Chapter 38

Ialways knew I might find myself at war with the kingdom one day. That eventually the day would come where I would have to stop running, stop hiding, and fight. But I never expected to be fighting with the kingdom, and certainly not with the Black Art at my side.

We are the epicenter of his army.

Sin and I stand side by side, half of his army spread through the city at our front and the other at our backs. My cuirass with the black winged pauldrons is fitted snugly against my core, steel plates protect my legs, and matching winged gauntlets hug my forearms. The sword Sin had forged for me hangs in anticipation at my waist, my dagger tucked into its holster, and my magic hissing in my palms like a viper that has just been stepped on. I look over at him and find him already staring at me.

"Ever think you'd find yourself trusting a bloodwitch in battle?" I taunt, hoping to ease both our nerves.

Sin maintains a calm, stoic appearance, but his collective rumbles with unease and restlessness. "Probably about as much as you thought you could trust someone in our uniform."

"I see you put on real armor today," I tease, looking pointedly at where he usually wears nothing but a steel plate over his bare chest. Sin is fitted in his own suit of blackened plated armor with twin swords strapped across his back. His long hair is secured into a loose bun at the nape of his neck, a few loose hairs framing the sides of his face.

"I had to cover up a little today, didn't want you getting your head lopped off because you were distracted."

I smirk and look away before he can see the blush on my cheeks. As much as I may hate to admit it, his appearance is a distraction. Suited up in armor, his eyes burning with intense focus and his hands clenching at his sides as if he's itching to reach for his sword, he looks like the reaper Aegidale and its neighbors have come to fear.

The ground rumbles beneath our feet as the distinct shrill of Legion battle cries pierce the air, and the galloping of their armored horses stampede towards us.

A storm of arrows hurl above our heads towards them, knocking a few soldiers off their horses, but the majority of them lodge into their poorly crafted shields. The first sendoff of arrows is our agreed upon cue, so Sin and I jump into action. We conjure a wall of fire before us and stretch it into a line that extends far off in either direction, through the side streets and alleys, creating a flame barrier between our first and second armies. Legion's mundane won't be able to cross the fiery blockade, forcing their transcendents to separate from the rest and dividing their numbers. The shifters will be able to cross the fire, but it will temporarily weaken their defense. It takes a lot of magic to wound a transcendent, but a sharp sword can slice through their skins as easily as any human's.

Ahead of us, the sound of metal against metal cleaves the air, signaling the fighting has commenced. And as predicted, a wall of transcendents come barreling towards our fire barricade. I plant my feet, opening and closing my hands as the magic warms there and simmers in anticipation. Our second army moves in around us with weapons drawn as the pounding of the transcendents' monstrous paws grows louder. And as soon as the Legion shifters are in range, Sin and I unleash a wave of destruction magic towards the charging beasts.

It hits the six shifters in the center the hardest, sending them stumbling sideways for a brief moment, while the others break off to cross the barrier from farther away. The ones in front regain their footing and lower their shoulders as they near the flames, hurtling themselves through the blazing wall like rabid, overgrown wolves.

Sin and I retreat a few steps as they tear through, their coats littered with ash and their bared teeth glistening with saliva as they growl and dip their heads. We reposition to stand back-to-back, covering the blind spot of the other as we surround ourselves with a ward. The transcendents separate and charge into the second army, while three of them stay and circle around us, snapping their heads to the side and licking their snouts as they let out low, guttural snarls. Two of them are reddish colored and the third a dark blonde, each with sharp pointed ears, long rectangular snouts, and golden eyes set deep in their canine faces.

Our ward is too strong for them to get much closer, so long as we can maintain its potency. The weight of Sin's back pressed against mine keeps me focused, grounded, as I pour my intention into the ward protecting us.

I swear to protect you in the face of battle tomorrow, he promised last night. And right now, with our bodies pinned together at the shoulders, I trust the Black Art with my life.

The flames that were ravenous with hunger a moment before vanish into a thick gray fog.

They extinguished the barrier.

We knew it wouldn't hold for long against a species known for their advanced abjuration magic, but we did underestimate how many of them would still be standing before the wall came down.

The ground shakes beneath my feet, and I strain to see through the barricade that has been reduced to a smoldering curtain, but the smoke is too thick. My knees buckle as whatever is approaching draws nearer, making the city streets quiver beneath my boots and—

"Sin!" I call over my shoulder as a second surge of transcendents come rushing through what remains of the smoking wall.

