Page 89 of Happily Ever Crowned (Underworld Royals 1)

I whispered around him in a cloud, slicing out with my blade across his bare arm, then ghosting back to my place before he could grab me. He whirled again, his growl vibrating the walls.

“Some might say you brought this on yourself,” I continued softly. “That destroying my kingdom was what breathed rebellion into my blood, and the dark need to carve my name into your burning flesh.” I slithered by him once more, adding another mark, followed swiftly by a third to complete the A in his arm.

His energy shot out, wrapping around me again and halting my retreating steps. I sliced through the bands with my blade, spinning and dodging as he sent more blasts my way.

Use my power! Valora demanded, trying to push her essence into me.

It came too suddenly, causing my feet to trip beneath me and sending me to the floor. I rolled to avoid a deadly blast from Necros, then fought to mist to the shadows but found my ankle trapped in one of his sticky webs.

Valora’s warmth burned through my veins, her gift an addiction that called to my instincts. But I couldn’t use it, not when I knew what would happen to her.

Stop forcing it, I growled.

Take it, she pleaded. Please.

She seemed to think Necros was winning, perhaps because of the purple smog climbing ominously over my prone form.

“You’re weak,” the king spat, walking toward me. “I can’t believe I ever feared you.”

Adrik! she screamed, her fire engulfing me from head to foot, but Necros’s energy penetrated it, his power immune to hers.

Unless I wielded it.

This was what I desired all my life.

What I’d been bred and trained to do.

But hurting Valora…

I can’t.

Her agony pierced my heart, her resolve crumbling into ash around me as Necros overruled her. His essence wrapped around my throat, squeezing, threatening to end me. I used my knife against it, but another developed in its wake, like Medusa’s snakelike hair but in the form of lethal claws from the beast hovering over me.

“When I’m finished with you, I’m going to destroy her,” Necros seethed. “Her power is mine. The vows she spoke promised that whatever she owned, she would share. With me. And I will take what’s mine, demolish Noxia for raising you, and make sure your name is a rumor of the past. A forgotten promise that everyone will only remember as a failure.”

I narrowed my gaze.

Not at his pledge to harm me.

But to those I cared about.

No. He would not win. I refused. My knife sliced through yet another branch and the one that came after it, all while he laughed at my plight.

Valora was right.

I had to use her power to stop him.

I was weakened by the unexpected bullet his minions had fired into my brain, my body not yet at full strength despite the desire in my heart to slay this maleficent creature.

I needed just a little more strength.

From Valora.

I closed my eyes, seeking our connection and finding it wide open, her heart mine for the taking. And I broke off a piece that I swore to return.

Flames erupted acros

s my skin, forming in my hands, granting me an electrical current that I used against Necros. He screamed as I drove the spark into his chest, my precision resolute.

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