Page 44 of The Queen’s Shadow

“Go get the Obeah Man!” I snarled at him, as he looked down at the laceration in his arm, as if he were surprised and confused about how it had gotten there. “He’s good at calming her down.” I turned back to face Raven, her head bobbed on her shoulders and tears streamed down her face. Panic thrilled through me as she locked her all-black eyes on us.

Fuck. I really needed to get Jeremy out of here.

“They already left!” Jeremy yelled over the increasing violence of Raven’s energy storm. Of course they did. Shit.

Shit, shit, shit.

I eyed Raven skeptically. I was excellent at pissing people off, not so great at calming them down.

“Let me try to talk to her, maybe I can get through to her.” Jeremy said, moving as if he were going to step past me. I grabbed him by his uninjured arm and launched him backwards so hard he nearly stumbled out of the room.

“Are you fucking crazy? Do you want to get barbecued? Look at her! She can’t hear shit right now.” Jeremy somehow managed to look angry and worried at the same time.

Raven screamed again and we both covered our ears, wincing, as the shockwave tore through the room, blowing one of the doors off her armoir. It smashed into the wall, the force of the impact nearly reducing it to splinters.

“Listen!” I yelled over the magickal storm, “I’m going to try and get her outside so she doesnt melt the entire fucking palace. I’ll be going through the common room and out to the training ring, so can you please listen to me and go in the opposite direction? If she accidentally kills you she’s going to be hella pissed when she comes back to herself.”

Jeremy looked like he wanted to argue for a second, but as her shadows began to peel themselves off the ground, he finally nodded and backed away out of the room.

Thank the gods.

Okay. One problem down. Now I just needed to figure out what to do about Raven. She currently seemed happy to hover and have a meltdown exactly where she was, which didn’t bode well for our current living situation.

“Kitten,” I said softly, trying to channel Conrad. I stepped towards her, holding both hands up in front of me. “We need to go outside, you’re going to fuck up your room.” I winced and looked around. Well, it was a little late for that.

This room was done-zo.

She didn’t seem to register what I was saying at all, she just started shaking her head, whispering no, no, no, no.

What had happened?

“Kitten, talk to me, what’s going on? Why are you losing your shit?”

She curled into herself in the air, her shadows ripping off the ground to spiral around her. I didn’t know much about magick, but I knew what a build up of power felt like, and I knew I was running out of time. She was going to detonate, and she could not do it in here.

Ugh.

The one time I actually needed the Obeah Man, he wasn’t here. After a moment of frantic thinking, I sighed. Guess we were going to have to do things my way.

“Hey, Kitten!” I barked, loudly and abruptly enough that her head snapped up to look at me. “You wanna fuck something up? Come and get it!” I said, before punching her directly in the face.

Rycon

‘Alexa, play Suffering by Melrose Avenue’

The punch pretty much yielded the intended results. I didn’t wait around to see if it would work. The moment my fist connected, I immediately bolted from the room.

A quasar screeched through the air after me, singeing the back of my t-shirt as I hurtled out the door and turned into the hall. The blast of energy smashed into the wall opposite her room, blowing chunks of stone and dust onto the floor.

Without stopping, I glanced back to see if she was following and almost laughed out loud.

Yup. She was following me all right. Crazy fucking kid.

She looked scary as all hell gliding through the air, toes hovering just a few inches off the ground. Her hair floated around her, and her hands hung limp at her sides, all-black eyes trained on me like I was a moving target. I caught a glimpse of her shadows peeling off the floor like phantoms before I had to turn back around to make sure I was looking where I was going.

I was fast, but not faster than her magick. The shadows nipped at my heels, and I put everything I had into pumping my legs faster as I hurtled through the main intersection of the East Wing and down the corridor that led to the common room.

One of her wraiths caught the cuff of my jeans and I tore my foot away from it, tucking into a roll just as another burning black quasar screeched over my head and out the opening in the wall of the common room. The beam skittered and smashed harmlessly into the distance, and I let out a sigh of relief.