This lot of them appear diseased, patches of skin blistering beneath their charred furs like a bubbling stew. Our men must have rained the boiling, iron-infused water on their backs before they breached the defense. Kingdom soldiers move in and surround us, lunging and hacking at the beasts while the three surrounding us snap at and test the boundaries of our barrier—a barrier that won't hold against this many of them.

"We need to put them down!" Sin yells over his shoulder. "Give me your hands!"

I reach behind me, and as soon as his white clenched knuckles lock on top of mine, my spine arches as he bleeds the magic from my body. I don't fight him as he rips the collective from my blood and siphons the magic right from my veins. My arms convulse and shudder in his grip, my body teetering on collapsing as Sin drains me from the inside. And suddenly my head is too heavy, and my neck falls limp against his shoulder, my knees threatening to give out next.

"Hang on," he growls under his breath, his hands tightening unbearably around my own. With a feral shout, Sin releases a wave of destruction strengthened with the magic he tapped straight from my own source, and the symphony of howls that follows in its wake snaps me back to alertness. I open my eyes and watch as the furred legs of the three immediately surrounding us wobble under their weight, and they crash to the ground, limp and broken and bleeding.

Sin spins me to face him, demanding to know if I'm alright, and violently shakes me when I don't answer. But I can barely see him through the red haze clouding my vision, and I struggle to hear his voice over the whispers in my head.

Her whispers.

My eyes narrow in on the fallen beasts, on their torn sides and dripping wounds, and I…

I smell them.

I inhale the scent of their suffering, hints of mulled wine and citrus petting my tongue, and I lick my teeth at the sight of them. Sin grabs my chin and jerks my head forward, forcing me to meet his eyes, and I bare my teeth at him instinctively.

"Remember who you are," he says, his words coming out hurried but gentle. "You are stronger than her."

I am stronger than her.

She who would rush to their fallen, crumpled bodies and snap their necks without a second thought; she who would lap the blood pouring from their wounds; she who would laugh as they begged for mercy.

Remember who you are.

High-pitched chants sung from the lips of Legion soldiers dance across the dense, smoking wall moments before they emerge in the flesh, weapons held above their heads. Swords, hammers, battle axes of varying sizes and quality stampede towards us, and I nod to Sin as I spin towards them, drawing my sword from my hip.

He pulls his own weapon from his back, and side-by-side, we stare down the flood of monsters storming towards us with the force of a raging tsunami. My agility surprises me, the caster's high pumping my body with adrenaline, allowing me to move faster, sharper. I jab and thrust and lunge with more swiftness than I could muster in training while my magic replenishes itself.

I quickly infer that an order was given to protect me at all costs as I am never alone. Sin's men flank me on all sides, letting me beat down my opponent but always stepping in to deliver the fatal blow once they've fallen before me. We hack through them one by one, our kingdom steel easily finding the holes in their makeshift armors and overpowering their pieced together weapons. The smell of bloodshed invades my senses, encasing my very bones in a euphoric glaze as I allow their affliction to fuel my power. I pivot to my right as a screaming woman charges me with a raised hammer, and dodging to the side, I spin and plant my foot into her backside, sending her stumbling into one of our soldiers who puts her down a second time—permanently.

Now facing the other direction, I catch sight of Sin through the blanket of smoke. Five transcendents slowly circle him, forcing him to resort to magic before it's regained its full potency. But even he knows five shifters is too much for the Black Art to take on with steel alone. Goddess-blessed magic doesn't make his human skin any less vulnerable to jagged canine teeth.

It only takes one well-placed bite.

I channel a defensive ward around me, strong enough to deflect any incoming swords or arrows without draining too much of my replenishing magic. Pirouetting around the horde of bodies dripping with sweat and blood, and leaping over the fallen at my feet, I dart towards Sin. I almost reach him when I hear the scream. My lungs turn to ice as recognition of those throaty shrills seeps in.

Ileana.

I whip towards the sound and find her behind Sin on his left, shrieking and howling as she hacks at the men who have hurt her in so many ways, and quickly drawing attention to herself with the sounds of her fury. Now sprinting towards Sin, I thrust what remains of my own magic into his ward, strengthening it. It expands outward, forcing them to put more distance between each other, and I dive through the protective barrier before the two nearest me even notice I'm here. They lower their shoulders and hurl themselves against it, searching for a weak point in our protective casing. We feed our power into the circle, and a few of them wince as the perimeter of our ward singes their fur everywhere it brushes against them. The ward is strong, but not strong enough to put them down on its own when it's divided between five of them actively shoving against it. Sweat rushes down my face, my neck, and my very bones grow heavier as exhaustion seeps into my every fiber, turning my marrow to sludge.

