of hair that fell from her head. Only clumps of scraggly white hair remained. Rheumy yellow eyes focused on him shrewdly, yet there was something off in those depths. While Nocis had extended her life unnaturally it had not kept her young, healthy, or sane. Madness gleamed in her yellow eyes as she watched him, her wings jumping excitedly at his every step.
Wheezing as she held a withered arm over her wound, a wild cackle of laughter escaped her. Mora swung her head rhythmically but with no purpose, her dark gray lips pulling back from the jagged remains of her teeth. Though her limbs were thin, her torso was bloated. From her condition, he suspected that more was left to rot from her meals than what she had succeeded in bolting down. Few of her teeth were left, and her lethal claws were broken down to fragments. His stomach turned as he imagined the pain that her victims had suffered, slowly bleeding out from where the broken claws ripped and scoured them rather than the quick brutal death that the species was known for. Parts of her mouth were stained with rot, saliva slipping frequently from her gaping mouth. Mora was a terrible shadow of the lethal, regal nature of a strix.
He felt another unfamiliar twinge of guilt.
All of this because he had rejected his purpose and discarded Nocis.
Silvas met her eyes, the sword in his hand held out from his side, ready to strike. “Where is the sword Nocis?” he demanded, his voice rolling through the cave.
“You will not take mine,” she spat, dark fluid flying from her lips as the raspy words were barked in a shrill voice at him. “You will die. Your pain will be mine to feast upon, your sorrow as I kill your female the wine that I shall drink. And then I will tear your flesh and swallow you until you are nothing more than rot and filth to be scraped from the floor.”
“Looks like we are going to have to get it the hard way,” Diana commented in a hard voice.
His eyes cut to his mate and her lips thinned, her hand tightening around her bow. She gave a slow nod of her head. She would follow his lead.
Keeping the tip of his sword pointed toward the floor, he moved closer, circling. As he circled, his eyes strayed around the nest, looking for any sign of the sword. Wherever she had it, she kept it hidden well away. He could feel the pulse of its power, but his eyes could not locate it. A wave of power rocked the cavern as Mora raised her wings, snapping them with a burst of power. Energy arched through every blast, blue tendrils lighting up the air. The power contained the distinct bite of Nocis and it called to something in Silvas’s blood.
He snarled as he braced himself against the current of power. Nearby, Diana wrapped her arms around a column to keep her steady on her feet, her bow clattering against the stonework as she maintained her grip on it.
Mora’s voice broke into a series of sharp words, and a blast sent both Silvas and Diana flying back to a far wall, their bodies impacting loudly. His breath whooshed out of his lungs and his mate’s cry was mostly drowned out by the percussions of power that continued to hit them.
Baring his teeth, Silvas felt his fangs and claws grow, energy pulsating from his antlers as he swept a clawed hand forward against another lash of energy. His magic burst from where his claws struck the ether. Each time he struck out with the aetheric claws, the blood red lines of power rolled through the air until they slashed into the strix. Mora shrieked, her body jerking.
An arrow whistled by his head. It startled him briefly, but a grin stretched wildly across his lips at the spark of aelven power that flowed from the forged tip. There was no way to guess how Diana’s power would manifest, but the sparks of aelven light that sprayed in its wake stirred an excitement within him. It sunk deep and the strix writhed with a blood-curdling scream. Diana immediately loosed another, her aim true as Silvas darted forward to drive his sword into the soft belly of the strix and end her life.
The sword struck, releasing a thick flow of black ichor over his hands. Mora jerked away, dislodging the blade as she struck out, sending a wall