The Ippos King (Wraith Kings #3) - Grace Draven Page 0,159
rider while protecting its head. Serovek imagined her furious expression as she belted out expletives that made even his ears turn hot with a blush. Using the hook side of the crow's beak, she wedged the steel into the sliver of space between plates and jerked upward, exposing a patch of soft insides. She raised the arm holding the spear, slamming it down and at an angle, driving the spearhead past the steel and up the spear haft. Black liquid spurted out of the wound in a smoking, viscous sludge, the smell so foul, it made his eyes water. No savory scarpatine pie ever smelled this bad.
Anhuset leaped off the scarpatine's back but not before the sludge splashed across her greaves and the top of her boots. The scarpatine's legs collapsed, its body dropping flat and the heavy tail falling hard enough to knock Serovek onto his back under its weight. It no longer so much as twitched. The champion had won, and judging by the crowd's ecstatic cheering, all knew it.
She suddenly loomed over him, without the spear but still holding the crow's beak. “How did you manage to get yourself in such a bind?” Sand dusted her perspiring face, and she squinted hard in the unforgiving daylight.
“I seem to enjoy embracing things that can easily kill me,” he said and grinned. The urge to laugh soon followed, no doubt fueled by the miraculous fact they were both still alive to jest with each other.
Instead of severing the tail to free him, she shoved it aside to hack away enough of the shield with the ax side of the crow's beak, allowing him to slip the connecting chain of his shackles carefully up and over the lethal tip. He grasped her offered hand and gained his feet. She didn't let go when he stood to face her. An obvious expression of relief flitted across her face when his shadow spilled over her to block the sun's brightness.
“You're smoking,” he said, watching as gray tendrils of smoke wafted off her armor where the scarpatine's blood had splashed the metal.
“And you're blistered,” she replied, her claws plucking at the burned spots in his sleeve and the inflamed skin exposed there. She lifted his arm to inspect his shackles and froze when the metal cuff at his wrist slid back just enough to expose the now filthy but still recognizable length of once-white ribbon tied there. The yellow of her eyes deepened to gold. She didn't say anything. Instead she let go of his arm to grab a fistful of his tunic and yank him closer so she could kiss him senseless in front of half the population of the Beladine capital and its king.
Serovek barely registered the shocked gasped intermingled with cheers and catcalls from the crowd in the stands. If she wasn't painted in places with scarpatine blood and he with scarpatine venom, he'd gather her in his arms and hold her tight enough that her ribs creaked. They stepped back, he wearing a full grin, she a close-lipped smile. Nearby, the dead scarpatine baked in the sun as black blood oozed into the sand, creating small pockets of foul-smelling ruin.
“Come,” he said, speaking close to her ear so she might hear him above the crowd. “You must present yourself to the king. No doubt he'll be disappointed that you killed this new toy of his.”
Her silvery eyebrows crashed together in a ferocious scowl. “Fuck him. I won. You're innocent.”
“And I doubt there's a soul in the forum who'd argue that fact,” he said, tipping his chin toward the crowd, who cheered even louder. “But considering your temper at the moment, let me do the talking,”
As he predicted, King Rodan was indeed disappointed at the loss of the abomination his sorcerers had made for him. No doubt he'd hoped for a vicious spectacle of his new pet's prowess. Something to display to all as a new weapon or simply to cow his own people in case any were planning insurrections. Serovek prayed the disappointment came mostly from the fact that Anhuset had killed the only one made and that more weren't forthcoming.
And while Serovek couldn't be sure, he'd confidently wager the king's discontent also sprang from the fact it was Anhuset, not Serovek who killed the scarpatine. He wasn't versed in the laws the way Rodan's administrators were, but he knew the importance of their interpretation. It was a fight to the death. The champion won by killing their opponent.