Sin whips to look behind himself, and I follow his stare to see what his transcendent ears heard that I could not. Behind us, Ileana is quickly becoming more surrounded as her cries of anguish baited them to her like hunters to a wounded wolf. Ileana has never been a predator, but even a lone wolf will attack a few humans if it's pissed-off and hungry enough. And she is fucking ravenous.

Worry corrupts Sin's face. He needs to move to her side, break the chokehold they've trapped her in, but if he drops his hold on the ward, the weight of the transcendents pushing against it will be too much for me to hold alone. His eyes flicker between us and her, judging how long it would take him to cut down the men around her and be back at my side.

Too long. And he knows it.

It's her or me. And he's not moving.

Ileana's vicious screaming grows louder as she swings her sword almost carelessly now, blinded with unbridled wrath. She stops a blade from piercing her left side with her own, her weapon sliding off his with a blood tingling screech, and she pivots to face the weapon's handler, ignorant to the bearded man rushing at her from behind. He raises his hammer above him, the Black Hand's blood glistening in his eyes like midnight stars.

I cannot fail her again.

The memory of Ileana's pain surges through me as I remember all she endured night after bitterly cold night. I allow that agony to shred me to pieces and consume them all as I rip off the veil separating me from her. And with a wailing yowl I don't recognize, she leaps from my very being and sinks her daggered claws into his chest. His hammer clatters to the ground as he arches forward, and I rake mental talons down the front of his leather skins, imprinting the shape of my fingernails swirled in his blood. He heaves over, blood gurgling from his mouth, and he collapses with a thud behind her as his final breath falls from his chest.

My veins swell with the rush of his collective, my blood thickening with power and adrenaline and wrath. His scent flares my nostrils wide, and I lick my lips as I look at the Legion soldiers still surrounding her, their eyes wide with panic now focused entirely on me. I hear that eldritch shriek again, the wild one coming from my lungs, enveloping the air around us as if it might grow spindly limbs of its own and suck the ichor from every pulsing wound. One by one, the men around her contort into unnatural angles with the snapping of bones, falling to their knees and fading from their bodies as I absorb them into mine. My head falls back in laughter as the chaos rushes through my chest, my stomach, my thighs. Ileana spins on her heel to see who is responsible for their deaths, and I lower my glowing eyes into her deep brown ones—eyes I never want to see riddled with fear again.

Behind me, a rumbling orchestra of growls rips from somewhere deep in the five shifters' throats as they threaten to overwhelm an already exhausted Sin. I reach a hand towards the bearded man now dead at her feet and wrap a phantom fist around his collective. I pull and pull and pull—willing his blood to obey me, forcing it to serve me as its master—and with one final tug, a long spear, created and dripping with his crimson juice, materializes in my palm. I hear as one of them rears up at Sin and snaps at him, its pointed teeth clacking together. They're breaking down the barrier, each trying to land a bite, and each attempt boiling my blood hotter.

No onetouches my Black Art.

Without a second's hesitation, I turn and hurl the blood spear into the face of the transcendent closest to Sin. A wicked smile too wide for my face stretches my mouth as it whimpers and slumps to the ground, fresh blood pouring from its face. I restrain myself from pouncing on the dying animal and lapping at the cardinal stream spewing from the hole my spear carved into its giant head.

The four others shift their focus to me, and as if they share a mental thought, they charge me at the same time, promises of death staring me down from within their inhuman, golden eyes. I widen my stance, and with a delicate wave of my hand, I rip the dead transcendent's blood from its body and send it spiraling into the others like daggered rain. It pelts into three of them, sending them tumbling over as the essence of their fallen friend bleeds their lives from their skins.

I kneel in front of the one closest to me, its fur as white as my hair, and its glowing yellow eyes reflecting my own. I grab its blood-soaked chin, swipe my athame from my side, and slit its furred throat, relishing in the cardinal droplets splattering my face. The fourth one charges at my rear, and gripping the dagger in my hand, I spin around, ready to drive the blade into its fleshy heart.

The beast vomits blood on me as Sin plunges his sword into its gut, its juice sputtering from its mouth as it crashes to the ground before me. He yanks his weapon from the shifter's side, his blade coated in its thick, scarlet syrup. Sin meets my eyes with his yellow-green ones, so vivid from the magic expulsion, and extends his hand to me.

The last of my control I've been clinging to rushes out of me at the sight of him. His hair is slick with sweat and blood, loose pieces stuck to his copper cheeks, concern for me apparent in his brightened eyes.

I want him.

