Spin the Shadows (Dark and Wicked Fae #1) - Cate Corvin Page 0,72
the weight of the stone and shattering the ice…
The huldra’s eyes were still wide with panic. Calm slipped over me when I looked back at her and realized what the jagged feeling was.
Pure rage felt with such crystal clarity it was breath-taking.
He’d offered her a helping hand, and she’d killed him.
Silke took a step back, between the two faceless guards. “Kill the nymph,” she said tonelessly.
I released Robin, my hand still wet with poisoned blood. The guards stepped forward, unsheathing wicked daggers that were no doubt poisoned, as well.
I didn’t need a blade, only my rage. I spun the ring on my finger and whispered, “Spin me a tale.”
The tunnel was full of shadows. I stepped behind Robin, hiding in his shadow when one of the guards sent a throwing star zipping towards my head.
It spun away uselessly, and then I swirled to the right, swimming through a shadow to the guard’s left.
I touched the wall, planting a seed of anger, and laughed when the roots burst out of the wall. The guard whirled around at the sound of breaking stone, but the roots twisted around his arms and legs.
He slashed at them with the knife, and I felt the pain of the dying trees. The poison on his blade rotted them quickly, and before I could cry out, the roots and the seed were dead.
Silke cocked the gun, taking a careful step back and looking around her.
I stepped through several shadows, letting the world spin around me as I remained focused on the target.
Roots burst from the floor and wrapped around their legs, but the faceless ones were quick to cut them away. The poison hurt inside my chest as the trees died, sharing their pain with me.
“He’s not dead yet,” Silke snapped. “But I can remedy that if you want to keep playing these ridiculous games.”
“He’s not yours to kill,” I whispered in her ear, so close that I felt her hair brush the tip of my nose, but when Silke spun around to slash at me I was already gone, moving from the shadow cast behind herself to the sliver of darkness at the edge of a lamp.
Silke took careful aim, refusing to be disturbed by the power of the ring. She was nearly accurate, too; I stepped into a shadow against the wall, and she was aiming only two feet away.
Robin was still on one knee. He dragged in a ragged breath and coughed, spraying black blood on the stone.
Then he slumped over.
I felt his heartbeat alongside the ache of the dying trees, slowing with every breath.
Silke wiped away a tear.
How dare she cry over him? She was the one who had done this, the one who’d spat in his face when he tried to pull her out of this cesspool.
I nurtured the rage inside me, letting it grow. Let it become thorny and jagged, until it was tearing at my insides.
I moved into the open and Silke fired. It was only the embrace of the shadows that saved me; I felt one of the Faebane bullets pass by, ringing in my ears as I stepped into the next shadow.
She pulled the trigger again and it clicked, emptied out.
That was when I slammed my hands into the floor, shoving the little seed of rage down into the earth.
It wasn’t like my roots, creeping out into the world.
It was a tree of fury and hunger, stones shrieking as enormous branches erupted between them, thorns the length of my hand growing slick and black from its bark.
They ripped outwards, tendrils running hungrily over the walls and ceiling, but the tree didn’t stop until it filled the tunnel.
I took several deep breaths, my hands trembling.
Slowly, I looked up at what I’d created.
It was nothing like the tree of love I’d created in the Unseelie lands. It was all warped trunks and thorns, and both Silke and the guards were caught in them. The branches were too thick to see the other side of the tunnel, a solid wall of living, writhing wood.
Silke drew in a ragged breath, her blood pouring over the trunk that pinned her in place. Several long thorns had pierced her throat, her chest, and her stomach.
She died slowly. One of the guards had been killed by the impact of the exploding branches, and the other was shredded to pieces.
I got to my feet silently. This was the tree I’d kept trapped inside me for years, the warped and twisted nightmare the Hesperides had feared.