Page 82 of The Unseelie War
She couldn’t stop to think it through. She had to keep pulling them apart like magnets with opposing poles, but the process was agonizing. Behind her, the battle between Valroy and Serrik raged.
Her spider moved like liquid death, his seven legs carrying him around his half-brother in perfect circles while golden threads sang through the air. Each strand was sharp enough to cut through steel. But Valroy was entropy incarnate, and wherever the threads met his darkness, they simplyceased to exist.
“Is this all you have, brother?” Valroy snarled as he backhanded a cluster of threads out of existence. “Two millennia of rage, and this is how you choose to express it?”
Serrik's response was wordless. He held his hands out in front of him, and instead of the golden webs, the world around himtwistedand warped like a kaleidoscope, structures of hallways and familiar Baroque architecture mixing with the forest and ruins around them, jutting out at odd angles that had no business being there. Up became down became right became left became everywhere.
It was dizzying to even comprehend.
Right.Serrik was an architect of reality as well.
Valroy staggered and fell to his knees, the distorted view throwing him off balance. It was the distraction Serrik needed. Golden threads met the flesh of his left wing. The membranous flesh parted like silk, spraying dark blood across the twisted grass.
“Better,” Valroy admitted, flexing his damaged wing with apparent satisfaction. “But it will not be enough.”
The darkness around him coalesced into a spear of pure void, and he hurled it at Serrik. Serrik twisted away, but the weapon clipped his shoulder, and Ava watched in horror as part of her lover's skin vanished, leaving raw muscle and bone beneath.
He didn’t make a sound. Didn’t even flinch in pain.
“Keep going,” Abigail urged. “You must not stop, Ava. No matter what.” The Seelie Queen was helping Alex to her feet, doing her best to heal the poor Unseelie witch as quickly as she could.
So Ava continued chanting, tears streaming down her face as she watched the most important man in her life tear himself apart in the name of buying her time. The worlds were separating faster now, the cracks in reality widening into chasms that revealed glimpses of their intended destinations.
Valroy pressed his attack, moving faster than something his size should have been able to move. His fists, wreathed in consuming darkness, hammered against Serrik's defenses with relentless fury. Each blow that connected left wounds that didn't bleed—they simplyweren'tanymore, as if pieces of Serrik were being edited out.
Serrik gave as good as he got, his threads finding their mark again and again. Valroy's left arm hung useless at his side, ribbons of flesh hanging where golden strands had carved through muscle and bone. His face was a map of cuts, and several of his clawed talons on the tip of one of his wings had been severed completely.
But it wasn't enough. Valroy was winning.
Ava could see it in the way Serrik's movements were slowing, in the way his threads were becoming less precise, less deadly.
Her spider was magnificent and terrible…and utterly outmatched.
Valroy had been created for this—for destruction, for war, for the unmaking of all things.
Serrik was a weapon of precision and control. For magic to be wielded from a book. Not a fistfight. In a battle of pure annihilation, there could only be one victor.
A particularly bad strike left Serrik staggering back, collapsing down to his seven jointed knees.
“Serrik!” Ava cried out, her concentration wavering as fear for him overwhelmed her focus on the ritual.
Serrik turned his head toward her. Just barely. But just enough.The moment of distraction cost him. Valroy's darkness wrapped around Serrik like living chains, lifting him off the ground and beginning to squeeze. That was the first time the spider showed pain, his face contorting in agony.
“Did you think your love would make you stronger?" Valroy laughed. “Did you believe that caring for someone would give you power I lack?” He tightened his grip, and Serrik let out a sound of pure agony. “Love makes you weaker, brother. It gives you something to lose.”
That was when Alex struck.
The purple-haired woman’s magic was…Ava couldn’t really wrap her head around it. The world around her simplychanged.From one thing to another, it warped. The grass around Valroy became a sea of bizarre poisonous snakes that all set upon him in unison. Ava might have sworn she heard music.
“Love makes usbraver,you psychotic bastard!” Alex snarled.“It means we’re willing to lose it all!”
Valroy staggered from the bites, his concentration broken, and Serrik dropped to the ground in a heap of tangled limbs. But the reprieve was brief. Valroy spun around with inhuman speed, his hand catching Alex across the throat and lifting her off her feet.
“Braver,” he repeated thoughtfully, studying her face as she clawed uselessly at his iron grip. “Perhaps. But bravery without power is just suicide with a conscience.”
Before he could tighten his hold, Abigail was there.
Red flowers erupted from the ground beneath Valroy's feet—not the controlled, elegant blooms of controlled power Ava had seen before, but wild, ravenous things that snapped and whipped at him.
