Page 199 of A Kingdom of Wild and Power
Saren drew her desert dagger.
The blade slid lightly across Alina’s cheek, cold and deliberate.
‘You may not want to hear this, Alina,’ Saren said calmly, ‘but you carry the blood of a god in your veins. The Sun God gave you his blood through your mother. That’s why you survived the fall.’ Her eyes gleamed with cruel amusement. ‘That’s why his foolish little messengers followed you across the desert.’
‘Shut up!’ Alina spat, her bloodied saliva striking Saren’s face.
Saren barely reacted.
‘All because of your brother,’ she continued, grabbing Alina’s jaw and squeezing hard.
Alina stopped struggling.
The moment the wordbrotherleft Saren’s lips, Alina’s body went still. Her eyes widened as she stared up at the woman holding her down.
‘Who are you?’ she whispered.
Saren chuckled softly.
‘My true name is Enyo,’ she said. ‘The goddess of war.’
Alina screamed and tried to twist free, but something had changed. The strength holding her down was no longer mortal. No matter how she struggled, her body refused to move.
Was Saren using her godly power?
Where was the staff? She needed the magic. She needed itnow.
Alina stared up into those pale, merciless eyes. Then she stared at the familiar scar that had once been carved across the face of the real Saren when she was only a child.
‘Do you like it?’ Saren teased lightly. ‘Would you care for a matching one? I’ve heard you were always the prettiest of drakonians. A pity about your horns.’
Alina spat blood at her.
‘I will kill you,’ she promised through clenched teeth.
‘So you say.’
Without warning, Saren raised her desert dagger and slashed it across Alina’s face.
The blade tore through flesh in a brutal sweep, carving a deep wound from one side of the princess’s face down across her cheek—mirroring the scar that marked Saren’s own.
Then she rose smoothly to her feet and stepped back.
‘Now,’ she said calmly, ‘let us fight like equals.’
Alina cried out as the pain exploded across her face, hot blood spilling freely down her skin and dripping onto her chest. Somehow she forced herself upright, staggering to her feet, hertunic already dark with her own blood.
She could feel the torn flesh, the right side of her face swelling shut, her eye useless beneath the agony.
The pain was unbearable.
But this had to end.
And it would end with Saren’s head mounted upon a spike.
Alina seized her desert dagger.
And lunged.
