Prince by Blood and Bone: A Fantasy Romance of the Black Court (Tales of the Black Court) (36 page)

She gritted her teeth and stabbed deep into Agrona’s thigh. “He’s not yours. Leave him alone.” Blood gushed, spraying onto her hand and blooming into crimson flowers all over the white dress.

Agrona screamed. She let go of Kian and fell back. “You…you…you.” Her arms flailed. “I’ll make you pay for that, bitch.”

Kian touched his throat and took a huge rasping breath. “It’s witch, not bitch. Get it right, for once.” Large purple welts were already forming on his skin.

Bryanna held her sword up, unsure of what to do next.

“Hah!” Agrona laughed. She spit out a stray lock of hair and brushed it off of her face. “She’s no swords-woman. Look at her stance. Is this all you have to rescue you, one pitiful human?”

“Let her go,” Kian said. “If Logan is freed, you have no hold over me.”

“No hold?” Agrona’s voice cracked. “I’ll ask you again, my betrothed, do you love her?”

For a moment, Bryanna saw under the aggressive woman to the ugly girl beneath. The sad, lonely half-breed who never fit in. Never got a date, let alone a handsome prince.

Bryanna held her breath.

“Why do you even care?” Kian rubbed his throat. “Will it make a difference to you, you selfish bitch?”

Agrona growled. “She’s nothing, just a human gypsy witch. Do you love her? ”

“Yes, I love her. Take that, and shove it deep inside. I hope it burns you up for the rest of your miserable life.”

Excitement fired along Bryanna’s skin, and she forgot about the angry woman standing between them. Kian loved her. Prince, witch…their differences didn’t matter. They’d work it all out. But first, she had to get him out of here.

Agrona’s face twitched. Anguish crawled across her features before slithering away and leaving nothing but rage. “She can’t have you,” she hissed. “You’re mine!” She spread her arms wide and assumed a wrestler’s crouch.

“It’s over, Agrona. Leave her alone.”

Bryanna faced the woman, and they circled. Agrona was bigger, stronger and meaner. Through the tattered remains of the wedding dress her rough green skin covered ropes of muscles. But Bryanna had determination, maybe desperation, on her side. Agrona lunged and grabbed Bryanna’s grenade.

Bryanna fell back, scrambling to get out of the way as Agrona raised her arm and threw the grenade. Bryanna’s hand rose to cover her eyes and before she could protest Kian thrust himself forward and shoved her out of the way. The grenade flew past, missing Kian, but hitting the wall next to him. A yellow-green cloud burst out and touched his arm.

It flared into flame. He screamed, the sound cutting deep into Bryanna’s heart. Sulfuric smoke billowed. He waved his arm, the fire licking along the gold lamé of his jacket.

“No!” Bryanna reached for power to put the spell out, but Agrona knocked her down. Bryanna’s hand hit the floor and the sword spun across the room, leaving her defenseless.

“Now, you slutty witch, I’ll kill you and marry Kian. I’ll be the princess, and everyone will love me!”

Bryanna groped in the bag feeling for a grenade, hoping she’d counted right and there were at least two left. Her hand touched something soft. She pulled it out and launched it at Agrona, sending a quick prayer the missile would hit its mark.

It flew true, hitting the middle of Agrona’s chest, exploding and hurling her to the floor. Great bursts of stinking, green flame erupted and the silk of her wedding dress caught fire.

The room filled with the pitiful siren sound of someone dying horribly.

Kian had grabbed his plaid from the bed and smothered his arm, putting the fire out. “Let’s go.” He helped Bryanna to her feet and handed her her sword.

She sheathed, it, but couldn’t leave. “Kian, we have to put it out. No one should die that way.” For a moment she thought he would argue. He was a son of the Black Court, she couldn’t even imagine the deaths he’d seen. “I’m a healer, I can’t let her die like that,” she said. She took the plaid and turned. Agrona was on her feet, her ear-shattering shrieks echoing off the walls as the magical flames ate her skin.

