Eyes narrowed, I extended my hand again. Her dagger—it was silver, wasn’t that nice? — flew to me like a bird, coming to rest neatly in my palm.
I tsked. “Nuh-uh-uh. No backstabbing allowed.”
“You unholy mongrel bitch.” Drawing her other dagger, nonsilver, she came at me quickly. I barely had time to think—Should I run? — before she was on me. Okay. I had time to think about it, and do it. But, goddamn it, I didn’t want to run from her. What if I ran and she turned back and buried her blade in one of my men’s backs like the treacherous bitch she was? And she might. Because she knew, as I did, by Dante’s and Quentin’s deft handling of their swords, that her men were outclassed. I, on the other hand, could fight her with impunity by our laws, Queen against Queen. I could even kill her if I needed to, though that was not my intent. I’d caused enough uproar as it was at High Court already. No need to add another Queen’s death to the mess, especially coming so quickly on top of the other one I’d been involved in. Two of them, I think, would be stretching even the Council’s tolerance, Halcyon’s new High Lady of Hell or not. To be on the safe side, I tossed away the silver dagger I’d snatched from Mona Teresa and faced her unarmed. My blade might accidentally-on-purpose bury itself in her black, cowardly heart if I faced her with a tempting weapon in my hand.
She slashed at me quick, like a serpent striking. I twisted to the side and grabbed her hand as it came flying by.
“Mona Lisa, no!” Amber cried, catching sight of us. He quickly cut down the two remaining men he fought—the third one he had already dispatched—and ran toward us, dropping his sword, coming at us unarmed.
I was distracted by the sight, concerned with Amber coming between us, two Queens. Because even though he was a Warrior Lord, our supposed equal, he still was not really equal in the Council’s eyes. If anything happened to Mona Teresa, Amber would be blamed and punished. Maybe even killed.
I froze, my attention drawn away from my opponent, which is never a smart thing to do. She kneed me in the stomach. It was a blow I could have easily blocked had I been paying attention, but I wasn’t. It caught me with full, stunning force, and I felt something delicate, something fragile, tear inside of me. Then I felt pain. Stunning, incapacitating pain as I crumpled to the ground.
“Noooo!” someone roared. A man’s voice—Dante’s—but sounding as I’d never heard him before. Amber reached us and pulled Mona Teresa off me, unarmed her. He held her a safe distance away from me, letting her kick and punch and claw at him as he turned his eyes to me. “Mona Lisa.”
Then Dante was there. If his voice had sounded frightening, the look on his face was even more so.
“Get that bitch away from her,” he told Amber in a voice so nakedly vicious that I shivered. “Quentin, find Mother. Bring her quickly.”
His hands when they touched me, though, were gentle. So gentle they brought tears to my eyes. A horrible fear gripped me as I smelled blood and felt wetness pool beneath me, flowing out between my legs.
“Oh God, Dante. Our baby…I’m so sorry.” Wet tears stung my eyes, streaming out almost as quickly as the blood gushing from my womb. I writhed painfully in his arms as a terrible cramp seized me, hardening my belly.
“Easy, dulcaeta,” he soothed. His eyes, turned that ferocious, glittering silver, left mine and speared someone in the crowd. “Go find a healer,” he growled, and the man quickly ran to do his bidding. When the spasm passed, he eased me gently onto his lap and laid his hands over mine, two sets of hands protectively covering my belly.
“Easy, sweetheart,” he murmured. “Don’t cry. It’s okay.”
But it wasn’t okay. And I couldn’t stop crying, couldn’t stop cramping. I cried and bled as he rocked me, and felt his own tears splash down to mingle with mine.
“I’m sorry, so sorry,” I whispered feverishly against him, over and over again, stopping only when another spasm gripped me.
Soft hands pushed our hands aside. I looked up, and through my pain, saw Hannah kneeling at our side, Quentin and Nolan standing behind her.
“Let me see, milady,” Hannah said urgently. I stopped fighting her and she ripped open my dress at the waist and laid her healing hands quickly over my bared belly. I felt her seeking warmth sink down into my flesh, and like that, the pain, the cramping eased. The bleeding slowed.
“My baby?” I asked, voice trembling.
“I’m sorry,” Hannah said in a bare whisper. “It’s gone already. I could not save it.”
Gone already. Her words echoed hollowly within me as she finished the healing. When it was complete, Dante gently eased out from beneath me, laid me back down. When he stood, I saw that he was drenched in my blood. In our baby’s blood. He turned those fearsome eyes on Mona Teresa. She stood about thirty feet away where Amber had dragged her. The look in those silver eyes held the same awful expression I had seen once before in my dreams—that look of vengeance, of terrible retribution.
“You killed my unborn child.” His words rang out loudly like a death knell. “I will take the lives of your men in return. Be grateful it is not your own life I will seek this retribution on. But I promise you this: If I am to remain cursed, I shall see to it that you share in it with me.”
He turned toward her guards, and long hooking claws almost eight inches in length unfurled from his fingertips with a hiss of energy—twice as long as they had been when he had fought in the challenge against Oswald. He had been holding back, it seemed.
A few of Mona Teresa’s guards had risen to their feet, helping their more severely injured comrades. The six warriors took one look at those claws, that maddened face, those silver gleaming eyes, and scrambled hastily for their swords. Some of them even grabbed it up in their hands before Dante reached them. He walked to them slowly, surely. In no seeming hurry to deliver the death he had pronounced upon them.
Two of them rushed at Dante, with sword and dagger in hand.
I said urgently to his father, “Give him your sword.”
“He doesn’t need it,” Nolan said, watching his son.
Dante turned their blades away like a careless afterthought, deflecting the blows with his wrist guards. Then in a move so fast you weren’t able to track it with your eyes, he sliced them open.
Splashing blood. Tearing cries.
Their intestines were still spilling out from their opened bellies when he sliced down again with those claws and took off their hands. Swords dropped down, daggers clattered to the ground with bleeding limbs still attached.
Turning his back on one eviscerated warrior, Dante concentrated his attention on the taller one, the guard who had raped Tersa. Another slice, aimed higher, and the man’s head came flying off. A flash of light, a puff of dust, followed almost immediately by a second shower of light and ashes as Dante spun around and took off the first warrior’s head, so that they were like two strobe lights going off in quick succession.
The coldness of his execution, his deadly accuracy with those claws, and the lethal consequences of them, struck pure terror in the remaining four men. They fled, or tried to.
“Stop,” Dante commanded. His silver eyes were glowing now, and even standing where I was, distant from where they fought, I felt the power that flared out with that command. They froze, all four of them unable to move, unable to fight against that compulsion. And everyone watching him—Queens, powerful warriors—gasped in fear and realization at what he was able to do.
The four guards stood captured by his will as Dante walked to them. When he stood before them, he said, “You are free.”