Nocturna (A Forgery of Magic #1)(120)
Finn swallowed his words and made them fuel her, stoke the unbearable anger within her. With a swipe of her hands, twin boulders rose from the ground and hurtled at him. Ignacio waved a hand, and the boulders exploded into pebbles at his feet.
“Come now, Finn,” he tutted. “What’s the point in this? Why not join me? Forget the boy, forget the world. You were most yourself when you were with me.”
“You made me whoever you wanted me to be. You made me forget who I was. You took them from me.” She closed the distance between them and with one powerful swing her fist met his jaw, sending him flying backward. He collided with the king’s and queen’s thrones, shattering them in an explosion of sound and dust. But he rose from the rubble laughing. For a moment his jaw bled profusely, but before her eyes it healed shut.
“No,” he said. His steps were slow and unbothered. “I showed you who you are. I freed you from a mediocre family, a mediocre life. It’s not my fault you didn’t like what you saw when you learned who you truly were. That under all of those faces you’re just like me.”
She closed the distance between them, gripped him by his cloak, and slammed him into the ground. The stone of the ballroom floor cracked under the force of her strength. She landed another punch to his jaw. “You took my family from me and told me what to see.” Another punch. “You lying.” Another. “Manipulative.” Another. “Pendejo!”
But he was laughing at her, his broken face further split by his smile. It healed in moments. Finn pulled him up from the ground roughly and landed punch after punch, kick after kick. With an angry cry, she pelted him with a boulder that she pulled from the ballroom floor. She sent him flying across the room again, blasting him against the stone wall. He slid off the wall, landing on his knees before standing sinuously, as if nothing had happened.
“I already told you,” he growled, his patience running thin. “Don’t think I can’t love you and hurt you. I can do both.”
He dropped into a low stance and with a quick round of jabs, stones as large as the prince flew toward Finn at lightning speed. She dodged the first volley and broke another boulder into pieces with a punch. But the last stone came too fast. She raised her arms against it, and it hit her full force in the chest, throwing her backward, skidding on the palace floor.
“How long are we going to do this, Mija?” Ignacio asked, flexing his fingers. He pulled water from the air, freezing it into spikes. She felt them burrow into the flesh of her arms; one tore through her collarbone and she couldn’t stop herself from crying out. “Why not let me be your father?” he said, beseeching. She hated how good he was at sounding like everything he did was for her. Out of love. It wasn’t. It never was.
“Stop it.” She rose shakily as he closed the distance between them.
“You have to do what you must to teach your children respect. Even if it hurts.”
She moved to break through the rock, but Ignacio’s voice cut through the air like a knife. “Don’t move,” he commanded, engaging his propio.
She froze.
Then he was in front of her. He gripped her gently by the jaw, his fingers rubbing slow circles against her skin. “Look at me.”
Her head rose slowly. Her body shook as she tried to resist. Not even the black magic in her was enough to fully resist him.
“Love me like you used to. When you were little. Think the world of me like you did back then,” he said, his voice soft and desperate.
Finn smiled softly up at him, a look of wonder on her face.
Ignacio’s face softened. “You love me now? You truly do?”
Finn nodded, her eyes wide and blank. “I always have.”
Tears gathered in his eyes. “You’re mine again.” With a wave of his hand the stones holding her to the ground fell away. He pulled her into a crushing embrace. “Today is the beginning of our new life. Things are going to be good again. Perfect. The world is ou—”
His breath caught in his throat and Finn felt blood gush over her hand as she drove her dagger deeper into his back, through to his heart. She gave the dagger a sharp twist.
“You loved me . . . ,” she heard him whisper, his voice dwindling to nothing.
She pulled back and looked in his wide eyes. “Don’t think I can’t love you and hurt you. I can do both,” she said, parroting his words. He’d commanded her to love him as she once did. But she never had. Her love for him had never been real. The command had meant nothing.
His blackened eyes found hers one last time, wide and vulnerable as if, for once, he was going to beg her forgiveness. He reached a hand out to her, his fingers grazing her cheek, the touch sending a chill down her spine, as he fell backward onto the stone ground. His eyes stared unseeing at the ceiling. Ignacio was still with death, but the tension curled tight inside Finn would not loosen. She couldn’t let herself believe that she was finally free of him. That he’d finally paid for what he’d done to her, and who he’d taken from her.
With a shaking breath Finn watched the corpse, fearing that he would rise again with that smile on his face. But he didn’t. He was finally dead. Finn had always feared that part of her would be saddened at the loss of Ignacio, that she’d regret ending his life if she ever got the chance to, but she felt nothing but freedom running through her, like wind through her hair. She didn’t care if enjoying a kill made her a monster; any monster who put an end to Ignacio was a saint in their own right.