The Shadow Queen (Ravenspire, #1)(98)
Irina was right. She owned him now. The only way to save Kol was to kill the mardushka whose magic was poisoning his mind, body, and heart.
But she couldn’t kill Irina if she was thrown, helpless, at the queen’s feet.
The spears clattered to the marble floor behind her and became thick, branchlike vines with serrated leaves and gaping teeth-filled mouths where flowers should be.
Lorelai bent double at the waist and shoved the back of Kol’s knees with her free hand. He stumbled, his grip softening. She yanked her hand free and twisted away from him, her palms hitting the marble floor.
“Rast`lozh,” she said, and the marble began expanding in a half circle around the princess, surging toward the ceiling like polished white hills and cutting her off from Irina.
Irina’s vines slid over the top of Lorelai’s barrier, their mouths snapping as they came for the princess. She spun to her left to avoid them. Kol snatched her waist and began trying to drag her up one of the slippery marble hills toward where Irina still stood beside the wall.
Lorelai looked past Irina to find Gabril’s face a deep shade of red as the snake around his neck tightened its hold. Desperation blazed through her, and she struggled against Kol’s grip.
Kol, listen to my voice. Hold on to me. I can help you. I can save you.
Irina laughed. “He can’t hear you. He hears only the pounding of his dragon heart and the voice of his queen.”
Lorelai whirled, planted her right foot against Kol’s left thigh, and launched herself backward out of his arms. Snarling, he lunged for her. She spun into the air, hit him in the chest with a roundhouse kick, and sent him crashing to the ground.
Sprinting out of the half circle of marble, Lorelai dove for the floor, and spoke the incantor again the second her palm touched down.
The marble expanded once more, completing the circle, rising like a loaf of bread until it was over Kol’s head.
He was trapped inside a fence of marble.
He was safe.
Now it was just Lorelai and Irina.
The vines rushed for Lorelai, tangling in her feet and sinking vicious little teeth into her legs. She kicked at them as her skin burned and blistered from the venom in their fangs, but she didn’t have time to think of an incantor to deal with them.
She needed to stop defending herself and start attacking.
“Do you really think you can take my huntsman out of the game?” Irina sent a bolt of magic into the floor and the marble circle cracked in half.
Kol burst through the opening and ran toward Lorelai, but she was focused on the arc of marble closest to the queen.
Pushing her palms against the floor, she whispered an incantor, and the thick half-moon of marble skidded across the room, slamming into Irina and pinning her to the wall. The marble knocked Gabril to the side, and he thrashed against the chains that bound him.
Irina screamed an incantor. Kol reached Lorelai, whose feet were still tangled in vines, as the windows that surrounded the door shattered and the glass teardrop chandelier fell from the ceiling to explode into shards against the floor.
The princess put one hand on Kol, desperately sending her magic into him, trying to smash through the barrier Irina had erected. With the other hand, she reached over a pile of writhing, snapping vines for the closest shard of glass.
Kol shoved her hand away, and Lorelai stumbled. Snatching at his shirt, she kept herself from falling as she bent at the waist and scooped up the glass. A vine lashed itself around her wrist and sank its little teeth into her arm. The pain was a brilliant flare that streaked through her veins and sent the room swaying, but Lorelai didn’t hesitate.
Holding the glass, feeling the heart of the Ravenspire sand that had been sacrificed to make the chandelier, she said, “Tvor`zhi.” It was the same incantor the queen used to create snakes, but Lorelai had a different creature in mind.
Thousands of razor-sharp glass shards rose from the floor and hovered like a swarm of bees. As Irina shouted another incantor, and more vines peeled away from the wooden bannister to plunge toward Lorelai, the swarm of glass swooped through the air, gaining speed and momentum, and then dove for the queen.
Irina screamed as the shards arrowed over the top of the marble barrier and struck her.
Lorelai had no time to celebrate the victory. Kol was grappling with her, his amber eyes wild, his skin so flushed with heat from his dragon’s fire that it hurt to touch him. She sent spells into him, shouted incantors, even tried to break his hold on her by breaking his arm, but he was a dragon trapped in a human body—impossibly strong, fast, and lethal, and she refused to do the one thing that would save her from him.
She refused to kill him.
Her chest burned from the vine’s poison, and every breath tore at her throat like a knife blade as she struggled against him, pushing her power into him in desperate hope that somehow she could slow him down long enough to kill Irina and set him free.
“Kaz`lit.” Irina’s voice thundered throughout the hall, and Kol howled in agony as the pain inside him doubled.
The queen spoke another incantor, and the marble barrier crumbled into dust. The glass shards fell to the floor. And the cuts on Irina’s skin knit back together again.
She began moving toward the far wall where the Diederich coat of arms, complete with a pair of crossed swords, was mounted.
“He’s going to kill you, Lorelai. Any second now. It’s the only way his body and mind can find any peace. But if he doesn’t . . . I have something that will do the job.” Irina’s smile was cruel.