Rejected Queen by Meg Xuemei X.
CHAPTER 18
Tessa
The angel of death struck, faster than lightning. I sidestepped to the left, my sanjiegun snapping and forming a curve as I flipped the sticks and chains to hook around his neck.
Azrael grabbed the end of one of the three sticks with one hand and shoved at me with great strength. The sword in his other hand flashed in front of my eyes and drove down toward my armpit.
I spun away in a blur, his steel missing my flesh by an inch and its metal heat nearly searing my skin. Not giving me a break, he lunged again, aiming his sword straight toward the valley between my breasts.
He intended to open my dress to see me naked, and he was too damn fast. I lashed out my sanjiegun and sandwiched his blade, but not before the tip of his sword nicked my skin.
Azrael had drawn the first blood.
I hissed in rage. Pain radiated to my core. Black stars swam before my eyelids. The blade of the angel of death wasn’t an ordinary one.
But at least he hadn’t undressed me in front of everyone.
I twisted my sanjiegun and yanked his sword with the strength of my Titan bloodline. I’d disarm this motherfucker first.
“Fine,” Azrael said, rolling his eyes. “Have it.”
True to his words, he let go of the hilt of the sword. As I pulled away his weapon to disarm him, he lunged forward and rammed the heel of his palm into my shoulder blade.
The angel of death carried inhuman strength. It was like being hit by a full-speed train. I regretted not wearing my armor, but the bouncers wouldn’t have admitted me if I hadn’t worn a dress.
I reeled back at the impact, nearly dropping my sanjiegun. His sword came free from my hold and flew backward, its black blade cleaving through a bystander’s neck before stabbing into the wall behind her.
The crowd yelped in alarm and pulled back further. Screams and curses rose among them as someone stomped on someone else.
I steadied myself, my bones screeching with pain. Azrael must have cracked my shoulder blade, and my right arm didn’t feel like it could coordinate again. But I pushed through the agony and didn’t wait for the fuzzy edges around my vision to dissipate.
Not minding the angel of death was now weaponless, I charged him at top speed, my sanjiegun snapping into one straight line and its spearhead thrusting toward his throat. I needed to end this fight, as I was getting tired, and soon I’d slow down a lot. A black scythe appeared in Azrael’s hand out of nowhere and banged into the spearhead of my sanjiegun two inches from his neck.
We wrestled with our weapons, and I kicked him in the knee, only to find it was probably made of fucking steel. He wouldn’t even bend. With a battle shout, I twisted my sanjiegun free, and he forced his way in and slid his scythe toward my neck to detach my head.
He hadn’t expected me to bend backward to an impossible degree. While a surprised appreciation flickered in his eyes, I thrust my sanjiegun toward him like a flash. It whooshed and hissed, frost rising from the sticks.
The spearhead of my sanjiegun pierced his side. Before it could dig deeper to meet the angel’s ribs, Azrael grabbed the middle of the stick and dragged it out of his flesh.
“No one’s bled me before, Morrigan,” he growled.
I smiled. “There’s always a first. You should go celebrate that you aren’t a virgin anymore, Azrael.”
With a howl, he played a brief tug of war with me and yanked my sanjiegun in his direction. I had to let go of it, or he’d grab me. With his angelic strength, he tore it out of my grasp and tossed it at the wall as if it were a dart.
My sanjiegun pierced into the wall, its sticks vibrating for a long second.
That was also a first, as no one had disarmed me before.
Rage and humiliation coursed through me, and I let out a frosty breath.
He smirked. “Looks like we’re a match made in heaven.”
“Then you should not come to Hell,” I said.
We lunged at each other at the same time, but I twisted out of his reach at the last second. Physically, he was stronger than me, since I hadn’t settled into my immortality yet. He had no weakness, and I had my vulnerability.
Sneaky attacks would work better for me. Usually, it was never the best fighter who won, but the dirtiest fighter.
I feigned a move to assault his left side, and when he went to defend himself, I swung my leg up to kick him in the cheek. I landed a direct hit. However, my blade-toed boot seemed to malfunction all of a sudden. The blades didn’t thrust out of the front of my boot, and that was the first time they’d failed me.
Azrael was to blame, but I didn’t know how he did it.
No matter, I’d still landed a kick, and his head snapped back.
I smirked. “Hope you like it.”
I wanted him to feel pain, as I felt a lot of it.
