“You didn’t know that?” Lirian raised his brows.
“That’s enough,” Holland warned.
“I’m sorry.” Lirian’s mouth pressed into a tight, practiced smile as he furrowed his brow in the poorest attempt of concern I’d ever seen. “But it’s just thetruth.”
My heart beat once. Then twice.
I swung at him.
Lirian was fast.
His hand snaked out and caught my wrist. Holland’s shout was lost in the faint charge of power dancing from the Ancient’s skin to mine.
“I was hoping you would do that.” Lirian laughed.
Before I could take another breath, his hand clamped down on my throat and his fingers dug into my skin as he lifted me. Spinning, he slammed my back into the wall of glass. The window cracked, and dull pain flared along my spine.
Instinctually, I reached for the eather, but it responded only with a weak flutter as I grasped his wrist.
Lirian smirked as if he knew I’d tried to summon the essence and failed.
But I didn’t need it to kick his ass.
My stomach muscles tightened as I drew up my legs.
Or tried to.
They didn’t respond to the command my brain was sending to them. They remained dangling against the glass.
I tried again.
My heart stuttered as my gaze met his. I couldn’t move my legs. Or my arms or head. What air I could get into my lungs lodged in my throat. I couldn’t move at all.
Lirian smiled as that outline of wings filled in, full of crackling eather. “As I said, you’re not more powerful than me.”
Fury exploded through me like the force of a wildfire as I could do nothing more than lock glares with him.
“Let her go,” Holland commanded.
It didn’t seem like Lirian was about to do that as he held me at eye level. “We should’ve been the ones to handle this.”
“Lirian,” Holland shouted.
“That’s what I wanted.” Tendrils of heated eather started to swirl around his shoulders. “We should’ve killed you. And believe it or not,” Lirian said, “I would’ve happily carried it out. Rules be damned.”
My eyes widened as a blur of black shot across the chamber.
“I was more than willing to make that—”
Thorne appeared behind Lirian and grabbed him by the shoulder. “Release her,” he ordered. “Now.”
Jaw clenched, Lirian lifted one finger at a time and let me go. I landed on my feet, managing not to stumble.
Thorne yanked the other Ancient back, and I stepped away from the window as Lirian suddenly went airborne and flew across the chamber.
He hit a pillar with a nice, fleshy smack and fell forward, his knees cracking off the floor.
“Are you okay?” Thorne asked me.
