Page 122 of The Princesses of Ruin
And I will never stop fighting for him. You’d do well to just let us be.
She watches me for another moment, rage rippling out from her in blackened waves. She wants to kill me right here in the dungeon, but she knows she can’t. She knows she needs me for the fight against Ashai, and the other gods would cast her out for ruining that chance.
I smirk. “Sucks, doesn’t it?”
Her lip peels back in a snarl. “Your arrogance will not serve you in the future.”
“Neither will yours,” I say, power swelling around me. My gold whips at her black, battling her back. I infuse my voice with an unshakable order. “Let us be.”
Zephrom flinches as if struck. She hisses in a shadowed breath that transcends the planes of existence, reaching all the way to her true domain. I sense her body there, the thing made immortal through the cultivation of the original arcane essence…the one they all hoard for themselves.
Her body recoils from my magic and I’m ejected from the space. I grin overwide. It has the desired effect, ruffling her feathers. Her visage glares at me, wild-eyed and panting in fear.
Yes, bitch, Icantouch you. So you’d best leave. Us. Be. All of us.
She puts the mask against the wall, giving me one last withering glare before she explodes in a wash of black magic. I encircle us in gold, effectively negating whatever it was she was trying to do.
When the black mist settles, Raenkor looks at me with awe.
“You fight the gods,” he whispers. “Is this not…evil?”
I straighten my spine, staring into the darkness where Zephrom’s eyes linger.
“Sometimes you must do evil to defeat evil.”
The words belonged to my mother…to Ashai. I remember her saying them after a diplomatic meeting gone wrong. A treaty with Seter had just condemned half a city to starvation because the king refused to lower the cost of importing krysanthem. In return, she cut off their grain.
She didn’t flinch. Just poured herself a cup of blood-red wine and looked at me like I should understand. Like it was the easiest choice in the world.
I say those same words now with gold in my throat, fury in my bones, and life growing inside me.
Maybe that’s the difference.
Maybe not.
But if I must become a villain to protect my family, then I’ll choose the shape of that monster myself.
“And the mask?” Raenkor asks.
I glare at the vile thing.
Chaos cannot be tamed…but it can be tempered, when in the right vessel.
“Do you have any experience with forging metals, Raenkor?”
He shakes his head.
“Neither do I.”
I pick up the mask. It whispers dark curses at me. I curse right back.
“I think I’d like to learn.”
Chapter forty-three
Reina
Ice cracks against the hull as our ship pulls into port. The Fyn port is rarely iced over, but with the war that burned much of our commerce, and the winter, it’s seen little use. I stand on the bow, blasting larger chunks apart with controlled bursts of solar energy. Thankfully, it’s been sunny.
