Cradling her broken wrist, she crawled back to her feet. Kel’s yell echoed off the walls, followed by a whimper.
She picked up her sword, moving toward the other two immortals. A shadow separated from the icy walls, but she was too focused on moving forward, throwing her sword at Kel.
A second before the blade would have pierced his chest, the icy cavern vanished.
She spun around, finding herself alone in the same bedroom as when she’d first arrived. The competition was over.
It took another minute to process that, and she dug her hand in her pocket, finding the stone gone. Maeve and Aden already had it then. Two others may have also come away with a stone, but it was still a win for her.
Leaning against the wall, she let her battered body slide to the floor. She’d check on Vaughn in a minute. She tipped her head back against the wall and closed her eyes.
“How’s the wrist?”
Briana grinned. Her wrist, along with her ribs and other injuries had healed quickly when she’d gone to stone after the first competition. Rhiannon might have rethought her stone prison sentence if she’d realized it increased a gargoyle’s healing process. “Trying to pinpoint a weakness already?” She moved in a circle opposite Nessa.
Dark red mats covered the floor beneath them in the training room. Weapons she couldn’t identify, but reminded her of something she’d find in a medieval torture chamber lined the walls with the axes, swords and staffs, like the ones she and Nessa sparred with now.
The huntress pursued. “That implies I need to know one to smoke you in competition.” Nessa spun around, feigning a high blow and dropping at the last second to sweep low.
Briana stumbled, but managed to block the move. It had been her idea to spar. Her confrontation with Kel had proven she’d grown too lax with her own skills, her tech jobs taking up most of her time when she hadn’t been trying to find a way to free Cian from his stone prison.
She wasn’t sure that even if her skills had been up to par, she would have been able to take on Kel and come out the victor.
“But don’t worry.” Nessa went on the offense again. “If it came down to the two of us, the limbs I’d cut off would regenerate eventually.”
She didn’t doubt her friend meant every word, and spent the next hour proving to Nessa why it wouldn’t be a cake walk.
The back of her shirt stuck to her skin and her shoulder throbbed from an earlier dislocation, but she was otherwise holding her own, even though she’d gotten the impression Nessa wasn’t giving it her all.
Both the enchantress and the Fae had wandered in at some point, but Bran paid more attention to the weapons on the wall, or that’s what he wanted everyone to think.
“I don’t know how you pretend you don’t have a blood-thirsty shadow following you around.”
Waiting for the next competition wasn’t something any of the surrounding immortals were handling well. It didn’t help that outside the walls of their mansion it had poured for the last two days. Only Vaughn, who’d already healed from the three broken ribs Kel gave him, didn’t let the weather stop him from going outside. Briana half expected he did it just to annoy Elena, who kept complaining about the wet dog smell.
Lucan had stuck close, but she’d ignored his attempts to talk. There wasn’t anything left to say. After everything else, reliving the memory of them together and the way he’d sent her away without a backward glance, had stung far more the second time around.
That alone should have been enough to temper the flames that continued to burn much too hot whenever she caught him staring at her. Twice he’d rejected her; three times if she counted their twisted deja vu moment, and still the need to mark him as her mate continued to build.
Would she even reach the end of the competition before the cat started the dark slide into madness? She’d already curbed the instinct to claim her mate for months. How much longer could her feline half endure the distance wedged between her and Lucan? Days? Weeks?
A cool tease of sun-kissed ice caressed the back of her neck. A moment later Lucan materialized in the room as though he’d sensed someone talking about him.
“See.” The huntress laughed, and lowered her arms just long enough for Briana to strike.
Wood met wood as Nessa pivoted at the last second, her leg swinging around in a vicious roundhouse that nailed Briana in the chest.
Momentarily stunned, she tightened her hand around the staff and managed to regain her balance. And then Nessa was on her, the huntress’s staff jammed against the back of her neck where a strike with the right amount of force could take out Briana’s central nervous system, leaving her incapacitated.
Nessa stepped back, helping Briana up.
He’s dying was the first thought to go through Briana’s mind. Sickly pale and a faint hue of blue to his skin, Lucan leaned against the wall. He hadn’t looked well last night, but this was the first time she’d seen him today.
Nessa’s staff connected with hers. “If I was a bigger person and dancing on snow covered mountains in hell I might actually feel bad long enough to offer him a vein.”
Focusing on the fight and not the hunger that continued to gnaw at her, she brought her staff down, catching Nessa behind the back of her heel.
The huntress stumbled but bounced right back to her feet. “I’m not the only one thinking about it.”
From the corner of her eye, Briana watched the enchantress approach Lucan. “Does it hurt?”
Lucan didn’t even spare her a glance.
“When you drink from someone?”
“If I want it to.” His eyes darkened, the wraith rising close to the surface. Likely in attempt to discourage the conversation.
The enchantress didn’t seem to take the hint. “Maybe we could work out an arrangement. We both have needs that need to be met.”
Blood for sex?
Briana’s feline half raked its claws, snarling when the distraction landed her on her back. She hadn’t even made the conscious decision to shift forms before her skin tingled with the change, bones and muscle realigning.
She sprang at Nessa.
Taken by surprise, Nessa hit the mat, pinned in place by the massive paws. Worry flashed in her eyes. “B?”
She snarled, much too close to sinking her teeth into her friend’s neck. Horrified, she backed off, bolting for the door and pausing just long enough to snap hers jaws at the enchantress.
The other immortal jumped, but wisely didn’t retreat behind Lucan, as though she knew that was all it would take to set Briana off.
Lucan didn’t come looking for her until she’d returned to her room and shifted back to her human form. Damp from the fight and the cold sweat she’d broken into when she realized how close she’d come to attacking her friend, she jumped in the shower.
By the time she’d finished, her aggression had abated, but not the feverish rush of blood pumping through her.
She’d only just turned off the water when she heard Lucan enter her bedroom, but she took her time drying off. Taking a calming breath, she emerged from behind the decorative partition that served as another illusion for a modern bathroom, complete with a ceramic tile shower big enough for an entire sports team and a massive tub.
“Isn’t it feeding time?”
Lucan’s gaze never left her face, but she could swear she felt it caress every part of her not hidden by the towel. “Maybe that’s why I’m here.”
Her insides trembled, thinking about the alley and the trace of fear that had coursed through her when his teeth had brushed her neck. More troubling though was the hot, tease of excitement that simmered low in her belly.
She picked clean clothes from the wardrobe stocked with everything in her size. “Sorry. Not interested in being your blood buddy.”