Happily Ever Awkward (The H.E.A. Files, #1)(64)

The impact broke Seeboth’s grip on the chain and sent the two men plummeting toward Princess Luscious, the deadly point of the Judgment Blade spearheading the way. At the last moment, Paul managed to hook his legs around one of the chains and jerked them to a stop, the sword tip just an inch above the princess’ glowing breast.

“Be careful!” she cried. “He just needs to scratch me with that!”

Attempting to prove her point, Seeboth swiped at her with the blade but she stretched out of the way, just barely. Before the Lord of Shadows could make a second attempt, Paul hoisted him up and wrestled for control of Judgment.

“Yield, wizard!” he said.

“And if I don’t?!” Seeboth asked.

“There are six million hells recorded in the Book of Flames — I’ll see that a piece of you arrives in every single one!”

“You fool!” Seeboth spat. “Do you honestly think you can stop me from killing the woman I love?!”

It was moments like these — trying to fight a wizard while dangling from chains one hundred stories above the ground directly over a princess charged with enough magical energy to destroy the entire universe — that seemed a good place for a chapter to end.





52



BETTER THAN NOTHING


Between the two of them — one man fueled by hatred, the other by desire for justice long denied — Captain Head and Jack Bravado burned a significant amount of what would one day be known as calories as they attempted to destroy each other on the stairwell.

After two full minutes of furious fighting, at the very moment Jack appeared to be getting the upper hand, he stumbled over an object on the stairs and lost his balance. Seizing the opportunity, Captain Head executed a textbook disarming maneuver that sent Jack’s sword spinning down the shaft.

“It ends, Bravado,” Captain Head panted. “Ye couldn’t save Whitethorne, ye can’t even save yerself.”

Jack frantically crab-crawled up several steps, but his enemy lumbered faster than Jack could scuttle.

“Ye can’t escape me this time, Bravado.”

“Actually wasn’t trying to,” Jack said. Then he kicked the thing that had caused him to stumble straight at Captain Head’s legs.

The pirate was understandably startled when the object grabbed his ankle. He was likewise startled when it pulled his foot out from under him and caused him to trip. As he fell, he caught the briefest glimpse of a severed arm clutching his boot. Then his steam-shovel jaw hit the steps with a jarring KA-LANNNG that spun his cannonball head around until it faced completely backward.

Dropping his cutlass, Captain Head flailed blindly. All he could see was the wall behind him, which would make disemboweling Jack virtually impossible. He rocked back on his knees and desperately tried to twist his head around.

Jack climbed to his feet and nodded appreciatively at Jeremy the Zombie’s severed arm. “What do you know, it was better than nothing.”

Before Captain Head finished getting his head on straight, he blindly grabbed at Jack and pulled him off balance. Jack toppled against him, and the two men rolled down the stairs, locked in a sweaty embrace. End over end they tumbled, fighting the entire way down the Shadowkeep.

It was a loooong way down the stairs.

It was a loooong fight.

In order to avoid tedious description of all the pummeling and swashbuckling that took place, suffice it to say they eventually reached the bottom of the stairs, landing with a particularly meaty THUD!

And Jack may have groaned, “My spine.”





53



THE SACRIFICE


Paul, Laura, and Seeboth leaped from one chain to another, jockeying for position above Princess Luscious like bickering squirrels fighting over acorns in an oak tree.

“You will not have her!” Paul declared.

“What right have you to interfere?” Seeboth demanded. “You think your love is worthier than mine?!”

Laura kicked at the wizard, trying to dislodge him without success. “You animal, you don’t love her!”

“You fool!” Seeboth jumped away from Laura, catching himself on a chain nearer to Paul. “The Spell requires me to love her, and I do! My love called white fire from the heavens themselves! It’s truer than anything you could ever know!”

Hanging by one hand, Seeboth slashed at Paul, swinging Judgment high and to the left. In spite of having overcome the debilitating effects of his curse and tapping into the strength and skill that had always been waiting inside him, Paul’s backhand was nevertheless quite weak, just as his father had pointed out so very long ago. As a result, the prince failed to adequately parry Seeboth’s blow.

Judgment, charged with the full power of Seeboth’s magic, shattered the Singing Sword’s blade and continued onward to sever the chain Laura clung to as well.

The handmaiden plunged toward the ground.

Wrapping his legs around his chain, Paul flopped backward, flinging his arm out to snag Laura’s wrist as she flashed past. Although he had saved her with an amazing feat of both acrobatics and strength, he had placed himself in a rather difficult position — that is to say, he was hanging upside down, clutching Laura in one hand, the stump of the Singing Sword in the other, his legs entwined around his chain, and completely powerless to intervene as Seeboth slid down his own chain toward the princess.