CHAPTER 97: NINETY SEVEN

It happens too fast. I barely get the time to react.

Lucien... he moves.

I understand why he wastes no second. Because a few seconds is all he has before the poison spreads and renders him completely useless, powers gone, limbs weakened, until eventually, he blacks out. Such is the effect of ash and silver.

But I’d never seen him fight, never seen him move to kill like he meant it, and so it strikes me stupid.

That even with the poison flowing through his veins, he’s killed six of them before they even realize he’s in their midst. Torn to pieces. Bones snapped like twigs. Blood sprays the frost, turning white into scarlet. Fear locks me in place, my lips parting in horror and mild fascination as the screaming begins, bodies dropping like flies, parts coming apart limb from limb.

Seconds. Half one second, he falters, his

But he falters a step, his body seizing twice, and I abandon the cloak, screaming at him to look out. But I’m not fast enough, not loud enough.

And another arrow lands in his back.

Another to his knee. All at once. Then another. Then three, four, five--

He doesn’t fall.

He roars. The sound shakes the ground. It sounds like the death cry of something divine. And it carves something fresh open inside me, making me double over with a sharp cry.

But the next volley comes harder. Faster.

Ten, eleven arrows bite into him before he finally stumbles, a single knee hitting the snow. I reach him then, knees slamming into the snow. It is more instinct than will to place myself in front of him.

"Hold!" A voice calls out sharply, halting the onslaught, but I don’t hear them as my hands rove over his body, at the blood. Gods, there’s so much of it. Tears spring to my eyes as he lifts his head, eyes glazed slightly with pain.

"Are you... crying?" he asks, breaths laboured, pupils blown wide with all the poison and he sways slightly.

"Why would you head first into danger like that? Have you lost your mind?!"

"I... was trying... to impress you." His eyes manage to focus on my cheek for one second, on the tear rolling down. "Fuck. If I knew it’d take dying to express your unending love for me, I’d have done it sooner."

I am ripped away from him by unseen hands, dragged really, as I shriek, something raw and fragile cracking inside me as a man kicks him in the jaw, forcing him to the ground.

"Lucien!" My voice rips out of me raw, trembling. I don’t even remember moving or shoving the male off. I’m just there, on my feet again, heart splitting as his body slumps forward into the snow.

He lays motionless, chest rising in thin, terrible pulls, hair matted with grit and blood. He coughs once, a sound like a person trying to force a laugh and failing. Blood smears his lips.

Strong fingers catch my hair, hurling me back against an armoured chest, and a foul breath says against my ear, "We have a message for you, bitch queen. His Majesty says, Watch, darling, how easy it is to lose everything when you choose the wrong side. Watch the animal die. Let it cleave your soul apart. And whatever pieces are left of you, I’ll fuck back together."

"Stop!" I yell, struggling, as the eight left, surround him, the one at the forefront of the group unsheathing his sword. "Stop. Please stop it. Gods, please stop."

But it doesn’t come. Not the whisper. So damned useless when I need it.

And as the male swings vehemently for Lucien’s head, something inside me snaps.

The world blurs red.

I spring before my feet remembers how, moving like all the training and the bone-deep thing inside me had been waiting for a command it never received. I launch myself at the man with the sword, my legs wrapping around his armoured waist, hands grabbing his head and my canines sink into his neck.

He gurgles, hands grabbing the back of my shirt to hurl me off. But I don’t budge, sinking my elongating canines that stretch into fangs deeper, wrenching vein from flesh and when I am finally pulled off him, there’s a chunk of his neck in my mouth.

He’s dead before he ever reaches the ground.

"Moon fucking goddess--"

I am engineered to protect what is mine. I lose function of my brain, my body, for minutes. There are only two words in my ears. Kill. Protect. Kill. Protect.

My hand finds a broken splinter of wood and it goes in the eye of a soldier, and I hack at it continuously, his body twitching violently under me.

Next.

Adrenaline is a sharp, hot blade. I have killed before, but never with the blindness of someone with everything to lose.

