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Taking it all in, I channeled a place of calm cool even as a whip of magic pummeled my light.

“Lancaster, as I said, this reunion is a pleasant surprise.” Keep talking, I thought as the queen’s eyes darted around. The conversation unsettled her, and we needed time.

Behind her, Ricordan’s wife stood still. Was Kakias’s focus not honed enough to keep her mobile right now?

“Spit it out, Mystique,” Lancaster snapped, fingers inching toward his blades.

“Tell me you’re here for a purpose,” I argued back. I wasn’t sure what aid the fae could provide—what depths their magic ran against something like Kakias’s, but I knew the fae held secrets, likely power unfathomable to us warriors.

“It appears you can do something we’ve never considered.” Lancaster said it as if it were a golden secret, a knowing smirk tilting his lips and canines poking through.

The queen launched another bout of blows to me, her attacks growing sporadic. Each ricocheted through my frame, but I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of showing that jarring pain again.

Just as I couldn’t let the confusion over how or why I was commanding Angellight slip through. I’d never controlled the light of the emblems before. My blood had caused it, but it was their own. Not something I directed.

Yet when I exhaled, the light seemed to expand with it. When it sputtered, my own pulse did as well. I processed Lancaster’s words.

I’d seen Kakias use her own power. Seen the way she ordered it with a touch or a thought or a flick of her fingers.

This light was different, though. Hers had been traded to her to own and control. He shed his power, she’d said.

Mine had grown within me, was nurtured by the Angels. I thought it was still theirs, though, even if it was in me.

Which meant if I wanted to use it, I had to do so in their manner. I dug inside of myself and found each Angel’s tether to their magic.

The flaming light licking across the floor ebbed as I watched it. This light belonged to Ptholenix, a creature of bodily connection. With an inhale, I closed my eyes and imagined those flames flooding my muscles right down to every nerve ending. I envisioned them growing, taking form of actual flame and slithering across the ground to wrap tendrils of light around the queen’s darkness and burn through it.

“What are you doing?” Kakias gasped.

Cracking open my eyes, I bore down on the sporadic control as the Angellight from Ptholenix’s gilded petal poured across the floor and swallowed one tendril at a time. The smaller ones went easily, the larger putting up a stronger fight.

Kakias’s magic was Angel in origin, if my theories were correct. We may have come into it differently, but hers was not so different from mine.

Intent of power could have drastic effects, and the queen’s was rotten. Kakias’s face twisted in a sneer, and she flung an arm out.

Mora shrieked as a thick stream of darkness banded around her waist and hurled her through the air.

“No!” I screamed.

Before she hit the ground, Lancaster waved a hand in her direction and a large cushion appeared.

“I suggest you keep your dirty power off of my sister,” he spat at the queen.

Sister? I mouthed over my shoulder at Tolek who shrugged. That would be something to inquire about later, as would that trick he had performed.

Mora regained her breath and stepped back to her brother, shoulders heaving. “If she does not fight with blades…”

“Magic it is,” Lancaster finished.

And the two vanished.

My jaw dropped open. Behind me, Tolek and Dax both swore. The queen spun, searching for them. Tendrils whipped around her, searching the air. As she was distracted, I pushed Ptholenix’s fiery Angellight tighter toward her.

Then, Kakias gasped, and a blade was at her throat. Lancaster winked back into existence, breathing down the queen’s neck as he once had Santorina’s.

But there was a darker promise in his eye now.

Kakias stretched a hand out, and a wisp of power wrapped around Lancaster’s throat. The two struggled, each strangling the other. A second tendril snapped out and latched around Mora’s neck, pulling her form back into sight. How it had found her, I didn’t understand. The female raised a wicked looking sword, glinting in the night, and aimed it at Kakias’s chest.