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My power is doubling on itself and yearning to break free. But I’m not interested in wiping this fairy out with my magic. I want to take his head the old fashioned way.

So I wait.

When I make no move to attack him, he sighs, looking off to the horizon and loosening his shoulders, making it plain that it’s tedious to deal with foot soldiers like me. Reluctantly he returns his attention to me and makes his move, closing the distance between us. All the while I hover there in the air, waiting.

He swings his weapon, the sword arcing through the air. My arm snaps out, my blade connecting solidly with his. He jerks with surprise. Surely he didn’t think I’d be that easy to kill a second time?

He yanks his own blade back, and I let him, still making no offensive move.

HeblindedMalaki. Should’ve been me.

That last thought, more than anything, fuels my rage.

Another Day soldier closes in on me. While still staring at the Day royal, I carve my blade up the incoming soldier’s chest, splitting him open. With a cry, he falls away.

“Is that supposed to impress me?” the Day royal asks.

I don’t answer.

“Can you talk at all?”

When I don’t respond, he glances away from me for a split second.

His mistake.

I move in then, swinging my blade. It slices through the skin of his shoulder.

He cries out as blood blooms from the injury, seeping into his gold uniform.

“First rule of battle: don’t underestimate your enemy.”

With a cry, the Day royal lifts his sword and charges me, and then the two of us are locked in combat.

Left, right, upper cut, downward strike. We’re a flurry of movement. Our metal blades sing as they meet, sparks dancing from the power behind each swing. He’s impressively good, but he thinks he’s better than a common soldier like me. There’s nothing like cockiness to get you killed quickly on the battlefield. Death doesn’t care whether you were born a king or a beggar.

I meet each stroke of his blade. He should be the better swordsman; I’m sure he has decades of life on me and the best instructors money can buy. But I have my gossiping shadows and my angst and vengeance. That and almost twenty years’ worth of constant warring. It’s a surprisingly useful mix of factors, and I’ve single-mindedly used them to master how to fight. After all, I know I’ll need more than just magic and cunning to defeat the Shadow King.

Once the Day royal starts breathing hard, I begin to fight him in earnest. His eyes widen for the briefest of moments when he realizes that I’ve been holding back.

Now I’m the one on the offensive, and he’s trying to stop each of my successive blows. My cold, calculating rage has taken over. It’s in my every movement. I couldn’t stop myself if I tried.

I raise my sword high and bring it down. He deflects my blow, and in the process leaves his stomach exposed, giving me my opening.

I pull my weapon away, and, bringing my sword arm back, I drive it forward, into his gut. It slides cleanly in one side and out the other.

The Day royal’s eyes widen. Did he think he was impervious to injury? To death? The way he’s looking at me, he must’ve.

His sword-bearing arm droops as he lets out a choke.

With a slick, wet sound, I pull my weapon out of him.

His hand moves to the wound, his mouth opening and closing. Then his eyes roll back and his wings fold up. He begins to fall from the sky.

I stare down at him as his body tumbles. I should finish him off; all I did was gravely injure him. But the human woman was right, I am not like my father. I hate the art of killing.

So I let him go.

The ambush comes to an end shortly afterwards. The Day royal was in fact one of the Day King’s twin heirs. He’d been the mastermind behind the ambush, and once he’d fallen, his troops lost their nerve and retreated, carting him and the other wounded back with them.