“Fuck,” he said and took the other end of the plaid, hobbling around one side he helped her wrap the blanket around the thrashing woman and suffocate the flames.

The screams died to whimpers and Kian pulled the plaid away.

One side of Agrona was fine, her brush of brown hair was a tangled, drooping mess, but the other had been burned away. The left side was destroyed, her skin and dress nothing but burned and shredded black tatters hanging on red, peeled flesh.

“All I wanted was to be a princess. To have everyone love me,” Agrona rasped out. Her eyes rolled up into her head, and her breath stopped.

Bryanna tried for power, but she couldn’t center over the shaking. She finally found a small trickle of pale blue and washed it toward Agrona. But it didn’t seem to help. She dropped her side of the plaid. “I think she’s dead.”

“Good riddance.” Kian winced, his arm and shoulder were a mass of oozy, red burns, blood had soaked his shirt and pants, and his face was strained and pale.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, great.” He said. He stumbled to the wall and slid down to the bottom, leaning against it and cradling his arm in his lap. “You shouldn’t be here. My mother’s outside the gate. If she discovers a MacElvy here, she’ll lose it. She’ll burn this place to the ground to get to you.”

“I don’t care.” She crouched next to him and stroked his cheek.

He hissed. “Everything hurts.”

“Hang on.” She breathed and centered and reached again for the blue strand of energy. Now that she could grow calm and concentrate, it came willingly to her, growing into that rich, healer blue that still amazed her. She stroked the power over his arm and the burns eased, leaving only red welts.

He flexed his arm, a grin spreading over his face. “That’s more like it. Come here, witch, I’m glad to see you.”

She pushed him gently away and tore his shirt down the middle. Little gold buttons popped off flying to the side and hitting the floor.

“Hey,” he said.

“Let me do the rest.”

“Fine.” He leaned back against the wall and she finished healing the newly re-opened cuts in his stomach and then the deeper wound in his thigh.

“Better?” she asked. Accessing the healer blue seemed easier and easier each time, but by the end she was tired and ready to stop. It would take time and practice to be able to do this kind of healing without draining herself.

“Much better.” Kian reached for her and pulled her in close. “Now come here.” He spread kisses over her face and cheeks and lips.

She melted into him. This was where she wanted to be for the rest of her life. “I love you,” she murmured against his mouth.

“Isn’t that sweet.” Agrona rasped out behind them.

Bryanna stiffened.

Agrona had pulled herself up. She crawled across the floor towards them, her burns oozing bloody yellow pus. Clutched in her good hand, she held a sparkling, black diamond. “She loves you.” She lifted the stone. “She’ll never want you once you’re a beast permanently. No woman will want you, monster!” She threw the diamond and collapsed, moaning and spitting on the floor.

Kian twisted his body, throwing his arm up and shielding Bryanna. The diamond hit his back and shattered into billions of glittering, magical fragments.

CHAPTER THIRTY

Bryanna scrambled across the floor and picked up her sword. Agrona’s swaying form rose, rushing at her and she gripped the sword in both hands and raised it over her head. Using all of her strength she stabbed down, pushing the blade into the plunging neckline of the destroyed wedding dress. The sword ground to nearly a halt as it hit the resistance of bone and flesh.

Agrona wailed, blood burbling out of her twisted mouth. Her hands bunched into claws and she scratched at Bryanna’s face.

Bryanna blinked past the droplets of blood caught in her eyelashes. She shook them off, leaned closer, and pushed the sword in, grinding it deep, and stabbing into the center of Agrona’s beating heart.

Kian screamed behind her.

The despair in his voice brought tears to her eyes, but she didn’t turn around. She stayed where she was, her muscles aching and holding her sword steady as Agrona’s life-blood gushed out over her and onto the floor. Agrona’s head jerked, then fell back. Her skin leached color and the soul drained out leaving her eyes flat and empty.

