She tried to reach across the cosmos where she floated without a body to him, but he did not hear her. Her mind continued drifting through the stars, the Phoenixes hovering, a force she did not understand.
What do you want from me? She gasped, unable to look away from Taryllion and the terrible battle unfolding below.
Hundreds of warriors littered the ground, bleeding or dying, as they fought a brutal fight with warriors from Mevia. A team attacked Gavyn, and he spun with animalist grace, his wing impaling several and tossing them high in the air and slashing their head from their body. He rested her body gently on the earth and faced an advance of more than twenty warriors. He flung back his head, and a deafening roar of fury echoed across the wasteland. A mix of fire and black chakra swirled around him, and the ink on his skin writhed as if alive.
"You'll not have her," he snarled, withdrawing his swords from his hip. With a pulse of power, they were coated in flames, as he stood before her body, a warrior willing to die, so they did not take her body for their experimentation.
Do you wish to return?
All four voices spoke, and her soul hurt at the pure power in the voices. Yet she could not wrest her gaze from the battlefield. Her mate was magnificent. He tore through the force with animalistic grace and prowess. He was both darkness and fire, as he fought with strength and skill.
Pools of darkness rose from behind him, and three Darkans appeared. The sun lowered behind the mountains of the wastelands, their skins twisted, and beasts reeking of pitiless brutality leaped from their skins.
Monstrous beasts—a six pack of wolvyes, three lyons, and a seven-headed hydra. The creatures converging on her love were massive, standing over ten feet tall, savage fangs dripped from their mouth, and the curved claw was as sharp and vicious as swords.
They attacked him in a wave, and she saw Tehdra jumped the fray, her monster leaping from her skin in a scream of raw power.
Gavyn
Xian screamed when one of the wolvyes split over his chest with deep furrows. His dance with his sword and fire was not enough for the four summoned beasts with which he contented. He screamed, dropping to the earth as his back contorted, his bones breaking and a thundering roared echoed from his throat. They charged at him, biting and rending him apart.
No!
Xian screamed his name, slamming against an invisible barrier to reach him, to comfort him, and to kiss him again, to protect him. A piercing agony hooked its teeth in her heart and gnawed with relentless fervor. She howled, beating against the barrier, but it made no difference.
The red Phoenyx wavered in her vision. Something savage emanated from inside her, and she did not shy away from the feelings as she had done all her life. Xian embraced the rage curling through her, and when the fire burned too harshly, she did not flinch but ate the chakra into her being. There was a red haze of madness, a fire sweeping through her, a rage unlike any she’d ever felt. Tipping back her head, she bellowed and allowed the wave of power, the unremitting strength, and pure madness of the Phoenyx to blossomed through her. She hurtled herself through the mire of her deep subconscious, gasping awake, surging into the sky on a spiral of flame, her conscious thoughts and logical mind drowning under the unremitting fury of the red Phoenyx.
Chapter 11
A burst of fire so intense it melted the skin from Gavyn’s bones swept across the wasteland. The attacking beasts which had surrounded him vanished until the ruthless spew of flames. The light vanished and his flesh started to heal, and he acknowledged without the blood of the dark ones in his veins he would have died just now.
A red glow from above had him tilting his face to the sky. The sun vanished behind the mountains of Taryllion, and Xian hovered several feet off the ground, massive wings of the Phoenyx keeping her suspended. Profound almost made his knees buckled.
His mate lived. Her entire body gleamed with her bright, burning flames. Her hair crackled with red fire, and her eyes were pits of fire. Flames of massive wings surrounded her, and the power clocked her form like a living entity. Whatever had manifested her felt ageless, and unlike the force buried in their king. Even their flames were different. Whereas Ajali produced an orange fire….hers was like blood and lava. Gavyn had never seen the Phoenyx manifest in such a raw, provocative form. It was powerful, malevolent, its beauty was enthralling, seductive yet cold and brutal, and the warrior’s factions was arrested by the sight of her in the sky.
The darkness inside of him hummed and reached for its mate. The raw power brushed against his mind, and Gavyn bellowed as a wave of pain and hunger which swept through him. The outside of the Phoenyx burned hot and harsh, but at its core was something cold and malevolent.
He pushed his thoughts at her and met only a churning mass of rage that wanted to devour. The trees in the wastelands slowly darkened from the trunk, turned black and then withering away to ashes. Yet he sensed the power was barely unleased.
Prince Baku dragged himself to his feet, slowly and painfully, one of his hand hung limply at his side, blood pouring from his nose. “She is magnificent,” he breathed, staring into the sky.
And Gavyn heard the awe and fear in his voice.
Prince Baku suddenly jerked, grasping at his throat, his body pulling forward as if controlled by another and he was lifted into the sky.
Bolts of incendiary lightning shot into the air, and the flames roiled around her, a protective barrier against Avendites' powers. With a sweep of her wings in their reaction they started to burn from the inside. Their cries of pain were terrible, but her hold on the prince loosened, and he landed in a roll and flashed toward them.
“She pulled me to her and I could…I could hear her in my head!” The prince’s eyes were wild with fear.
“Impossible,” Ajali said, his voice a gravelly rasp of menace and power. “It is Xian who was controlling his movement.”
“She is showing telekinesis powers,” Tehdra said, echoes of shock in her tone. “Do you have such a power, my love.”
“No,” Ajali murmured. “I can feel the force of the Phoenyx around her and inside her.”
r /> “I can taste its rage,” Tehdra said, inhaling deeply, feeding the demon beast inside of her. “She has one mission….and that is to eat.”
Gavyn jerked. “Eat?”