, quiet! Let me concentrate!”
She walks to the edge and growls from exertion, closing her eyes. Before I can do anything, she begins crackling with lightning. All I can do is back off until she’s freed the power inside her, lest it electrocute me.
After a second, she throws her hands down the battlements.
Lighting smashes down. The noise it makes is ear-shattering. It ricochets through my bones from as far away as I am. I hear the cries of the army below us, and when I look down, the electricity wall has been restored to its former glory, and the enemy army has been devastated. They are sprawling, and those who aren’t are being flanked by our own army. It looks positive.
We could… actually do this!
A gasp rattles out behind me, followed by a lightthud. When I turn around, I see Ebelor on her knees.
“Ebelor!”
I dart to her side and put a couple of hands on her shoulders. She gives me a weak smile.
“I’m fine,” she says.
She’s not. She’s white and a few beads of sweat are beading on her brow. When I take her hand, they’re trembling.
Of course. She hasn’t just cast her own spell but helped me with mine…
I grip her arms a little harder and help her up to her feet again.
“Rest now,” I tell her. “You’ve done more than enough.”
She smiles lightly. I look down over the battlements. The fight below is going well—so well that I don’t even think that our archers up here are necessary; if we were to get our archers to fire down, they would be much more likely to hit our own forces than any of the enemy. Our forces are dominating.
“Vicmar!” Ebelor shrieks suddenly.
I spin around. There’s a purple sigil in the battlements in front of her.A teleportation sigil!
I sprint, crossing the distance, drawing my sword. Dralis snaps out from the teleportation sigil, and he’s already reaching for her. I swing my sword, and Dralis’s hand pulls back. As he draws his own sword, I shove Ebelor behind me. There’s a gleam out the corner of my eye.
I just about manage to block the blade before it hits me—but not by much. I can hear Ebelor behind me, gasping.
I am going to keep her safe. I promised.
I lunge forward, ducking down under his guard to thrust my blade up underneath. Dralis snarls and slips the blade. He backs away. He tries to answer my blow with one of his own, but I slam my elbow into his arm and stop his arm.
His eyes widen. He keeps walking backward as I keep up my assault. I don’t want to give him any quarter to get any attacks off.
He will not be getting through me. He will not be getting to her.
I throw a pulse of power across him, and Dralis is flung backward. He starts flying to keep himself from falling. I launch off as well, swinging my sword at his neck. But there’s aclang. My sword is stopped. Then, my blade is wrenched down, my arm strung out so low that a scattering of sharp nerve pain moves up my arm as my elbow is overstretched. Before I can turn, something strikes the side of my jaw. Deep, muscular pain moves up through my jaw—my teeth aching and the taste of blood spreading in my mouth.
I try to pull my sword up, and I see his weapon hurtling toward me. I lean back. My forehead burns. Hot blood pours down my face. My wings beat, and I hurtle backward through the air. His sword is coming straight for my chest. I slam a parry down onto the sword, forcing it away. More hot pain trails down my skin as it catches my torso on the way down. Blood soon follows. Dralis growls and tries to move his sword up, but I put as much strength into keeping it down as I can.
As we struggle, he sneers at me.
“I should have known better than to think stabbing you would kill you, Vicmar, you cockroach!” he snarls. “But perhaps you won’t live without your head!”
He rips his sword out from under mine with a painful screech of metal. I flap backward and put some distance between us as he tries to strike me again.
“I can’t let you do this anymore, Dralis,” I say. “I wanted to try and work this out. I wanted to come to a peaceful resolution.”
He just scoffs at me this time.
“I don’t need to negotiate with you!” he snaps. “We both know you can’t defeat me!” A dark smirk spreads over his face. “Perhaps, at some point, you could have. But you can’t defeat Mischevil working through me!”
