Page 27 of Wolf of Ashes
My hand shoots out, halting the female panther even as her legs bunch beneath her. She looks ready to tear out the angel’s throat, but I don’t want her injured. “No. Stay clear.”
I’m gratified when she obeys me, retreating a few paces across the floor and out of the angel’s path. The female panther stops close to the keeper, who has continued to stay out of the fight. The light has died down around his body and he’s watching me intently with very human-looking brown eyes.
The tension around his mouth is intense, his muscles visibly coiled.
And yet, he doesn’t leap into the fight.
His choice is confusing to say the least. Particularly when he has the power to end this woman.
I can’t spend another second trying to figure out his motivations.
I guess it’s just me and the Commander now.
Her weapon ripples in her hands, the gold it’s made of resuming the shape of a sword. I’ve remained crouched on the floor and my mind is working through the scenarios. I could leap up at her, try to rip out her throat or her heart, but I’ve tried that already and failed…
My heart hardens.
Maybe failure is my best option.
I plant my feet, pressing my body weight down into my legs where I crouch. Then I force myself to glance wildly at the fallen panthers, allow my eyes to widen as if in fear, making it look like I’m cowering and a little frozen.
She’s only two paces away from me and the sheer hatred in her eyes, the twist of her lips, tells me she won’t question my subterfuge. She’ll see only the kill.
I exhale a long, slow breath, counting out the heartbeats.
Her sword slices through the air toward my neck. A perfect arc.
Everything around me becomes silent as the blade glints, the soft light reflecting off it onto the myriad of glass shards, all twinkling.
At the last moment, my right hand shoots up into the blade’s path.
The sword’s trajectory will carry its blade right through my upraised claws, a blow certain to slice them clean off before it reaches my neck.
The muscles in my arm tense.
I turn my face away and brace for the impact.
CHAPTEREIGHT
The sword hits my claws.
Metal shrieks and shatters. Razor-sharp shards of gold fly to either side of me.
One of the shards spins right into the angel’s own leg, ripping through her dress and impaling her thigh. Another shoots into her foot.
The remaining pieces of her shattered blade soar through the air, hit the ground, and scrape across it, the force of impact leaving scratches in their wake.
The panthers are luckily all clear of the spiraling metal—the angel saw to that.
The Commander screams and propels herself backward across the floor, her hands fluttering around the gold impaled in her thigh. Still crying, she drops to a crouch and wrenches the shard out of her foot, but she leaves the one in her thigh where it is.
Smart. Since it may have pierced a major artery.
I check my claws where my arm has remained upturned.
They’re perfectly unharmed. Perfectly smooth. Not even notched where the blade struck.
Unbreakable.
