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An agonizing cramp seized her side. Terrek’s restlessness intensified. She swore she could sense his fear. Fear thatsuffocated her soul. Stabbing pain spread across her distended belly.

“Like that?” Daeanna growled. Another strike of mind-numbing pain grasped her. She curled over and cried out. “How about that?”

Grappling for the fading ends of her wavering consciousness, Moira formed a protective barrier around her baby with her own body. Contraction after contraction wracked her trembling body until she screamed.

Mommy’s got you, little one. I’ll protect you, baby. I’ll protect you if it takes my last breath.

25

Rihanna raced into the living room, where the soul-shattering scream originated. She barely registered the damage to the room.

Instead, her eyes caught Daeanna, a beaming sun-blaze of fury, fingers bent like claws, twisting the air over a fallen Moira. Goddess almighty, her sister shook like her body suffered one continuous convulsion.

Without hesitation, Rihanna gathered all of her power, her magic, every thread of old, familiar energy, and unleashed it with one explosive burst that wrenched a roar from her lungs.

Daeanna was flung across the living room, crashing into the corner, a deep purple mist discharging behind her like magical dust. Rihanna sprang to Moira’s side, dropping to the floor at her head. Fingers trembled. A strangled ache cinched her chest. She lifted her sister’s blood-stained and battered head into her lap. Moira’s breaths were ragged and shallow, barely enough to fill her lungs. Blood trickled from the corners of her mouth. Rihanna sent as much healing energy as she could muster into the other woman, her own reservesdwindling from her attack, but the tremors in Moira’s body refused to cease. She had to get Moira away from here.

Now.

“How perfect. You came to me.” Contempt dripped from Daeanna’s exaggeratedly gleeful tone. Rihanna snapped her gaze up as Daeanna steadied herself on her feet, smoothing down the rumpled fabric of her pantsuit. “Oh, Rihanna. You were never one for much fun. I’m surprised you possessed enough strength to lift my feet from the ground.”

“Do not underestimate me, Daeanna,” Rihanna warned. She placed her hand over Moira’s belly, trying to sense the damage. Terrek squirmed madly, further battering his mother’s mortal body. “’Tis a mistake you’ve made before.”

“Assumptions. They’re a dangerous risk, are they not?” She laughed, the sound freezing Rihanna’s blood. “Alas, ’twas an assumption made by you and Horano that landed me in unjustified exile.”

“Your exile was well-deserved after the torture you put my brother through.”

“Must I continue to remind all of you imbeciles that ’twas I whosavedhis life?”

Daeanna reached behind her, angling enough for Rihanna to see what she hid. A cruel jagged-edged dagger that glinted with menacing silver teeth. Black leather strips strung around the simple hilt. Daeanna’s fingers straddled the base of the blade as she lifted the object to admire its luster. Rihanna lowered Moira’s head to the carpet and shifted to shield her vulnerable body while she scraped up any remaining magic she could gather.

When she glanced at Moira, she noticed for the first time the blood staining her sister’s linen pants.

A new surge of panic threatened to consume her.

Goddess, not Terrek!

“Bandia,” she hissed, snapping around to Daeanna. Slowly, she climbed to her feet, her legs trembling with anger. “How could you?”

“How could I what, Rihanna?” She flicked the dagger toward Moira. “Oh,that?” She laughed, setting Rihanna’s fury boiling. “Easy. Doing away with a problem. A problem, it seems, you’re too weak to save.”

Rihanna raised her hands, magic flickering in a purple-blue ball between her palms. Daeanna sniggered, her smile poisonous as she twisted her hand and unleashed the dagger. The razor-sharp edges bared its deadly intent as it came toward her in seeming slow motion.

Her magic faltered.

She struggled to regain her strength, regenerate the magic.

Deflect the dagger.

Deflect…

An explosion of color and motion blinded her. Silver-blue light flooded the room as an unforgiving force slammed into her, bringing her down over Moira’s chest.

“Moira!”

Rihanna struggled beneath the weight pressing down on her, dizzy and horrified. She shook her head against the light as it faded.

It took her a half-second to realize she was in Shaye’s bedchamber back in Faery.