Bryanna did a quick check. Agrona’s eggplant-rich aura was gone. This time the bitch was truly dead. She let go of the sword and the body toppled to the floor.

She turned back to Kian. Bones rippled under his skin. Another agonized scream ripped from him, tearing into her soul.

“Bryanna, go,” he panted. “You can’t save me. The queen will be coming.” His back arched and his face contorted.

“I’m not leaving,” she said, rushing to him. “I won’t let them win. I won’t let you be permanently cursed.”

Her Gift still pulsed inside her, the blue power waiting for her. She wiped the blood from her eyes and reached for the power, pulling more from the stars and the earth than she ever had before. It rushed through her, lifting her hair and crackling off of the tips of her fingers. She took it all, and everything she felt inside, all her desperation and fear and love and pushed it into him, willing him to be himself. To be fully Kian with all of his Gift intact.

But nothing happened. She’d healed more in the last twenty-four hours than she’d ever done in her life and she was exhausted.

“Go, just go,” he panted. “Save yourself.” His body contorted, his teeth elongated, claws sprouted from his fingers. His scream was black with despair and it curdled her bones.

“Danu, help me,” she whispered.

And just like one of Cassie’s visions, it came to her. She knew what to do.

She threw herself onto Kian’s writhing body and gripped him hard. He bucked and twisted, the curse ripping through his limbs. She pressed her face into his chest and gritted her teeth as his flesh writhed beneath her skin. She pulled the last of her power, and all of her love, and wrapping it around him she rode the storm of his change.

Black diamond dust swirled around them. It whipped into a tornado of magic pulling and tugging at her, trying to make her let go. She dug her fingers into Kian, gouging him with her nails and fingers and the spell-wind sucked her back. Pushing more healing power into him, with everything she was, she willed him to be whole.

To be a man.

To be hers.

Muscles flexed and bulged, ripping through the tight white and gold satin, shredding it into pieces as his bones morphed and shifted, and he became a wild boar, his bristles slick and slippery under her hands, one tusk sprouting too near her face. She nearly let go, but he shifted to a wolf, black as night and easier to hold. She dug in, re-anchoring her fingers and her magic, and he changed in her arms, sprouting huge wings and feathers and the long, sharp talons of an eagle, black with a golden head.

The wind picked up. She shut her eyes against the sharp spraying dust and held tight to the screeching bird. Her body lifted off of Kian’s, pulled by the tornado’s howling swirl of magic her feet flew out behind her.

The tempest swirled faster, and her hands slipped. She used her magic like a lasso, flinging it over the bird’s golden head, anchoring to him and using the reprieve to bury her fingers into his feathers.

“I’m not letting go!” she screamed into the wind. “I let go before, and I’m not letting go now. You can’t have him.”

The furious wind shrieked. An enormous gust nearly pulled her loose, but she hung on.

And then it stopped.

The air was still. And in her arms, she held Kian, naked and shivering, and whole. A man. Not a beast.

For the first time since he’d been cursed Kian’s full Gift surged inside him, tingling along nerves he’d never fully appreciated. He pulled Bryanna to him and squeezed.

Her hair had tumbled loose from its braid, she had blood and soot smeared across her cheeks, and smelled of burnt magic, but none of that mattered.

“Hey, too tight,” she said, but her wide smile said other-wise.

“I’m not letting go,” he said, and squeezed her again. With Bryanna in his arms he was home for the first time in his memory. He would do everything in his power to make sure he never lost this feeling again. “I am never letting go. You are the most amazing woman in this world, or any of the others,” he said and kissed her.

She tasted of magic, and healing, and desire, and what started off as a celebration turned into something else. He slowed and deepened the kiss, taking the time to lavish her with everything he felt inside. Love and lust and a longing for all the things he not only had never had, but never knew he was missing.

She kissed him back, matching him lip to lip, tongue to tongue.

He forgot about all they still faced and everything narrowed to this moment…this kiss…and this woman. Bryanna MacElvy.

She pulled back. “What’s that?”