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The map she so desperately sought was on the conference room table, surrounded by books. She ran toward it, completely ignoring me.
I was on my feet in the next second, reaching for her. She sidestepped my fingers, and I caught air as she spun away. Her hand shot toward the map, and I knew the second she touched it, she would be gone forever. Lightning shot from my fingertips, scorching the parchment.
She stopped, her hands half-raised, watching as it floated toward the ceiling in ashes.
“No.” The words left her lips on a whisper. “What have you done?”
Then she turned to me, her crimson eyes burning with blistering rage, and on a roar of fury, the room burst into flames.
* * *
My first thought was how glad I was I’d evacuated the city. It burned now. Every ball of fire she tossed at me, and I redirected, burst through a wall or window, lighting the city aflame.
My second thought was I had never really counted the number of floors we had in this building until I fell through each and every one of them. My hand swiped the dust from the silver-plated armor on my shoulder. I had summoned it for protection between the first few floors Dianna sent me through, letting it take the brunt of my fall. I couldn’t allow an injury to slow me down, not now. Not when I was finally this close.
I pushed from the floor as the debris settled. Electricity sparked in the hole my body had made above me.
“You ruin everything,” Dianna hissed, her lithe form landing in a crouch before me.
“You will have to be more specific, akrai, on what exactly I ruined. Your mood?” I taunted her. “Your panties, perhaps?”
Her brow furrowed, and I saw the shock in her eyes at hearing me call her my heart in Eorian. Satisfaction filled me and made the time spent learning the ancient language worth it.
“Don’t call me that,” she growled, lunging forward. My blade blocked hers mere inches from my face. “You egotistical, conceited, arrogant lying bastard.”
“If you’re going to insult me, akrai, you have to do better than that. I have heard far worse from beings who wished to have my head on a spike. You should have heard what they said to me when I ascended.”
“Stop calling me that.” She pushed off, sending me a step back. To her, it looked as though I was eluding her, fleeing, but I had to keep her moving. I needed her closer to the runes.
“Is this us flirting? You yell and toss me through a few stories when you don’t get your way, or perhaps you’ll drop another building on me.”
I twisted from her, sprinting to the end of the hall.
“I am not flirting,” she growled, cleaving her sword through the air toward me. It cut through the wall behind me as I ducked and rolled inside a nearby room.
“I don’t know, Dianna.” I smirked. “It definitely makes me hard.”
She pulled her blade from the wall, stepping into the room. “Shouldn’t your queen do that?”
“She does.”
She snarled, all fangs and fury, and attacked, not giving me a chance to respond. Steel rang against the forsaken blade, the room shaking with her ferocity.
The sound seemed to echo through time as if it was what the universe had craved, what it desired. Walls cracked, tables and chairs splintering as one blade missed its target, then the next. It was a deadly, powerful dance of two beings destined to destroy each other since the beginning of it all.
“You’re wasting my time.” She snarled. “Because of you, I have to find another fucking way.” Her head collided with mine, a crack sounding through the room. “Do you have any idea what you have done?”
“No.” I stumbled back, righting myself as she straightened. “Because you won’t tell me why you needed the map.”
“It meant everything, and you took it from me.” Another sharp hit of her blade against mine. “You ruined everything again!”
Rage, powerful and overwhelming, poured from her.
I took a step back, dragging her with me. In her warpath, she paid no attention to where I was leading her. “Again, you must be more specific about which situation I ruined the first time.”
A frustrated growl left her lips as she charged. “It’s your fault.” Another hit. “I was fine. Everything was fine until you showed up and ruined it.”
Ah. So that was what it was, a crack forming in that impenetrable armor. I only needed to apply more pressure, and I would split it wide open.
