myself against the door so hard I ended up falling on my face.
I scrabbled upward. My shoes slipped on the blood dripping from my wound, and I almost tripped again, but I miraculously kept my balance. As I rose upward, the Phantom burst through the doors, and I turned to face him with a pounding heart.
The wind howled, whipping my dress around my legs and tearing my hair free of its updo as the full moon shone down from above. If I brought my wings out in front of him now, he’d know who I was. My identity would be revealed.
But did that matter when he was literally trying to murder me? I tried to fly— tried to do something, but my wings wouldn’t come. A horrified expression crossed my face, and the Phantom smirked when he noticed. I threw out my hands, tried to call a spell, but sparks flickered uselessly in the air and failed.
Illusion magic didn’t work when you were this terrified. Fae magic didn’t manifest when there was fear. You had to believe to get the spell to work.
And I didn’t believe I could defend myself from the Phantom. Not like this. I’d beaten him before because he hadn’t been serious about taking me down.
He was serious now. And it was deadly.
I hadn’t been so fucking stupid as to not have a weapon on me. My dagger was holstered to my leg, underneath my dress. I lifted my skirt and wrenched it free, pointing it at the Phantom to defend myself.
“Ethan, if you do this, there’s no going back,” I warned. My voice was so scared. “You’ll be past the point of no return!”
The Phantom wrenched a dagger out of the sheath belted to his side. “I’ve already made up my mind. This is what I must do. For my country!”
Ethan swung his dagger downward. I parried away his blow with my own, though it was a weak attempt. It wasn’t seconds later before his blade was stabbing forward again. I was so frantic I couldn’t do much but jump out of the way and avoid his dramatic advances. He was pressing in on me, making me lose ground. His blade moved so fast I could hardly keep up. The edge of the dagger nicked at my face, and once upon my thigh.
I’d never been so scared in my life. I didn’t want to hurt Ethan, but at this point, it was almost kill or be killed. He wasn’t giving me enough time for an explanation. Would I have to decide between his life and mine?
I’d nearly made the choice before he knocked my dagger out of my hand. It flew away from my fingers and sailed over the wall surrounding the roof, leaving me defenseless.
I backed to the very edge of the rooftop and nervously peered over, to the ground far below. If I jumped from here, would my wings save me?
A pit in my stomach said probably not.
“You tried to kill my mate,” he growled. “Now I’m going to kill you.”
“Ethan, it’s me!” I shouted. “Em— agh!”
Before I had time to finish my name— my own damn name— he’d lunged forward and stabbed me. He ran his blade across my middle, cutting my dress and slicing open my tender torso.
I spun and dropped to my knees as blood poured out of the wound, screaming in utter agony. The cut stung, driving me mad with suffering. I put a shaking hand to the skin, and found that it was cleaved in two.
This was bad. This was really, really bad.
The Phantom towered over me, his dark cloak rippling in the fierce wind. There was a hungriness in his eyes that was more demonic than the gaze of Droga himself.
It was then I realized there was a dark part of Ethan I couldn’t handle. A killer inside of him I couldn’t control. I was appalled by it— sickened and horrified. For as much as I loved him, I knew then Ethan wasn’t all good. He was a monster.
He’d only kept that monster hidden carefully behind a cage. Now that I was faced with it, it was disgusting to see.
His lip lifted in a snarl as he stooped down in front of me. “Let’s see who it is behind the mask.”
The Phantom yanked off my mask. As he did so, the illusion broke. My brown hair turned back to red, my eyes from blue to green. My voice changed, and the white fabric of my dress turned red