Page 42 of Bite Sized Bride
Through the red haze, I see her.
Mikana.
She is not cowering. She is not running. She is standing a dozen feet away, evidently furious. Her hands are clenched into fists at her sides, and a strange, faint, silvery light is beginning to glow around them. The Purna blood. The power she does not know she has.
“Get away from him,” she screams, her voice a raw, powerful thing that cuts through the din of battle and the drone of the ritual.
She runs. Not away. She runs directly toward the circle of sorcerers. She runs toward Vexia.
“The anomaly is becoming a nuisance,” Vexia says, a note of annoyance in her voice. She gestures with one hand, not even breaking her chant. A bolt of black, crackling energy, a smaller version of the one that nearly killed me, flies toward Mikana.
It is a death sentence.
The sight of it, of that black spear of magic hurtling toward the one pure thing in my world, breaks the last of my chains. Not the master’s chains. My own. The chains of despair.
With a roar that comes from the very core of my being, I surge to my feet. I ignore the swords, the grasping moss, the hooks in my mind. I have one purpose. One goal.
But Mikana… my Mikana is a warrior.
She does not try to dodge. She does not cower. She does what I taught her. She acts. She throws herself to the ground, not away from the spell, butunderit. The bolt of black energy sizzles over her head, missing her by inches. She rolls, coming up to her knees, the Miou knife I gave her now in her hand.
She is inside their circle.
The sorcerer to Vexia’s right turns, his face marked with surprise, breaking his part of the chant to deal with this unexpected gnat. He raises a hand to incinerate her.
Mikana is faster. She lunges, not at his body, but at his leg, plunging the knife deep into his thigh.
He screams, a high, thin sound of pain and outrage. His concentration shatters. The ritual falters.
The pressure in my head lessens for a critical instant. The hooks retract slightly. It is the opening I need.
I am on them.
I grab the wounded sorcerer by his robes and use him as a living club, smashing him into his companion. The third sorcerer turns to flee, but I am too fast. My hand closes around his head. The memory of the scout’s death, of Mikana’s horror, flashes in my mind. I do not crush him. I simply throw him into the shimmering, iridescent trunk of a Wildspont tree. He hits it and dissolves into a shower of screaming, multi-colored light.
Only Vexia is left.
She has abandoned the ritual, her face replaced with a mask of cold, controlled fury. She is powerful. She is the architect of my hell. And she is standing between me and my mate.
She raises her hands, a storm of black lightning crackling between them.
But as she prepares to unleash her power on me, Mikana acts again. She stumbles to her feet, her face pale with exhaustion, and throws herself at Vexia, not with a knife, but with her barehands. She presses her palms, glowing with that faint, silvery Purna light, against Vexia’s back.
The magical backlash is explosive.
It is a silent detonation of pure, chaotic energy. Vexia is thrown forward, her spell dissolving, her body tumbling through the air. But Mikana takes the brunt of the feedback. The silvery light around her flares, then dies. She is thrown backward, her small body limp as a doll, and lands in a heap on the glowing moss, unmoving.
“Mikana!”
My roar is a sound of pure, soul-shattering agony.
I start toward her, but a figure steps into my path. Lord Malakor. He has descended from his throne, a long, slender blade of black steel in his hand. A shimmering, golden shield of force surrounds him, a perfect, impenetrable sphere.
“A touching display,” he says, his voice a dark, mocking purr. “But the game is over. The girl is dead, or dying. And you, my pet, are coming home.”
I look from Mikana’s still form to the smug, arrogant face of my tormentor. The red storm is back, but it is a cold, focused thing now. It is the red of a dying star, a rage so absolute it has become a singularity of purpose.
I charge him.
