shreds with what’s headed our way. Nothing I do can stop King Mord.
"We need to go back the way we came," I state, and already I'm leading her to the woods, taking a route farther to the right of where we'd traveled. Hoping with everything, we’ll bypass the hobgoblins.
Except, in that same heartbeat, the bastards emerge from the woods ahead of us.
The world tilts around me.
Licia and I back away as more from the woods while the creatures pour out of the shadows across the line of trees. Behind us, is a sheer rock, cornering us.
"Shit!" Licia trembles against me, her hand quivering.
I swallow the boulder in my throat. There has to be close to two hundred hobgoblins glaring at us, carrying no weapons. Each one of them are as solid as stones, and when they run into you, there is no getting back up. If I wasn't worried before, I am terrified now. I already know how this will play out if we don't escape.
I will be die mercilessly, my kingdom will perish, and my sweet Licia will become the king's sex servant.
I fist my hands and my heart clenches, picturing myself ripping out his spine. A deep guttural growl rolls over my throat, because this isn't how any of this was meant to go down. But I'm not backing down either.
Licia's glued to my side. “We attack,” she whispers. “I ice as many as I can, and you poison the rest." She lifts her head and meets my gaze, a shaky confidence flashing over her face. But fear swims in those gorgeous blue eyes. Since meeting her, my world had turned upside down, but there's not a thing I'd change about our time together.
"When a moment of escape presents itself, you run, understand?” I say. “No matter what happens to me?"
She frowns, and is shaking her head, her grip on my hand tightening.
The king shoves forward, drawing my attention. Shadows darken his eyes. He doesn't move any further but remains thirty feet away, his army curling around us.
My throat closes. I can't take my eyes off the king.
He raises his chin, and his words stream over the grounds. "I considered offering you the option of giving yourself over without force. But I changed my mind. Attack!" he roars, his voice catapulting across the land.
My nerve-endings fire up at once, the muscles in my body bunching up.
Licia's hands stretch out, but we'll wear ourselves out before we defeat them all. I snatch her hand and say, "We do this as a team. Hurl your power in the form of shards of ice... think of daggers. And leave the rest to me."
She stares at me with uncertainty. The enemy charges to reach us and my heart is racing. "You can do this, please Licia.”
She nods, and in a flash, we both throw our hands out in front of us.
Power thunders through me, charging down to my hands with a sharp stabbing pain. Vines spear out from my palms.
Sharp fragments of ice hurtle from Licia's palms and hurl into the air, dozens of them blotting the sky. My vines fly in an arched trajectory toward her attack.
I strain with the force as a cluster of vines coated in venomous thorns strike encroaching hobgoblins, hitting and piercing them. Some duck, others swerve, but I hit as many as possible.
Licia’s ice pieces slam into the charging hobgoblins. Seconds is all it takes for many to be struck.
So, we keep fighting.
Flooding the air with poisonous shots.
Movement shifts from my left, and I swing around, the vines attacking the hobgoblin sneaking up on me. They whip toward him, and snap around his throat with ferocity. His eyes bulge with dread.
He falls, and I whip back around. Hobgoblins are down but so many more keep coming like an endless tidal wave.
Her body shakes brutally, and in a burst of power that lifts every hair on my body, her shards turn into an explosion of tiny pieces. They slam into the enemy. Jabbing them, tearing skin, blinding them, shredding through clothes.
Hobgoblins go down faster this time. But more rise behind them to take their place. Chaos and terror strangle the land.
A hobgoblin leaps forward and lands next to me, the ground shaking. Enormous tusks are all I see, and then his attention swings to Licia.
I jerk to intercept him reaching her, but he lashes out a hand and snatches my hair. I'm wrenched sideways and trip over my feet just as the bastard drives a fist into