Page 44 of Marked By the Dark Lord
He grunted and blasted many aside, avoiding others, which slammed into the stainless-steel oven behind him, turning the smooth face into a cheese grater. One took him in the side, but I knew it had been little more than a glancing blow. The fight was nowhere near over yet.
As he fell, Irrtok pushed off the table, sending the heavy baking surface skittering across the tiled floor. I had expected him to use magic, so the use of a physical object caught me by surprise. The table hit me squarely, driving the air from my lungs and throwing me backward. I landed against the cinderblock wall, my impact shaking loose all manner of dust and debris.
“Have you been hiding all this time on Earth?” Irrtok cackled, rolling to his feet and throwing magic at me.
I sucked in my stomach and slipped underneath the table, sending a pair of glowing discs Irrtok’s way, no more than an inch off the ground. I then sent a foot-long spike of it on a different trajectory.
Irrtok leaped over my attacks, leaving him essentially immobile in the air. My third strike slammed into his shoulder, pinning him momentarily to the oven before it shattered into pieces, dropping him to one knee.
The Fae fell with a grunt, leaving wisps of red magic behind, indicating I had scored a solid hit. Not enough to send him back to Faerie, unfortunately, but it tilted the balance toward me.
“Damn you,” Irrtok hissed.
As I said, he still felt the pain.
He grabbed a small rolling cart from where he was crouched and whipped it at me. I caught it mid-air, easily crumpling the metal into something unrecognizable before dropping it.
“You’ll have to do better than that,” I said, tossing my head back and laughing. “You haven’t learned a thing.”
“Oh, but I have,” he said, lunging forward just as I snapped out a long cord of red energy, narrowly missing him with the magic whip.
He rolled between two ovens, momentarily leaving my sight. I heard something crackling, like thick paper being balled up. A moment later, a huge sack came hurtling over the top of the oven in a very high arc, right toward me.
“How is that supposed to hurt me?” I laughed, stepping aside and letting it hit the floor.
“It wasn’t,” Irrtok replied as the bag of flour exploded, white dust filling the air around me. I coughed, closing my eyes while my lashes grew heavy with the dust.
Irrtok slammed into me from the side with a blow worthy of a linebacker. I grunted as something gave way in my ribcage. Pain exploded up my other side as we hit the floor, my head slamming off the thick tile as it shattered under the impact. Blood dripped down my temple.
A blade of steel sliced over my stomach as Irrtok rolled free, drawing yet more blood. He jumped to his feet, holding the kitchen knife low to the side, while droplets slowly fell from it, immediately absorbed by the mass of flour he stood upon.
“See. I’ve learned,” Irrtok hissed.
“Or you got lucky,” I said, slowly climbing to my feet, planting them both on the tiled floor outside the flour bomb’s sphere of influence.
“You must be aware of your surroundings,” Irrtok chanted, quoting someone like it made him all the wiser.
“Exactly,” I hissed and flicked a ball of incandescent red fire at the flour while dropping a globe around it and Irrtok.
The summoned entity had a moment to realize his mistake before the flour pile exploded, filling the globe with fire and scouring everything into fine dust. I staggered, needing one hand to hold me up against the wall, the effort of keeping the globe in place requiring quite a large amount of magic. I hadn’t cast anything that strong in a long time.
I could have just let it go and shielded myself, but that would have destroyed Lily’s bakery, which would have hurt my chances of winning Mila’s approval. Which I apparently gave a damn about.
“Damn all of this,” I snarled to the empty space, wishing it didn’t have to go that way, that I could have remained hidden.
Now, though … now it was only a matter of time. I just had to hope that the prize was worth the price.
I pushed open the door and went to Mila, still not entirely sure what the hell I was doing. But I was starting to figure outwhy.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Mila
We had our first date after returning to The Crack. I wasn’t a fan of the name, but it was certainly a lot shorter than the formal name, and if humans were prone to anything, it was shortening things to speak less.
After leaving the bakery and ensuring Lily was all right, I allowed Korr’ok to bring us back. It felt wrong to justleaveLily like that, but she’d insisted she was okay and needed to get back to work. Korr’ok hadn’t cared, she wasn’t his problem anymore, but I couldn’t help but wonder how she was handling everything so well.
I would have lost my shit and been in the middle of a mental breakdown. Not Lily. She was tougher than she looked. I just hoped she was processing things properly and not repressing until she exploded.
