Ugh. I had to save that puzzle for later. Right now, we had a duel to make it through.
“I’ll be his second,” I called out. I didn't want to, but what choice did we have?
“Good,” Ruis said.
Lucus and Arleigh flew to the top of the hill as the unseelie’s shouts and cheering rose into the fiery, pink sky.
The two alphas faced off. Arleigh rose into the air, her wings blotting out the first stars as she spread her hands wide. Her black gown spilled around her like ink, and her eyes blazed like fire. Her glowing veins wrapped her bare arms like decorative sleeves, curling up her shoulders and neck until they disappeared under her chin like a high-necked collar. Red hair flowing freely and her antlers crossing the bright of the gibbous moon, she looked like she belonged to the evening sky.
Lucus was rocking his alpha-ness as well, no doubt about it.
“Damn,” Hekla whispered as she stared up at him.
With wings twice the size of Arleigh’s, he flew on level with her and set his fiery gaze on the unseelie queen. His long, obsidian tunic rippled in the wind as he fisted his hands at his sides. Emerald magic whirled around his forearms like those gauntlet deals medieval guys wore. They’d put a belt around his trim waist, and it looked like it might have been made out of the gold coins I’d scored during the game. Reflecting the myriad of stars, his ebony horns curled away from his face, the shape highlighting his high cheekbones and proud, straight nose. The power coiled in his lithe, tightly muscled form made me think of a wolf stalking its prey, about to leap into the fight. His lips parted. A flash of his white teeth showed, a clear threat to the unseelie gathered along the edges of the circle. A thrill of desire rushed over me, heat gathering between my thighs as I imagined that vicious, glorious body on mine. Psycho, I know. But hey, sometimes near-death experiences made one horny.
“Damn fully seconded, my friend,” I said shakily, falling back on my usual attitude to hide the sheet of ice fear had slid under my skin.
Across the clearing, sage-hued fire leapt from Arleigh’s thumbs and forefingers. The magic spanned high, then arced to create a circle of light.
Thorny, black vines rocketed from the ground. They poised, moving side to side, like cobras ready to strike.
Then they shot across the earth toward Lucus.
Chapter 23
I held my breath as Lucus’s wings beat hard and lifted him away from the thorny vines. Bits of dirt ricocheted off the hill and into the crowd. The scent of turned earth and pine resin was everywhere. Magic spinning around his hands, fae light glancing off his horns and the planes of his face, Lucus dodged the whipping motion of the thorned arms, then shot his own dark green vines toward them. Lucus’s vines overtook Arleigh’s and thrust them into the dirt to the gasps of the unseelie.
It was Lucus’s turn to strike.
Emerald fire rolled across his forearms, and his lips moved as he spoke some spell in his ancient language. As he raised his hands above his head, the largest pine in the tree line, a beast of a thing that stood behind Arleigh, shook its boughs. She spun in the air as the great pine swung two of its limbs at her. Green light exploded from her hands, but before she could fight it off or whatever she was planning, the pine grabbed her like a giant and lifted her high. Light burst from her body. A crack sounded. Starting where the tree touched Arleigh, rot sped up the pine’s branches. Within a few seconds, the dark stain spread down the trunk and into the tree’s lush needles. The decay moved with an unnatural crackling sound not too different from fire, and an odor of death swirled into the last few minutes of twilight. The pine seemed to exhale, bending backward, before it released Arleigh and crashed to the ground, taking several other trees with it. The entire pine was deader than dead, as Aunt Viv used to say.
“Wow,” I whispered.
“Our queen is mighty,” the fae beside me said.
The queen’s hands moved quickly through the air as she prepared her strike.
Lucus hovered just above the hill, his boots touching the ground and his fingers glowing with the emerald light of his magic.
The ground under Lucus exploded like a geyser. The roiling dirt engulfed him, and he was gone in an instant.
My heart stuttered to a complete stop. The unseelie crowed over their queen’s victory.
“Lucus! Come on!” I started up the hill as if I could do anything. But I sure as shit wasn’t going to just stand here doing jack. “Lucus!”
Before I crested the rise, the ground trembled. I fell back as the earth erupted and Lucus flew into the air, moss-colored light swirling around his arms and hands. Every pine that lined the clearing tore its roots free and raged toward Arleigh with branches outstretched. Fae flew out of the way, shrieking and growling as they fled Lucus’s army of pines. The trees gouged the ground with their roots and left massive ditches behind them. The first of the pines clawed into the hill with their wide lower branches until Arleigh was flying just above them, magic spinning from her blackened fingers. The pines made a loud groaning noise, and
