Page 63 of The Filigree Key

The curtain sizzled as I swept it aside and stormed outside. Daphne screamed again, black hooves scraping madly against the sky and touching nothing. Her mane and tail danced in an unseen current as Alec’s stolen magic kept her aloft.

The sneer on the magic hunter’s face faltered when he saw the expression on mine.

It vanished completely as the emerald flames flashed and engulfed my entire body.

Behind my eyes came the tell-tale prickle of heat that I was channeling the full power of my magic core, the whole of my eyes glowing the same green as my flames.

“Put my friend down,” I seethed.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

The magic hunter didn’t get a chance to comply.

A pillar of flames struck him square in the chest and shot him across the clearing into the scale-barked trunk of a sycamore tree. There was a loud snap, but it wasn’t the magic hunter’s spine. No, his stolen magic protected him from that.

The old sycamore tree broke with a groan, its skeletal canopy swaying like so many flailing arms. Alec, sprawled where he’d slumped to the ground, had only a moment to react.

The ivy keeping Daphne aloft winked out, and a volley of bluish-green blasts detonated against the falling sycamore tree. The restraints around the robin vanished, and Gertrude flapped away faster than an obese pigeon trying to out-fly a red-tailed hawk.

Daphne screamed as she dropped, but my own fire vines caught her and lowered her safely to the ground. She still neighed in terror—they resembled twisting ropes of fire, after all—and reared when her hooves touched down on solid earth. With a surge of her flanks, she leapt behind me.

Kindling, branches, and the fluff of ruptured seed balls piled against the sycamore stump like a haphazard haystack. It burst apart a heartbeat later, Alec stepping out of the debris like a magician from a cloud of smoke.

With a vicious yank, he tore his jacket off to reveal a black tank top and pale skin that rippled with fae-like markings like live tattoos. On his sternum below his collarbone was a mark I’d never seen before—a Celtic Solomon knot.

I’d delved into Celtic knotwork after encountering that bound tree on Alder Ranch, but only a little. That half-heart embedded in my family’s grimoire had occupied the majority of my time, after all. Arthur would know more about this knot, but from what I remembered, it fostered a connection of some sort.

Alec caught me staring and tapped the symbol. Savagery gleamed in his bright blue eyes. “I’ve waited for this moment for a long time, witch. You’ve gone too far, at last, and now I get to take what’s rightfully mine.”

His dagger appeared in his hand, and he dragged it across the bicep of his stump arm. He coated both sides of the blade in red. “By the law of the hunt: you keep what you kill.”

I didn’t smirk in the face of his ignorant arrogance. Even now, he couldn’t know I could break him like a toothpick. I didn’t want to break him like a toothpick, anyway. As much as I burned for vengeance for Daphne’s mistreatment, I knew hurting him would only sicken me later. I’d tried so hard to leave battle magic—and the bloodlust it created—behind, and I wouldn’t let the power I’d amassed by becoming Violet’s true heir give me another avenue to the same fate.

“Too far?” I quipped. “If coming to a friend’s aid by blasting you into a tree is your definition of going ‘too far,’ then frankly, Alec, you’re just a wimp. No wonder Ossian’s leaving you behind and taking Shane to Elfame instead. You just couldn’t cut it.”

A strangled roar ripped free of his throat. The fae-like markings dancing along his skin lifted, swirling around him like leaves caught in a dervish.

“Careful, Alec. I wouldn’t attack the fae king’s mate because you got a little bump to your head and your ego.”

“Attacking a Brother is a punishable offense!”

“I think I’m exempt from that one. Though, I wonder what punishment you’ll receive when I tell Ossian about your little declaration—that to deny you is to deny Cernunnos himself? Why, it sounds like you consider yourself equal to him. And if I, as his mate, am not equal enough to rule by his side as queen, then I can only imagine what he truly thinks of you. And how you’ve just degraded his name by associating it with yours.”

“You know nothing, witch,” he spat. “I think he will overlook any mistake on my part when he hears all about yours.”

That was probably true, but only to a certain extent. We were both expendable to Ossian, and unlike me, Alec didn’t seem to know that yet. And presently, I was much more valuable alive than dead. “I don’t know what you’re—”

“What did you do to Carissa? I couldn’t reach her, and when I returned, I found her passed out in the hall. That’s two Brothers you’ve assaulted!”

“I did no such thing. A snail from the kitchen apparently hitched a ride on my breakfast, and when she saw it, she freaked out. Flailed about and smacked her head against the wall. You can ask her all about it when she wakes up.”

“She won’t wake!”

“Well, stone is not known for being very soft or flexible, so it makes sense when you hit that it hits back pretty hard. Maybe instead of harassing me and my friends, you should go heal her. Or do your pretty little markings not work that way?”

Alec bared his teeth at me, his hatred and jealousy so intense I actually stumbled back a step.

Struck a nerve with that one.