Page 17 of The Princesses of Ruin
The assassin wails like a banshee and blackness whips out of him like an injured predator seeking a place to hide. The man crumples to the ground, while the dark ooze zips off into the sky.
“Zane, Reina’s magic!” Adrik yells as he runs toward me.
The pain in my thigh flares anew as it climbs up into my hip. I grip the spot, pressing down on my leg as if I can stop the spread of this poison, whatever it is. Adrik slides across the ashy ground and kneels beside me.
“This will hurt,” he says.
I want to say something funny, but the agony delivers only grunts to my lips. Tears gather unbidden in my eyes, and I watch a blurry Adrik pull something from his coat pocket. It’s cylindrical, metal, and wide, but I can’t ascertain what it is. He holds one end over the gouge in my leg.
“Breathe,” he says, pinning my thigh down.
I take a deep, gasping breath, but he hesitates.
His eyes dart between the tool in his hand and the cut on my leg, then lock on me. “Thisis untested.”
“Do it,” I growl.
His jaw flexes and he looks back at the wound with a determined glare. Blue light spears in a concentrated beam from the end of the device and lances my leg. I throw back my head and let my pain be known to the world. Then the ice in my blood turns to fire. I sense anger that is not my own alongside the agony, as if something—some sentient being—was in that black ooze.
I look down at my leg and watch the dark goop bleed out of me like it had the assassin. Adrik sighs in relief, his hand squeezing my thigh.
Flashes of blue light go off around us and the air is filled with a chorus of inhuman shrieks. When the last of the poison is lifted from my body, the black coalesces into a winged shape, like a crow. Its beak points toward me and it rushes forward.
Silvershingsthrough the air, slicing the attack in two. The severed pieces of magic bird fall to the ground with a splat, then bubble into nothingness.
Adrik’s hand trembles on the hilt of my saber. He looks at me. “Are you all right?”
My heart thunders in my ears, and my vision narrows on his sharp, angular face. His eyes are a bright blue with a starburst of gold around his dilated pupils. What a surprising combination for his dark, wavy locks and pale skin.
“Search the bodies,” Andrew says, cutting through my trance.
I glance around at the carnage. There are several dead assassins and one in Andrew’s custody. A sharp sting draws my attention back to my leg and I grimace. “Well, I’m still bleeding out, but otherwise…” I shrug.
Adrik’s eyes widen as he looks down at my thigh. “Yebat!”
He fumbles the metal cylinder, dropping it on my lap as he reaches for a pouch on his hip. “My apologies, Captain,” he says, openinga container of green, sharp-smelling gel. He curses again in Seterian and pulls out a clean cloth and a bottle of clear liquid. I grunt out a pained laugh, and he glances at me in a panic while dousing his fingers in the alcohol.
He sanitizes his hands before scooping a large glob of the gel onto his fingers. He hesitates again, opening his mouth to say something silly like “this is going to hurt” because of course it will, so I save him the trouble.
I grab his wrist and push his hand down onto my cuts. He sucks in a sharp breath, and I groan into the feeling of cool, healing paste touching my flayed flesh. His eyes skate between mine, and I smile as best as I can.
“Not my first battle,” I say.
His eyebrows shoot up, wrinkling his forehead. “This I can see.”
The sharp pain turns to a dull ache as his fingers slide up and down my thigh. The relief is so strong I can’t help but groan again. Adrik’s cheeks turn a deeper shade than before, and he wets his lips, his gaze intent on my leg. The magic paste stitches the wounds but leaves three pink scars behind.
“Thank you,” I say, trying to lure his eyes back to mine.
“I would do this for anyone,” he says.
“You’d throw yourself into harm’s way and cut down a malicious spell for justanyone?” I tease.
He clears his throat and pulls his hand back. “Yes, of course.”
He wipes his gelled fingers on his pants as he stands, keeping his gaze pointed firmly away from my face. “You will have scars. They were deep cuts infected with Ashai’s magic, but you are healed.”
He turns away in a hurry, leaving his little blue fire cylinder. I pluck it off my lap and inspect the device. It has a lever on the side that seems to control an iris opening at the tip. I’m tempted to pullthe lever and see if it fires another beam of Reina’s blue magic. Try as she had to hide it from me, it was easy to see from my ship as it blasted from the titan’s mouth. Her scarred body, licked by flames, was evidence of her magic being the culprit. It had banished the dark cloud of Ashai’s magic that hung over the palace.