With every nerve in my body and every breath in my lungs, I want him. I want to let the caster's high consume me, ravage me, as we give in to the carnal desires we've both been fighting. Resisting because what would it mean if the man sworn to protect the realm from my kind wanted me? And worst—what would it say of me if I wanted him back? The man who threatened my family, my freedom, my life…

But tapped into this part of myself, the visceral hunger I've buried so deep in my core, I can admit what I've known to be true for a while now. A part of me, some raw, primal piece of myself, is falling in love with the Black Art.

It's wrong to want him. I know that. He is poison. A tonic promising tangled sheets and stolen kisses and everything wrong in the world. Maybe it isn't love. Maybe it's but a primal need, as much a part of me as the bones in my flesh, but try as I might, I can't stop drinking him.

And I don't think I want to.

I grab his hand and let him pull me to my feet. His eyes sweep over me, assessing me for damage, and my core blooms with desire at the sight of his concern. I act without thought… logic has no place mingling with feelings like these. Sin is poison, and I'm going to willingly swallow him whole, even if it kills me.

Slamming my chest into his, I wrap both hands around his neck and pull his mouth to mine. For a moment, as I press my lips to his, he goes rigid beneath me. His mouth has greedily tasted my neck, my shoulders, even the skin between my breasts, but never my lips. Because sharing a kiss is beyond just acting out of carnal need… a kiss is intimate. Deep. Soulful.

Just the night before, I widened my stance and bared myself to him so he could pleasure me at my very core. And even then I didn't feel as… connected… to him as I do with his mouth against mine. Sweet, delicious poison.

I part his lips with mine, and his body comes alive beneath me, like the taste of me stokes the flames inside him. His hands drop to my waist and pull me against him, our armor awkward and in the way, but it doesn't stop his mouth from devouring mine, his tongue relishing in the taste of my own. I nibble his bottom lip as I pull away and lick the blood smeared on the corner of his mouth. I hold his stare as I back away, tucking the hungry look on his face away in my memories, then turn and run through the sea of the injured and dying.

I scale a ladder leaning against the side of a storefront and hop onto the roof, throwing out a ward around me to deflect any incoming arrows. I use the height to survey the fighting beneath me, noting how much we outnumber them now. It won't be much longer until Sin and his men finish picking them off like starving dogs, but from this vantage point, I can accelerate our victory.

With a wave of my hands, I birth fire onto the road beneath me. Leaping from rooftop to rooftop, I feed it through the streets and alleys, creating partitions and boxing the soldiers into groups. Ensuring each group contains more of our men than theirs, squashing any chance they had of inflicting more casualties on our side and hastening their demise.

I find Sin through the smoke and ash, taking on three men on his own in the city's center. The scent of blood is heavy in the air, some of it metallic, some of it sweet, all of it absolutely mouthwatering. Power washes through me like a live current, thickening my skin as if it were impenetrable, fueling my magic with sparks of chaos and drowning my thighs in the arousal from it all.

Sin is hunched slightly forward, his weight light on his feet, and I wonder how I never noticed how beastly he is, as if he can't fully hide the animal lurking within him. He bests the three of them with ease, but exhaustion is apparent on his face. With no more enemies to cut down in the ring of fire I strung around him, his eyes find me on the rooftop. His breathing is heavy, and I note the blood seeping through the cracks in his armor. I reach for the small vial tucked under my chest plate and pop the lid open with my thumb. His lips part slightly as he watches me dip my nose to it and inhale deeply, inviting him inside of me. Not breaking our stare, I dip the pointed tip of my tongue into the bottle, tasting him.

Pleasure rocks through me.

He goes unnaturally still as he feels my power surround him, and gently, I cradle his collective with my own and deluge him with healing magic. He doesn't wince as his wounds close over under his armor. He's too focused on me, his own caster's high nudging forth the same feelings thrumming inside me. He wets his lips, and it takes every ounce of self-control I have left to not jump off this roof and devour him right there in the city street, listening to the cries of the rebellion as they fight for their final breaths.

I force myself to tear my gaze away from him to check on the others, and pleasure sweeps through me again as I watch us slaughter the men that once thought they could enslave me. And as our side finishes them off one by one, zone by zone, I inhale the fire magic back into my lungs.

Sin orders for our injured to be tended to immediately and to begin retreating. I watch with admiration—at the very presence he commands—and if it was possible for me to become more aroused, I do as he wipes the red from his face and runs a hand through his long hair now damp with rebellion blood. He watched as I slaughtered his enemies without mercy, crushed their bones with the force of my will alone, and witnessed their energy flooding my core. He didn't so much as blink as he beheld my transformation, or scoff as I grew slick with more than just their blood. He wanted me.

And I am going to have him.