A Love From A Different World

Chapter 82

She only tasted embers, only saw fire as she rained down on them.

Hybern soldiers did not have a second to scream when she descended on them.

She slashed at their throats with her fangs. Her nails cleaved through their heads, one after another.

Six went down in her wake, and as she halted at the foot of the Rainbow, staring up into the fire and blood and death ... Too many. Too many soldiers. She'd never make it, never kill them all—

But there was a young female, green-skinned and lithe, an ancient, rusted bit of pipe raised above her shoulder. Standing her ground in front of her storefront—a gallery. People crouched inside the shop were sobbing.

Before them, laughing at the faerie, at her raised scrap of metal, circled five winged soldiers. Playing with her, taunting her.

Still she held the line. Still her face did not crumple. Paintings and pottery were shattered around her. And more soldiers were landing, spilling down, butchering— Across the river, thunder boomed—Amren or Cassian or Azriel, she didn't know.

The river.

Three soldiers spotted Aelin from up the hill. Raced for her. But she ran faster, back for the river at the foot of the hill, for the singing Sidra. She hit the edge of the quay, the water already stained with blood, surrounded herself to that thrumming power inside her bones and blood and breath.

The city would not yield.

Aelin rose her hands, and misted every soldier in her wake.

The ones behind her stopped dead in their tracks as she turned toward them.

The soldiers whirled, fleeing.

But she would not let them.

Collars of fire encased around their necks, leashes following. And so Aelin tug on those leashes and dragged them, closer and closer. Until they were a breath away from her. She stared into their lifeless eyes and breathed into their mouth. They thrashed in their collars, screaming and crying as she burnt them alive.

When they were nothing more than ashes at her feet, Aelin marched to where others were.

She would suffocate them with smoke, mist them, burn them. And she would not stop until they were all gone.

Aelin's bones sang as she made her way, fire setting ablaze everywhere she walked. She would end them all.

The assassin locked eyes with one, others flanking him.

They were her next target. And they seemed to know it as they scrambled away into the skies.

But she would not let them get away.

So she send daggers and spears of fire into their hearts, watching as fell from the sky, as they screamed and pleaded. It was music to her hears.

She would make them pay.

There were so many, they were endless. But so was her magic.

Again, and again, and again, Aelin cleaved through them, a sword to rival Damaris made of fire formed in her hand.

As they died around her, another creature emerged. One of the soldiers rose up above the brightly painted buildings ... she knew him. It was the same thing that had taunted Cassian as the golden queen died. That repulsive grey monster. It made eye contact with her, and smirked. The blood of innocent coated him as he advanced.

WHERE ARE YOU?

A voice she had never heard before spoke to her.

CELEANA, WHERE ARE YOU?

How anyone could speak to her through the mind apart from Rhysand, she did not know. But she could not focus on that. Not when that hideous, hairless creature was in front of her.

She raised her sword and swung. It laughed as it dodged and raised its wings.

It tried to fly away.

But she did not let it.

Just as its feet rose off the ground, Aelin sliced its wing with her sword.

It shrieked, wings curving as she slammed into it. As she plunged her blade in, fire spreading through its wings. Right through the main muscle.

It arched in pain, its forked tongue cleaving the air between them. The city was a blur around her.

In the span of a heartbeat, she wrapped myself around it. She was a living fire. And she burned, until there was nothing left.

It thrashed in her arms, thrashed as it burned.

Smoke surrounded them. It would feel pain, it would suffer. It was justice for what it had done to the city, for what it had done to its people, its children.

And so Aelin revelled in the creature's screaming, hearing nothing but a song. When she grew tired of the game, she allowed but a fraction of her power to be present, stiffing the smoke and the flames. Only her sword at her disposal. She stared at the creature's lifeless black eyes, raised her blade, and severed its head with one swift move.

The head bounced on the cobblestone as its body toppled over.

She looked around the square. And on the street ahead—what lay broken and oozing on the cobblestones ... The creature's wings were a twisted, burnt ruin. Beyond that, scraps of armor, splintered bone, and burned flesh were all that remained.

That wave of darkness, Rhysand or Azriel's power, she did not know-hit my side of the river.

No one cried out at the star-flecked cascade of night that cut off all light. Aelin thought she heard vague grunting and scraping—as if it had sought out hidden soldiers lingering in the Rainbow, but then ...

The wave vanished. Sunlight. A crunch of boots before her, the beat and whisper of mighty wings.

A hand on her face, tilting up her chin as she stared and stared at the splattered ruin of the severed head. Hazel eyes met mine.

Azriel. Azriel was here. He leaned forward, his brow sweat-coated, his breathing uneven. He gently pressed a kiss to my mouth.

Aelin tasted fear on his lips and relief.

They separated and he froze. Froze as he spotted her pointed ears, the fire in her hands.

Behind him, Rhysand, and Cassian, and Mor stood. Eyes wide as they took her in.

She looked at Azriel, confusion clouded his eyes, before meeting Rhysand's own perplexed gaze.

"I suppose it's time we have a little talk,"