“Yes. Take it. Take it all, love.”
Chest shaking like he couldn’t quite feed properly, he inhaled. The blood stopped flowing from his wound as his body healed itself partially. The gash remained open, though, and the rest of him didn’t seem able to move.
“Lucus. Keep feeding. Stay with me.”
He breathed again, and color returned to his face, skin going from gray to the olive tone it normally was. “Coren.”
The sound of my name on his now pink lips wrenched a grateful sob from my throat. “What can we offer the Mage Duke to please him? To keep him from killing everyone?”
The urge to rush the Duke gnashed its teeth inside me, but he was too much of a wild card. He knew so much damned magic and controlled the demon—or so he claimed. He’d kill me and possibly everyone else if I tried it.
Lucus coughed, and the Duke’s head turned. “Flowers,” Lucus whispered.
“What?” I must have heard him wrong.
The Duke’s wild eyes locked on mine. Rain slicked down his hair and over the grimace pulling at his lips.
“Flowers. Lucilla loved flowers.”
“Get back!” The Duke stormed at me and lifted his palms. Light crackled across his palms, and the shiver of knowing I was about to be slammed with power rattled my spine.
I leapt from the ramparts.
My legs were going to snap like biscotti.
A darkness flashed around me, and then Kaippa was lowering me to the ground.
“Flowers.” I bunched Kaippa’s shirt in my fists. “The people need to bring the Duke flowers for Lucilla.”
“The hell are you talking about, mage?”
“Lucus said—”
The Mage Duke roared in anger, and the courtyard exploded in light. Hekla, Kaippa, and I rolled away from the lightning strike. Heart pounding, I waved smoke from my face to see the castle’s small forest on fire. I stood to try a spell to help the rain put out the flame, but before I could come up with anything, the ground shook and I fell hard against the stone.
The demon’s great head appeared above the castle walls as lightning washed everything in white and indigo. Arms raised, the Duke shouted at the beast, which belched bright flames into the storm. Screams sounded from the crowd outside, and I rose with the lift spell to see my army scattering.
We were so screwed.
The Duke laughed like a coked-up psychopath and turned to face me. He flicked his fingers, and my lift spell disappeared.
I dropped to the ground, but there was no Kaippa to catch me this time. Before I could see where Hekla and Kaippa had ended up, my head hit the courtyard cobblestones, and everything went black.
When I came to, the storm had only worsened, and the noises coming from outside the castle gripped my heart and shook it hard.
Hekla and Kaippa were nowhere to be seen. Had they left to help our scattered army? Raising a cloud that tingled over my skin and against my legs, I rose above the castle to see what was going on.
My throat closed up.
Two streets away, the demon leapt high, wings spreading, then dove onto the street. Flames burst from his mouth as he devoured a van and two sedans. The surrounding traffic slammed together or veered off the road to avoid the demon. Rising high again, the demon wyvern flew toward Main Street at the command of the Mage Duke, who remained on the castle's ramparts, waving his arms like a conductor. I could see just the top of Lucus’s head, his horns black and his hair tangled. He must have been slumped against the wall up there, slowly dying.
I had to fix the Yew Bow, or we were all lost.
Blood in my mouth and heart in my throat, I ran for the casting chamber and the spell book that would have answers.
28 Coren
My hands shook like I was being electrocuted as I pressed them into the cover of the spell book. I pulled my palms away and the book flew open, pages flipping like a crazed bird’s wings, but they didn’t stop.
“Please! I need a spell to fix the Yew Bow. I’m the damn Yew Queen. You have to help me help them!” Hot tears flowed freely down my cold face.
Peace, Yew Queen. Find peace, someone said in my head.
I whirled to see the dark unicorn. “There is no peace here! Everything is going to complete shit!”
You want to repair your weapon.
“Of course I do! Stop being mysterious and either help me or leave me the fuck alone!”
The Bow is yours by rite, by blood, by the fated threads of the universe.
“Awesome,” I choked out, totally over this asshole. “Lot of good it does broken as shit.”
Have you held the Bow?
“What, like lately?”
The Bow is yours. Only you can destroy it.
I ran from the chamber, heading for Lucus’s bedroom where the pieces of the Bow sat useless. “Well, the Duke seemed to do a pretty damn good job for someone who supposedly can’t destroy it!” I called over my shoulder.
The clop of hooves on stone sounded behind me.
We rushed into Lucus’s room, then skidded to a stop. The oak, the pines, the roots—all of it had gone gray as the storm clouds.
I swallowed my panic and knelt to pocket the magestone and to pick up the two pieces of the Bow. “Nothing’s happening, unicorn. Are you just here to torture me?”
Peace, Yew Queen. Know that you are the most powerful here and now. You must find your peace. You must realize and rest in that knowledge, and it will be so.
I was getting real fucking tired of his wisdom.
But I took a breath, closed my eyes, and held the pieces in front of me, feeling like I was wasting valuable time when I could have been fighting, trying, doing something worth something.
Peace.
“Yeah! I heard you.”
The unicorn set his nose on my shoulder. Know your power here. Feel it.
The warmth of his touch calmed my breathing, and the Yew Bow hummed louder
