Black Moon Draw(51)

“A simple no works.”

“You are the worst-”

“Don’t start on me!” I snap. “I’m so fed up with you telling me I’m something I’m not. Is it my fault I don’t know how to use this thing” - I pull the medallion from the bodice of my dress -“the way Queen Naia did a thousand years ago? Even with it and all the battles she rode in, she didn’t know her husband was about to die until it was too late! So cut me some slack!”

His boar’s mouth drops open. Nothing comes out. Something I said shocked him. I don’t have the chance to wrench away, grab my squire and run, which is still my intention.

The troll issues a roar and charges us.

“Any last words, witch?” The Shadow Knight tightens his grip around me and lifts his axe.

“Maybe you should use your sword instead of the axe.”

“If we survive this, witch, I swear you will know the –” His words are lost as the troll reaches us.

Certain I didn’t want to hear them anyway, I close my eyes and hold on for dear life.

The Shadow Knight moves fast enough to knock the air from me, an impossible feat in the real world. It’s more intense than going downhill on a rollercoaster. My stomach drops and my equilibrium is thrown. There’s nothing I can do but hang on.

I feel the troll’s first blow; its force ricochets through the Shadow Knight into me, and my head snaps back. I right myself the best I can in the tornado conditions of the battle when suddenly, I’m torn out of his arms and flying through the air.

Too shocked to scream, I open my eyes and stare down at the roof, a good twenty feet beneath me and closing fast. The troll and knight are deep in battle. I don’t know which one flung me, but I’m falling fast towards the both of them and I have no second thought about who the worst off is about to become.

Guess we’ll find out if I really am invincible in this world.

Covering my head, I don’t have time for my life to flash before my eyes. I brace myself for a very rough landing.

Something winds around my wrist and snatches me out of the air. The Shadow Knight’s whip breaks and then stops my fall.

Gasping, disoriented, I flinch as I bump lightly against the cool stone of the hold’s wall, not quite understanding what happened.

“Quickly. Climb.” The Shadow Knight is wrapping the whip around his hand, winding me up. I’m dangling over the edge of the roof. He’s on his belly, the axe in one hand.

My senses catch up with me. The troll is screaming. My arm and chest are wet with warm blood. I don’t have time to figure out where I’m hit. My whole system is trying to right itself after the speed of the past few moments. I look down my body, unable to identify any injury in the grainy dawn light.

I’m a good hundred feet off the ground, though, far enough that a fall is probably going to kill me good.

“Climb, witch,” he says with some sign of strain.

My focus shifts to the boar head peering over the roof at me. Four feet divide us. At this rate, he’s going to be chopped to bits before he manages to pull me up. There’s a rock sinking into my stomach, and I catch the glimmer of a torch against the raised sword of the troll above him, ready to chop off his head the same way the Desert Knight did his ancestor a thousand of years ago.

“He’s right there!” I cry. “Turn and fight!”

“Come on, witch!”

If he saves me, he dies.

But if I fall, we both have a chance to live. Looking down, there’s no part of me that wants to test the theory I’m invincible.

The image of his ancestor being beheaded stirs a deeper emotion, the memory of the woman who lost her love that day a thousand years ago. I can barely sort my thoughts out about the sexy man trying to haul me onto the roof instead of protecting his head, but I don’t want him to suffer the same fate. It seems . . . unfair for his story to end here. He’s the underdog trying to save the world, the last in a line of mighty warriors, the man most likely to need a second shot at some sort of redemption after all the death and destruction he’s caused.

I don’t want him to die. The singular thought overrides my fear. Not for any of those reasons – but because I like him. More than I should.

If I truly am invincible in this world, the fall will either kill me or send me home, and it’ll save his life so he can go on and save the world.

My chest constricts so fast, I can’t breathe. The next handful of seconds happens as if in slow motion. The medallion grows super hot and sends a charge of electricity through me, similar to the one I experienced on the battlefield. Purple electricity arcs and shoots through the Shadow Knight as well.

He jerks without letting go. Whether or not I should, I brace one foot against the wall and yank free.

I fall. Air rushes by me. I have the sense of free flying for a short time before terror consumes me.

This is gonna hurt.





Chapter Fourteen





“You survived your trial.”

I sit up. I’m neither falling nor splattered in a million pieces.

I’m back at the bridge where Panther-man and the Red Knight found me. I clamber to my feet.

“Omigod. Is it over? Can I go home?” I ask, wringing my hands. I search my surroundings frantically for a door back to my world.