burst of power followed so strongly that he crouched low, every part of him crying out to reach his mate and try to save her. He dug his claws deeper into his enemy, hatred filling him as he watched his mate stumble back. Power wavered around Diana and he frowned in confusion, a sharp pain piercing his head as the air rippled and blasted from around her.
In that blast, the world around him shattered. Bewildered, he watched as his private chambers fragmented and fell away, leaving only coarse gray stone. A sickness filled his stomach. If this had all been an illusion… He looked toward his mate. Where Diana had stood a monstrous female shrieked and pulled at the arrow lodged in her breast.
Silvas shook his head in denial. Where was his uxorem?
A feminine whimper of pain reached his ears and he looked down, his chest seizing painfully as he beheld his mate. Blood welled up around his claws, and though he hadn’t yet dug them in terribly deep, he could clearly see the wounds left upon her delicate skin and the tracks of blood staining her flesh red.
His hand fell away briefly before he hauled her up firmly into his arms. Fear flooded her, and the rancorous scent filled his lungs. She obviously thought that he was still under the influence of the strix.
“Shh, I have returned to myself. All because of you,” he whispered against her skin.
She held herself stiffly in his arms for but a moment longer before relief filled him as her weight sank against him. A low sob rushed from her, tearing into his heart. Silvas clutched her tightly to his chest. He didn’t want to consider what could have happened if she hadn’t broken the enchantment. He had been certain that he was fighting a threat and had been prepared to deal with it accordingly. It had seemed so real. He had no doubt that the magic was being fueled by the power of Nocis. No ordinary strix would have been able to deceive a god so easily.
If the problem didn’t lie within himself.
That was an unsettling thought. Had he spent so much time refusing his proper place that he had become weakened as any other immortal? If that were the case it was no wonder the Eternal Forest was so vulnerable to attack.
Straightening, his eyes narrowed on the creature who had caught him in her illusion. He heard Diana scramble to her feet at his side. Never taking more than part of his attention off the strix, he shot his mate a warning look, cautioning her to stay back. In his peripheral vision he watched as she curled her lip in disgust and surmised that she wasn’t going to listen to him. He comforted himself with the fact that, although she was a bloody mess, she wasn’t nursing any gaping wounds. He cut her a disapproving look which she completely ignored.
Silvas grit his teeth, but after what had just happened, he didn’t feel like he had any grounds to rebuke her, nor could he argue with the fact that she had most likely saved them both. Swallowing his objections, he slid his body between his uxorem and the strix with a clear warning growl rising in his throat as he faced off with the monstrous sorceress.
Her wings flapping angrily, letting loose pale gray feathers into the air with every burst. Even as he stepped forward, she stilled, her wings laying monetarily limp at her sides as she turned her head, following his advance.
As he stalked toward her, Silvas noticed that the centuries had not been kind to the strix. He suspected that the illusion of the beautiful dark-haired woman in the feathered cloak bore some semblance to what she had looked like when she had obtained the sword: fertile, ripe womanhood at the height of her beauty. It was clearly not a new ruse for her. She had attempted to use that illusion against him, but had switched tactics quickly when her power failed to take hold of him. It was only when she had adopted the guise of Diana that she had found a weakness to exploit.
Now, however, there was no hiding what she was, and how the magic of the sword had unnaturally twisted her. She was not made to wield such divine power. Her skin hung withered from her frame, and she suffered from large balding spots not only in the feathers on her body but also in the mane