Page 175 of A Bond so Fierce and Fragile

Then it all came back—louder and wilder and more vicious.

A huff left Merrick as he released his grip on his magic, shoving the souls out wide, ensuring he took out at least a few people on each ship from the enemy fleet that spread out on either side of him.

He didn’t look at Lessia as screams began and cut off, animals shifting into their human forms as they fell from wherever they’d been standing when their lives were ripped away, and already-cold bodies slammed into wood before tumbling into the water that had begun to whirl with red from the many lives yet lost.

Merrick’s breathing became labored as he steered his magic, keeping it away from the people on either side of him in the lineup of their own ships, who just stared as the rebels bled and died, and he closed his eyes when a young man—someone who couldn’t have been much older than Lessia—crashed into their ship, eyes unseeing and body twisted at a strange angle.

The air in his lungs thickened as a veil of crimson colored the darkness before his eyes, and he struggled for a moment to remember where he was, only hearing someone call “Enough, Merrick. It’s enough” as if from far away.

It wasn’t enough. Merrick allowed his magic to stretch out farther, let the fury of the souls and the terror of those they took with them to the afterlife flow through him until they were all he could feel. Until the whispers were the only thing pressing around him, within him—the only thing filling his ears.

“Enough! Merrick, stop!” someone called again, but it was easy to ignore them.

There were too many living souls before him.

He needed to do this.

For her.

Merrick almost didn’t notice when Lessia’s hand slipped into his, but as he panted, giving more of himself than he’d ever done to thin out the line of enemies that just kept refilling ahead—togive the people here, his friends, his brothers, his… Lessia… a chance—her voice muted the whispers, broke through the haze of rage that always overtook him when he let them free, and he glanced down at her as she continued speaking to him.

“I love you.” She smiled as she said it, and continued smiling as she pressed his hand. “I love you so much.”

Merrick blinked at her, sensing another’s hand on his back.

“Enough, Merrick. I can feel that you’re on the edge.”

Thissian’s voice.

Lessia’s smile didn’t dim as she whipped her head to the side, the hand not holding on to his flying out to send something silver through the air. Something that lodged in flesh, with a groan following.

“You and me,” she whispered, and the world around him came to as he pulled on his magic, reined in the souls wanting, pushing, shoving to be free.

“They’re on the ship!” Thissian screamed, slapping the last of Merrick’s muddled thoughts out of him.

Whirling around, he drew his sword in one motion, and he couldn’t help but relish the feel of Lessia’s warm body lining up with his own—the sensation so different from the cold wrath that had been wrapped around him only seconds ago.

Even here—even in war, she was… everything.

“Remember,” Merrick whispered hurriedly as metal hitting metal rang ahead, the rebels who’d survived his attack not hesitating as they stormed their ship and those around them, animals and humans and Fae crying out as they collided. “Stay behind your weapons. Don’t let them corner you?—”

“I know,” Lessia interjected, a soft edge to her tone. “You’ve taught me well.”

He glanced at her, and she offered him a crooked smile as she let another dagger fly, one that lodged in the back of a shifter that had sprinted for Ardow’s unprotected back.

“Thanks, Lia!” he called out, the smile he shot them contrasting with the fear in his eyes.

Lessia seemed to have noticed it as well, given the sense of worry rolling through her, but they didn’t have time to discuss it as a group of half-Fae descended upon them.

Fuck, they were so young.

Twenty- or thirtysomethings, barely past their Faeling age.

He cursed the rebel leader as his sword sliced open the guts of one of them, the male falling to the ground, clutching the wound Merrick knew wouldn’t heal before he died.

The fucking leaders somehow never found their way into the front lines, allowing their people to die for them and their stupid fucking causes, and he was so sick of it.

Lessia danced beside him, ducking under swords and flying weapons so fast that her unbound hair flew around them, but Merrick snarled at her when he realized what she was doing. “Do. Not. Hesitate!”