With each sentence, Rhone and Kajo’s blades smashed into each other. The glowing blues and greens lit up the whole battlefield, momentarily blinding anyone watching.
I looked out at the other fighters and was stunned. Rhone’s Bordash units were either dead or on their knees, hands behind their heads. Commander Sasrin was leaning heavily on one of his lieutenants, a bright red blast through his upper right chest, but he was laughing and joking, watching the fight.
How was no one intervening? Rhone’s army had clearly lost. So, why were they letting Kajo still fight him? Why didn’t they just demand his surrender?
That was when I realized Kajo was crouched low, head bowed down, looking up from underneath his shaggy hair, left hand outstretched, fingers tense, right hand holding his blade over his head at the ready. He was breathing heavily from the fight, but he was smiling, smirking, really. A glow of animal desire was alight in his eyes. Rhone dropped his guard a moment and Kajo charged, slashing down, then up, spinning, jumping and slashing down again, parrying, ducking, shoving Rhone back with his telekinetic push, then stabbing low at his gut to rip apart Rhone’s leather armor.
The Beast King.
He would always be the Beast King.
I thought for a moment that he would lean his head back and howl.
It was the glory of the fight. His men and women, the warriors of the whole planet of Farian, might follow him for his intelligence and strategy, but also for his fierce protectiveness over his pack and his feral desire to rise to every challenge greeting him.
It was one reason I hadn’t been a conquest; I had been an equal partner, an invitation, someone to challenge him continually. He desired me, not as a prize to be won, but as a prize to always admire, cherish, and protect as an equal.
These thoughts struck me so profoundly that I thought I must be reading his mind, or at least his emotions.
Then, I realized, that I likely was.
He was in a vulnerable state, fighting in this way. It was like wearing one’s emotions on their sleeve. And, I could read them now.
I could cherish and protect them.
We were each other’s Destin.
As I watched, Kajo whipped around, did a fantastic flip in the air and then ran his sword clear through Rhone’s shoulder from behind. Rhone roared in agonized anger. Kajo whipped the sword out of Rhone’s body and Rhone collapsed to the ground for a moment, his own blade flying.
Sasrin picked up the green glowing Curan blade.
“This has never belonged to you,” Sasrin said. He held tight to it, leaning on it like a cane for support from his wounds.
Rhone looked up at Kajo from his knees as the King walked around to face him. Kajo held his own blade out at Rhone’s neck. Then he whipped it down to his side and struck Rhone across the face with his fist. Rhone rocked backward and then sat up straight again. So Kajo hit him again. Two more times. Rhone’s lips were split, his eyes blinking rapidly against the hits, but his spirit was broken.
Kajo shook his fist, knuckles bloodied, and held the sword back to Rhone’s neck.
“Shall I kill you? You have lost.” Kajo gestured to the beaten and bound Bordash.
“You kill me, and she falls.” Rhone pointed up at Vania where she was slowly spinning in her suspended web of magic. Her eyes were pinned to me, more alert. She was starting to struggle in her bindings, as if she had just realized there might actually be hope.
“Daphne…?”
“Yes! Vania! It’s me. Everything is going to be okay. Everything is going to be okay.” Tears were pricking at my throat and freely falling from my eyes. I couldn’t believe she was here! I couldn’t believe she was at such risk…I knew it wasn’t really my fault, but in a way, also, it was…
While Kajo was looking at me and I was looking at Vania, Rhone had pulled a small knife from his pocket. I turned back just in time to see him lunge up and whip it at Kajo’s throat. Kajo deflected it just enough that it ran a line down his neck but didn’t pierce his throat. I stepped forward and grabbed Rhone’s sword from Sasrin, then slashed it through the air at Rhone.
He screamed in pain as my slash from ten feet away ripped through his leather armor, burying into his chest, the same way Kajo was able to use his telekinetic powers to amplify the sword’s distance and damage. Rhone collapsed to the ground, hugging his chest. Kajo was on him in an instant, but not before Rhone managed to lance the small knife in his hand up toward Vania.
I watched in shock, trying to spin and deflect it out the way, but it was too far gone, too sharply thrown, too fast for me to catch, and it impaled itself in her chest, right above the heart. Vania screamed, and then Kajo was ramming his own knife through Rhone’s throat. Rhone spluttered, dying, his magic collapsing, and Vania was falling from the air.
Kajo turned and lifted his hands to cushion Vania’s rapid descent, straight into my arms and I knelt to the ground, holding her as best I could, as she gripped at the blade above her heart.
“Don’t pull it out! Don’t!” I said. Tears were streaming down our faces. “Vania, you’re going to be okay, you’re—” I stared wildly around for help. The Curans were looking at me helplessly. “Kajo! Kajo, help!”
Kajo looked back at Rhone one last time to see him flooding out his life in arterial blood on the ground and then he joined me beside Vania.
“Please, please, do something! Save her!”
“Ok, lay her on the ground. I don’t know if this will work.”
I laid her down carefully.
