Page 90 of The Queen’s Shadow

Amon hesitated and I slammed my energy angrily into his presence in my mind.

‘Answer me!’ I snapped, and he sighed.

‘Yes. He is referring to me. It’s the name she used for me when I was serving as her executioner.’

My blood was boiling. Try as I might, I couldn’t stop the tremor that had begun in my hand, and the menu shook slightly. Jeremy and Cerenah were both watching me now, expressions tight. Rycon kicked me under the table.

“Get it the fuck together.” He hissed, quietly enough that only I could hear. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes, trying to calm myself down.

“Fuck The Origin, Venrin. You can’t just accuse me of cheating every time you have a shit hand.” Raek grunted, shoveling his winnings into a leather bag. “Besides, maybe if you’re less of an ass I’ll take you with me to The Gauntlet. I got tickets.”

All of us held our breath. All I could think about was the colosseum Amon had mentioned. Was that where he was being kept? In The Gauntlet?

“No fucken way.” Venrin leaned forward in disbelief. “To see the chameleon? Those have been sold out for days.”

My raging hot blood turned to ice. The tickets weren’t to see whatever was going to be happening in the colosseum.

It was so much worse.

Jeremy, Cerenah and I all looked at Rycon in the same instance. His slit pupils blew so large that only a thin line of golden iris remained.

Time seemed to stop.

He stood so fast that my eyes couldn’t track the movement. I blinked and our table was suddenly violently flipped. Cerenah and Jeremy were thrown to the ground. Our pint glasses went flying and shattered, ale exploding across the crowded room.

A series of shots rang out seconds before I could process that Rycon had drawn the ever present submachine gun, firing a round into the ceiling of the tavern.

Patrons started screaming and daemons leapt from their seats, trampling each other to get out the door.

Venrin and Raek were no exception, they threw themselves away from their table, faces slack with shock. They tried to summon their aura’s, but as Rycon had taught me long ago; bullets were faster than magick.

Rycon pointed the MP5 low, and only needed to bounce his finger off the trigger once before the gun came alive in his hand. He slowly guided the barrel in a horizontal sweeping motion, aiming the relentless spray through the daemons at mid thigh level.

They both went down screaming. Raek attempted to roll under the table they were sitting at. Rycon stepped forward, grabbing the edge of the table with one hand before casually whipping it across the room. It broke into pieces with the force of the impact as it hit the wall. Rycon pressed his boot into Raek’s chest and pointed the barrel of the gun directly between the daemon’s eyes.

“Where is she?” He asked, his expression cold and blank. I could barely hear him over the ringing in my ears from all the gunfire. Outside of Raek and Venrin, the tavern was now more or less empty. Jeremy and Cerenah had gotten up and came to stand with us. To my surprise, Jeremy wasted little time moving forward to train his Carbine on Venrin.

“Wh-who are you?” Raek asked, looking up at Rycon with terror filled eyes. In response, Rycon lifted his boot off the daemon’s chest and kicked him in the face so hard that several teeth went flying across the dirty tavern floor. “What the FUCK!” Raek screamed, spitting out blood. Rycon pressed his boot back on his chest before crouching over the daemon, putting his face directly in his line of sight.

“I’m not going to repeat myself.” The shifter said calmly. He drew his shadowstone dagger and put the blade against the daemon’s ear. “You can tell me what I want to know now, or you can tell me after I cut this fucking ear off. What’s it going to be?”

‘Raven… Jeremy!’ Amon suddenly bellowed through my mind. I glanced up, to see the shattered pieces of a pint glass hovering behind Jeremy. It took less than a second for me to realize that Venrin was going to use his power to run the glass through my father, who currently had him pinned with the barrel of his gun.

“I don’t think so, asshole.” I snarled. I released the gates to my aura. Every shadow in the room peeled off the floor, shooting forward like a shiver of sharks chasing blood in the water.

Venrin screamed as my shadows descended on him. I felt my own pupils expand as I shattered both of his elbows, before tossing him like a sack of flour across the room. Tables and chairs flew away from his hurtling form as he crashed through them, before hitting the bar and slumping down on the floor, unconscious.

“Kill him.” Rycon said, without looking at me. “I only need one of them.”

I didn’t hesitate, or feel any remorse as I gestured to Venrin’s prone form with two fingers, indicating to my shadows I wanted them to end him. They bounded forward eagerly, falling on the daemon in a rushing flash of darkness.

His death was instant. One second, he was crumpled before us on the floor, the next, he was nothing but shredded pieces of flesh. My shadows broke him down until he was a messy red mass of remains on the floor. When they were finished with him, they crept silently back to the objects that had cast them.

Amon chuckled in my mind. He rolled his power through me, mixing the violence of what I had just done with my adrenaline and turning it into a potent cocktail of excitement and arousal.

‘You’re so fucking dangerous.’ His voice was husky, and my skin pebbled beneath my armor at the sound of it. I glanced back at Cerenah and Jeremy. Cerenah was looking at me like she respected me for what I had just done. Jeremy, on the other hand, was looking at me as if he wished he believed in some kind of god, so he might pray for the salvation of my eternally damned soul.

I tried to turn back to face Rycon and Raek, when I realized I could no longer move. I frowned, and attempted to wiggle my fingers. They were frozen. In fact, my whole body was frozen. Cold terror rushed through me. The last time I had been frozen in place, it had cost me my mate. I couldn’t hear the tell-tale sound of The Flute… What was happening? My bones began to vibrate, and in response, my body jerked and moved without my permission. My skeleton screamed at me to face the entrance of the tavern, where a daemon leaned against the door frame, watching us with an annoyed look on his face.