Breath cut off in a wet, terrified sound as claws rip from the stub of my fingertips, tearing past armor and flesh, closing around a beating heart and tearing it out.

Next.

Next.

The male manages to punch me, rendering my vision temporarily blurry, but I do not move with my senses. The thing inside me controls me, seeking blood, retribution, and I seize it. I take it, because they shouldn’t have done that to him, shouldn’t have brought him down like an animal. Shouldn’t have touched him. Shouldn’t have... Shouldn’t have.

I crush a throat against a stump, slamming the heel of my feet against a face until there’s nothing left of it.

The rational part of me knows there are only two of them left. I whirl, searching for the threat, but a palm strikes my cheek so hard, I fall, the back of my head slamming into a boulder. The world explodes with ringing pain, vision skittering white at the edges.

My sight blurs as the male picks me up by the front of my tunic and snarls in my face, "Stupid whore."

His fist slams into my face again, and the world blacks out momentarily. When I come to, I am being shoved to the ground, the front of my tunic shredding.

"Stop it, Angus," the second says, voice tight with fear. "The King said she was to be brought directly to him, untouched."

The male growls angrily again, tearing the rest of my tunic off. He is the one who had delivered the king’s precious message. "She killed eight of us, Carr. She killed Morre. She is little more than an animal, and I’ll teach her a fucking lesson. I’ll teach her what happens to women who bed beasts. She was fucking the beast king, you know that?"

My hands come up and he claws for my wrists, holding them in place and he spits in my face, forcing a knee between my thighs. "Fucking bitch."

"Angus," the second male says, and the man holding me looks up, face etched with anger. "If you’re not going to join in, then the least you could do is shut the fuck up."

Another swell of adrenaline bursts through me at the thought of being touched by a stupid, rotting pig like him and I cage my thighs around his waist with all my strength, twisting violently. It knocks him off balance, very slightly, but that is all the opportunity I need to shove my knees up and slam it into his little, rotten balls.

He screams like a bitch. Because he’s actually hard.

He let’s go of my arm and I slam my thumbs against his eyes, pushing my fingers in. He claws at me blindly, but I push my claws in deeper, carving out his eyes and even deeper into his skull, until blood begins running down my fingers, my arms, dropping against my nose and into my mouth.

The male tries scrambling away from me, screaming something about killing me, and I blindly reach around me, panting. My hand closes around the blade of a sword and I clutch it.

My palm sizzles at the pain of the ash on my skin, but I ignore it and with an enraged cry, I tear it into his skull.

He dies quietly, his body falling on top of mine, and in my peripheral, I notice the last soldier take off into the woods, looking back once, and I can smell his fear all the way from here, and he looks positively petrified.

I roll up from under the male’s body, a small sob ripping from my throat as I crawl back amidst the sea of bodies, cradling Lucien’s cheeks.

His lashes flutter slightly, eyes still glazed. His pale yet bloodied lips quirk up into a slight smile. "You... look... sexy covered... in gore. This... is... cozy."

My lips quiver. "What do I do?" I stare at the arrows, and my fingers wrap around the one closest to his heart, but he hisses a sharp breath. "No. Cut... ends... off. Won’t... heal... until... poisons... flushed. Will... bleed... out."

My fingers tremble as I move around him, delicately breaking the arrows. Everytime he hisses, my heart aches, and I have broken into a full sob by the time I get everything out.

"What next?" I whisper.

He doesn’t respond, his breathing barely there, body unmoving. I grip his face once more, slapping my palms against his cheeks until his lashes move once more, violet eyes squinting into mine. "You... make... terrible... care... giver." His eyes darts to the skies. "Mountains... House."

"W-what?"

"Home. Our home. You... know the... way home. Follow your... heart."

"I don’t... I don’t know where-- Lucien!" I cry, gripping his close to my chest as I look around us, wondering if it’s the poison talking or if he means there’s a house in the mountains.

How do I even find it?