Heart of Vengeance (Alice Worth #6) - Lisa Edmonds Page 0,115

about moving. My cold fire whip blazed out of my hand and lashed across the distance between Kyrios and me. I fully intended to cut him in half and deal with the consequences. Lucy went for him with a battle cry, sword raised. My cat-dragon took to the air with a hiss, her claws extended and ready to rip him to shreds.

Ronan got to Kyrios before any of us, ducking under my whip and avoiding Lucy’s swinging blade with impossible speed. He plunged his sword through the Spartoi’s chest before his target had a chance to avoid the attack. With a roar, Ronan drove the other man back a half-dozen steps and pinned him to the trunk of a tree with his blade.

I ran to Daisy. My wolf fell on her side, her chest heaving. Bloody foam spilled from her mouth. Black blood soaked her fur and the grass beneath her. My skin tingled with a familiar sensation. Kyrios’s blade was silver and spelled.

I knew virtually nothing about my wolf’s physiology, abilities, or magic, or about the spells on the blade, but silver was deadly to shifters and I had to assume it could kill Daisy too. I pulled the dagger out. To my horror, its blade was half gone—dissolved into flakes of silver still leaking poison into Daisy’s flesh. It was a cruel and deadly weapon meant to kill a shifter. If Kyrios couldn’t have Daisy, he intended no one else to have her either.

Fear and fury turned my world silent. I saw and heard nothing but Daisy. She would not die. She was me. She was mine. No one, not even the descendant of a dragon’s teeth, was going to take her away.

With a snarl Sean would have been proud of, I rested my hand on Daisy’s side to comfort her, stuck my fingers into the wound, and used my earth magic to pull the silver out.

She whined and spasmed as liquid silver ran from the wound and dripped to the ground. I pulled harder to get the poison out as quickly as possible.

When the last of the silver trickled out, Daisy shuddered hard and snarled. Before I could react, she flashed out of my hands in a burst of fiery golden magic, crossed the ten feet to Kyrios, and tore the Spartoi free of Ronan’s blade.

And then she tripled in size and ate Kyrios in three big bites. His gurgling scream ended abruptly after the first meaty crunch.

Daisy raised her bloody muzzle and howled. The sound rolled through the forest.

“Son of a bitch,” Lucy said, lowering her sword.

Malcolm made a sympathetic sound. “So much for that rude fella. Hope he doesn’t give Daisy heartburn. Is this going to mean paperwork for you, Lucy?”

“The League doesn’t even have a form for this.” She grimaced and touched her bloody shoulder.

He snorted. “You’re telling me you don’t have a form for seeing someone get eaten? I’ve only been here three days, but I find that hard to believe.”

“It’s the Spartoi involvement that complicates things. Has a Spartoi ever been eaten by anything? I don’t even know.” She glared at Ronan, who withdrew his undamaged sword from the tree with suspicious ease. The blade must be spelled. “You could have kept her from eating him,” she accused him.

Daisy licked blood from her muzzle with undisguised relish. Spartoi was apparently quite tasty—or maybe she just enjoyed the taste of revenge.

Ronan took out a cloth to clean his blade. “I’m not entirely sure I could have, Lieutenant, and if I’m being completely honest, I was rather reluctant to get between this wolf and her meal.”

“You okay?” Malcolm asked me.

I thought about it. “A little better,” I said finally. “I used my dark magic by choice to save us from the shades and gravelings. I could have killed Kyrios the same way, but I used my whip instead, by instinct. That’s something, right?”

“That’s important,” Malcolm assured me. “That means you’re still in control, still thinking clearly.” Something in his tone made me think he wasn’t certain how much longer I’d be able to stay that way.

Ronan watched me as he wiped Kyrios’s blood off his sword. His hard mask was back in place, but I figured I knew what was thinking: that I’d used dark magic too much since coming here, that it was only a matter of time until I used it instinctively instead of my own innate power.

“I’m still me,” I said. I wasn’t sure if I was trying to reassure them,