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He lifted his sword with a snarl and leapt at her.
There was a truth in what Dameon had said to her. Fey had never really respected his position over the Queen’s Blades. After all, despite his orders, despite his training, despite the fact that it was Dameon himself who had taught Fey to wield her twin blades, at the end of the day she had something he never would.
She was a Witch. And that made all the difference.
His sword came down with a speed and strength unmatched by any others in the Queen’s army, but he still wasn’t fast enough. Fey dodged to the side, easily, knocking his blade aside with her own with a quick flick of her wrist.
She clicked her tongue at him. “You’ll have to do better than that, Dameon,” Fey mocked. With a roar of rage, he launched himself at her again, bringing his sword down over and over, forcing Fey backward from the strength of his hits.
He was trying to tire her out, Fey realized, parrying the attacks he rained down upon her. Keep her on defense, keep her reacting so she can’t act. It’s a common tactic when fighting a stronger opponent, and on someone else, it may have worked. But everything Dameon had known about swordplay, he’d taught to her, and Fey had made those tactics part of her life’s work.
The next flurry of blows he tried to land hit nothing but Air, as Fey summoned a wall of wind between the two of them, pushing Dameon back and momentarily off balance. But the wall of Air did nothing to stop Fey as she dove right through the shield she’d created, bringing her blade up above her head and slicing the tip down his face at a sharp angle.
Dameon howled in pain, letting go of his sword hilt with one hand, and bringing his hand to his face. He touched the deep wound that now crossed from one side of his face to the other, curving down and angled over his nose. A mirrored match to the scar on the other side of his face.
“There,” Fey said. “Finally balanced.”
On the dais, Alice and the Queen fought, seemingly oblivious to Fey and Dameon. They fought not with weapons but with power, and the room itself shook with the energy that they threw at one another. Fire and Air rushed back and forth, but Fey knew she couldn’t risk glancing at the fight to see how her sister was doing. Not until she finished this.
Glaring at her, blood dripping down his face and over his hand, Dameon took up his sword with both hands again and came at her.
He was no match for her—for any of the Queen’s Blades. Even Willow, young and untrained as she had been, would never have fallen to him if he hadn’t slit her throat from behind like a coward.
The fight would have been over quickly, and Dameon would have fallen to her blade without any trouble, if Fey hadn’t forgotten one thing: they weren’t alone. And while Dameon was the Queen’s protector, she was also his.
Queen Edelin had never been to war. She had never been trained as a soldier, never been an assassin. Even with her power over all four elements, it had been easy to discount her as a threat.
Easy, yes. But a grave mistake.
As Fey parried the blows from Dameon’s sword, as she tempted him ever closer and prepared to finish him off, prepared to finally make him pay for Willow’s murder, a gust of Air hit her shoulder, impossibly hard, twisting her off balance and knocking her to the floor.
Stunned, Fey had no time to recover, no time to get up, before Dameon’s sword sank into her, through the right side of her abdomen and all the way through to her back. The metal tip clanged like a bell as it exited her back and struck the marble floor beneath her.
With a scream of rage, Fey summoned a blast of Air and Fire that flung Dameon away. He hit the marble wall on the other side of the room and collapsed into a heap on the ground. Alive, for now. On the dais, Alice and the Queen still fought, the very air and marble floors of the throne room becoming weapons in their battle, but Fey couldn’t focus on what they were doing.
Dameon’s sword remained behind, embedded in Fey’s side. She couldn’t reach the hilt, and trying to move, trying to shift her body at all, felt like she was being torn apart from the inside.
Struggling to remain calm, her breaths quick and shallow, Fey gripped the sword blade in both hands. Gripped it, and pulled, ignoring the pain as the sharpened edge cut into her hands, ignoring the pain as the blade tore again through her body, widening the wound. She whimpered as she pulled at it, hands slick with blood, until finally, painfully, she pulled the sword from her body and let it fall from her hands, where it clattered to the ground next to her.
She was bleeding heavily, and the ground underneath her was wet with it, but Fey could already feel her body responding. Water rolled through her, uncalled, and began to heal what it could.
Shaking and dizzy with blood loss, Fey stumbled to her feet. Dameon was doing the same, across the room from her. Unarmed, still stunned from where she’d thrown him, he rose unsteadily. With a snarl of fury, Fey flung her hand out, wrapping Air around his throat and pinning him to the wall.
She let the Air lift him, until his feet were several inches from the ground, while he struggled and thrashed, his hands pulling at the invisible force that held him in place.
But his hands found no purchase on the Air there. The Air Fey commanded.
“This is for Willow,” she said, feeling the breath in his lungs, the life-giving oxygen inside of him, and gathering it together.
“This is for taking her away from us,” Fey continued, one hand pressed against the wound in her side as she approached him, blood seeping through her fingers. She gathered all that Air inside him and dragged it out.
Dameon’s eyes went wide and bulged. He struggled against the force that held him in place, struggled to draw breath, but he had no power over the Air. She did, and it obeyed her command, refusing to be drawn into him, refusing to fill the vacuum now occupying his lungs.
On the dais, something crashed and broke, and Alice screamed in pain, but Fey wouldn’t look away from this. Wouldn’t look away as Dameon slowly suffocated to death in front of her.
Another blast of Air hit her, making Fey stumble, but still, she didn’t look, still, she didn’t lose her focus and drop the power around Dameon. Instead, she called Fire, wrapping them both in a cocoon of flames, shielding them both from the outside.
“Her name was Willow,” Fey said, softly. It hurt, Goddess it hurt to talk. Her throat was so damaged, so inflamed, but she didn’t care. She needed to say this, needed to get these words out. “She was our sister, and we loved her. She was so smart, so funny. And she deserved better. She deserved better than to die at the hands of a miserable coward like you.”
