Wicked As You Wish (A Hundred Names for Magic #1) - Rin Chupeco Page 0,149

don’t deserve any more chances. We’ve done enough damage to forfeit us a hundred lifetimes.”

She drew back with a slow hiss. “Does that woman still cling to you? Surely you know that you love her only for her curse?”

“I love her because she makes me feel like I deserve something better than I do.”

“No. You love me.”

“Aye, I did. Once. Please. Let us end this.”

The queen’s face hardened. “If you will not return to me, Kay, then you will not return to anyone else.” Her fingers moved, and another ice spike crystallized before her father, the deadly tip aimed at his chest.

Without thinking, Tala grasped the sword behind her firmly and wrenched it free. The blade made a soft singing sound as it slid out, one of inconceivable triumph.

Without hesitation, she shunted the sword at the Snow Queen’s face. Almost at the same time, the firebird glowed brightly, its body jerking up almost against its will as the ice around it shattered. Tendrils of flames encircled the sword. It registered in Tala’s mind that she felt no heat or searing pain—only that the blade felt right in her hand, that it was right to hold it in this manner, that it was good to do so.

And the Nameless Sword, unused for decades, burst into flames, engulfing the room in fire. She felt her agimat take hold, molding and shaping the weapon so that it too, was ingrained within.

There was a sharp sound like that of ice cracking. It reverberated throughout the whole castle.

Again and again Tala swung the sword, and again and again the sword bit into the Snow Queen’s body. The woman lifted a hand, trying in vain to defend herself, but Tala was unrelenting. She sliced through the queen’s arm, and where blood should have spurted, water poured out. The woman’s abilities had no power where her agimat was concerned, and every stroke of the sword was the culmination of the sacrifices of every Makiling that had come before her, all for this moment.

Ice thickened, lashing out at her from all sides, but the sword burned them away, and it was so easy. So easy to spot the stalactite bearing down on her from the ceiling, watching it miss.

So easy to catch the shade jumping out at her, the Nameless Sword sinking exactly three inches into its body so she could twist the blade, so the screams it made before disappearing into oblivion could be prolonged and drawn out. This was the reason she and her father had practiced arnis, though neither of them had known it then. She was made to wield this weapon.

She was humming before she’d realized it. Carly Rae Jepsen. “Call Me Maybe.”

When the Snow Queen struck out, intending to gouge at her eyes, it was so easy to catch that slim, perfect hand in her own, and deftly twist it at a 180-degree angle so one can hear the snap underneath all that now-whittled, pathetic skin.

She no longer felt helpless, or useless, or irrelevant. That all ceased to matter.

She was powerful. She was strong. She was fire.

Flames licked at the Snow Queen’s hair, framing what was left of her face, and still Tala lifted the sword, cutting away tiny bits of the woman each time, purposeful and unflinching. She understood now why the Snow Queen coveted the sword, and why she feared its wielder.

The woman sank down on her knees as she loomed above her, her right arm raised.

She felt nothing for the woman; no mercy, no compassion, only resolve. She lifted the Nameless Sword one last time, focusing every ounce of strength she had into the blade and, ruthless, brought it down.

In the moments before her face shattered into a thousand pieces, the Snow Queen looked up at Tala and smiled.

The firebird sang.

The resulting fireball consumed the woman. She seemed to expand into a hundred directions all at once; a hundred indiscernible pieces that flooded the stone floor with sparkling shards of ice. From elsewhere in the castle, a vast howl seemed to rise as every shade within seem to recoil from that same fatal blow, shrieking as they felt their mistress’s pain.

And just like that, it was over. Snowflakes littered the ground as before. Unlike the last time, these quickly melted, the water evaporating in a span of seconds, until nothing remained.

Tala stared at the space that had once been the Snow Queen, the sword slipping out from her numb, nerveless fingers. That strange feeling of implacable resoluteness disappeared. Her knees