Page 114 of Wolf of Ashes
His face is cut up. Far more than the wounds Halle inflicted on him. There’s a red ring around his neck that looks like it was made with knotted rope. He’s wearing a long-sleeved T-shirt, but bruises are visible at the sleeves and his knuckles are busted up.
His skin was already pale in color, but his cheeks seem to have drained of blood.
“You can’t be real,” he says, shaking his head at me.
I read the disbelief in his eyes, the struggle to comprehend what he’s seeing—what he must have been seeing for the last little while. My real features slowly revealing themselves.
My uncle, the usurper, gives me a slow smile. “I’ll give you one chance to fight me, Veda.” He folds his arms across his chest. “But first you have to go through my son.”
Lucian tenses. “Father—”
“You lost the boy!” my uncle screams at him, the starlight in his skin turning to shadows.
Lucian recoils, his wings suddenly shivering, as if he’s fighting the instinct to fly to safety.
“You know I can’t beat her,” he says without a hint of cunning in his voice. “She’ll kill me.”
“Really?” The usurper advances on his son. “Why don’t I make sure of it.”
Lucian’s eyes widen. “No… You don’t have to—”
He attempts to backpedal, but his father grabs his left wing by the upper bone, yanking it toward himself. In the same instant, he smacks his other fist across Lucian’s face. The force of the punch knocks Lucian backward, but his father is still holding on to his wing.
Crack!
Lucian screams and stumbles backward before he collapses to the floor, hunching his shoulders. His broken wing flops at his side.
The usurper bends to his son, dragging his fingers across one of the cuts on his face. “The color of your blood sickens me.”
I marvel at his hypocrisy. Even if he siphoned all of my father’s power—which is a possibility I can’t ignore—it could not have changed the color of his blood to black since he wasn’t born with it.
But then, Mom warned me that those who crave power often ridicule the weaknesses in others that they most loathe about themselves.
The usurper pushes his son away. “Veda will kill you soon enough.”
He returns his attention to me, his lips parted as if he’s about to speak, but I’m already beside him.
“Hiding behind your son?” I say. “Fucking pathetic.”
I ram my claws toward my uncle’s neck.
He lurches backward, his reflexes fast. He deflects the blow, knocking my arm clear of his neck, but in moving backward, he has to steer clear of his son’s location, and it makes his evasion clumsy.
I didn’t expect to take him down easily, so I’m not disappointed that I don’t draw blood.
Yet.
“You killed my mother,” I say as I follow him around to the right, the hollow in my heart allowing my voice to remain detached. “You took the first twenty-three years of my life.”
I don’t see any weapons on him. It’s possible he prefers to work with his hands.
“You left us in darkness.”
“But look how strong you’ve grown,” he says, his white teeth flashing at me. “Despite the odds.”
“Strong,” I snarl. “And vengeful.”
His smile broadens. “Clever, like your mother.”
