“Not now!”
She couldn’t turn now. What good was a tiny fox?
Kaippa slashed a clawed wing tip at the demon’s blunted snout. Drawing more trees into the brawl, Lucus shouted fae words that jumbled inside the cacophony of noise. Riding the dark unicorn, Coren’s face lit up with purple light as she drew her magestone back once again.
Snowflakes blurred Hekla’s view, and her body shivered, shifting into fox form.
The world was suddenly so much larger. And painted in those strange shades of pink and blue.
The demon had hated her bite before, so she’d dig into its flesh again. Or die trying.
In fox form, she was so fast. All she had to do was think Jump onto that walking tree and then she was there, high and already leaping toward the demon’s outstretched wing.
Kaippa was a blur of bright blue movement to her left as she dove toward the demon, mouth open to the cold night. Her teeth sank into the demon’s wing, and bitterness flowed across her fox tongue, the creature’s blood foul as rancid butter. The wing gripped in her jaw jerked hard, and she was thrown into the air. She slammed into one of the trees as it grabbed for the demon’s leg, and she slid to its roots. Using the tree’s forward momentum, Hekla pushed off and leapt toward the demon, sharp fox teeth bared, but she missed and rolled across the chunks of chewed up street.
“Together!” Coren shouted from the lightning-washed, purple sky. “Shout the spell together!”
Their small army had gathered and reformed their line. They held up hands that were dark with Hekla’s blood, and she felt the magic of their words, spoken now in unison, shoot through her like the magic was tugging the power from her own body.
Gasping, feeling like she was being turned inside out, her body shifted into her human form without any suggestion from her. The grit of the street bit into her bloodied palms as she pushed herself up.
The army’s spoken spell grew to an echoing chant, and the air around the demon seemed to implode.
Kaippa was thrust to the ground beside her. She blinked, trying to see through the crackling lightning. Was he alive?
30 Coren
The spell casters’ words were a song that became power, and the magic sucked all the air from the area around the demon with a sound like a massive anvil dropped on glass. A sparkling darkness engulfed Main Street, then the dazzling black threw the demon backward. Spiraling in the air, wings tangling, the wyvern soared past the first hole it had emerged from, then landed directly in front of the last building standing, Landmark Booksellers. The creature's maw hung open and its eyes narrowed to slits as smoke spun from its nostrils and a low snarl rumbled in its belly.
I jammed my heels into the unicorn and shouted to my spelled cloud, then we were dashing over the rubble alongside Lucus. Lucus’s bright ivy wings beat the cold, smoky air against my face before he veered toward the fallen beast to distract it.
The unicorn and I rushed behind the demon, and I pulled the magestone back.
But my hands shook. I would miss my shot.
Remember who you are. The Bow knows the truth. Feel the truth, the unicorn said in my mind.
The Yew Bow sang in my ears, an echo to the power in the townspeople’s casting, and the arrow sparked and smoked its way into being, a line of crackling lightning stronger than any of the magicked arrows I’d nocked yet. The heat of the arrow focused my thoughts.
“I am the Yew Queen, and I wield these weapons by right of destiny.”
I took aim at the back of the demon’s wide, scaled head, then released the lightning.
With a blast that hit my ears like ten thousand gunshots, the amethyst arrowhead exploded against the demon’s skull. Glittering flesh and white bone flew into the air as the creature dropped to the street in a sudden silence.
Lucus rose above the wyvern, his eyes, arms, and hands bright with emerald fae magic. “All hail our Yew Queen! She has defeated the monster!”
The Mage Duke hadn’t shown up to see his cursed creature die. Was he still at the castle? With the way he’d gone ashen and the wild look in his eyes, I didn’t know what to expect if we returned to the ramparts.
Those still alive and able to move came running, Hekla and Kaippa in the mix. A shout of joy went up, and I set a hand against the dark unicorn’s ebony neck.
“Thank you, friend. Without you, I couldn’t have done this.”
You could have, but you would most likely have lost a limb or two along the way.
“Well, thanks for legs and arms, then.”
On the ground again with the crowd and Lucus coming close to offer congratulations, I dismounted and held the Bow string tucked under an arm, my fingers curled around its now familiar heft. “So you’ll leave now?”
I’m waiting on one event.
Some of the crowd called out shouts of thanks while others went to tend the injured.
Hekla ran to me and hugged me so hard my back popped. She turned and grinned at the dark unicorn before taking a pumpkin muffin from her pocket. The unicorn whinnied, then, with fervor, ate the treat from Hekla’s palm.
Lucus settled beside me, the last of his wingbeats cooling my hot skin. “I told you it’s always your pumpkin muffins.”
“Don’t mansplain, Lucus.”
“Don’t what?” His bunched eyebrows were adorable.
I patted his gorgeous chest. “We can chat modern dos and don’ts later.”
“As you wish, my queen.”
Hekla and Kaippa stepped back as Lucus swept me into a rough kiss that told me exactly how afraid he’d been that we would lose and how much he feared we might still. Who knew what the Duke was up to? We had to get back to the castle.
“Hey,” Kaippa drawled. “Surely I can get a kiss for my work here today too?” His mouth tipped up at one side