I swung my leg at him again, my boot connecting to his jaw. Fury burned in his eyes—one gorgeous, one set in a hollowed socket rimmed with shadowy flame. It was a bold move, but I was fast, and I felt like kicking him. To my disappointment, Azrael didn’t stagger. Nor did his head snap back. He clenched his teeth to take the strike. His hand lashed out, faster than I thought he had the right to be, and grabbed my shin.
I yanked it back, but he refused to let me go, enjoying the tug war and showing off how strong he was. And the hand of the angel of death inflicted pain. It felt like my leg was being sawed off. It took more than a second and sheer will for me to regain focus.
“Let go, prick,” I snarled, my ice magic slamming into him.
“You’ll have to do more than that to drive me away,” he purred, “since your ice and frost actually draw me in instead of repelling me. There’s a raging storm in you, Morrigan, but you haven’t tapped into it. What a pity. But perhaps I can help bring it out?”
“Eat worms, please,” I said, my sense of humor gone.
“Don’t say that,” he said. “Don’t hurt my feelings. You know I’m the angel of death.”
“Then take your job seriously!”
I leapt and spun in the air, my other leg striking him. Not many could pull off this stunt when their other leg was being held hostage, but I’d trained with the best and practiced a lot. But before my other foot rammed into the angel’s head, he tossed me into the air like I was a feral feline.
“I’ve dealt with a lot of pissed-off women, but none like you.” He shook his head. “It’s not worth denting my face.”
I flew over a few heads and landed on the bar with my shoulder touching down on the hard wood. The wood caved and pain nearly brought tears to my eyes.
I rolled over into a crouch, knocking over a few drinks on the counter, not caring about the complaints from the other patrons, who cowered in the corner.
“Oh, shut up,” I nearly yelled at them. “What the fuck do you expect if you weren’t here to protect your drinks?”
Ace nodded his agreement, siding with me, then he shouted a warning.
A blond mage took the opportunity while I was half down and dashed at me, a spell containing an explosive energy beam shooting at me from his fingers. I rolled to the edge of the bar, missing the beam by a couple of inches. The spell charred the wood where I’d been.
I grabbed a broken glass from the bar and flung it at the mage. He hadn’t expected me to recover so fast, considering I had been thrown by the angel.
The sharp shard sank into the mage’s forehead, cut into his brain, and left a jagged redline on his skin. Blood streamed down his long face, and he fell in a heap on the floor.
I turned to the angel of death; he was my only concern. A strange and savage sound tore out of my throat. Then I realized my even teeth had elongated into fangs, and my eyes glowed with icy light. Before I understood what was happening to me, my phantom wings shot out, spreading to their full, glorious length.
Azrael heaved a satisfied sigh. His black wings manifested, larger than mine and intimidating.
“The Morrigan in you has finally manifested.” He laughed. “That’s all I wanted to see.”
I forced my wings to disappear before they manifested completely, and they obeyed. I wasn’t ready to show anyone my wings since it was a private matter.
The next second, Azrael’s wings also vanished. He smiled at me, and I glared at him. The fight between us had been purely physical. I had no idea if I could win when our magics clashed. The bastard surely had a lot of magic. Judging from the shit-eating grin on his lips, he knew it, and he would soon bring death.
I wasn’t going to go down without damaging him, even though the angel of death might be impossible to kill. He grinned at me as if sensing my determination, his power responding by ripping the fabric of the air.
The crowd scattered, feeling the sting of his reaper magic.
When death neared, regrets and sorrow flashed before my eyes. I had no chance to say goodbye to my team. I had failed my kingdom and my people. Loki’s image popped up in my head, even though he was close, just a floor above me, watching the angel of death eager to cut short my last breath.
I’d come all the way to this world to assassinate him, only to find that he was the fire to my ice. Yet he had no idea I was his mate as he drank to my demise with his harem upstairs.
Beings are capricious. One moment we were lovers, then the next, enemies. While he hadn’t exactly made an attempt on my life, he was more than happy to let others do it.
A wolf growled from upstairs, breaking the sudden silence.
I slid onto the barstool next to my former seat that had been axed in two.
“Ace.” I sat sideways and flicked another gold coin toward the blue-haired bartender, my eyes scanning the rest of the threats in the crowd. “What happened to the happy drink I ordered a while ago?”
“You…still want that…cheerful poison, Lady…Morrigan?” he stammered.
“Don’t tell me it’s sold out,” I said, “’cause I won’t believe you, as Hell is such a merry place with tons of jolly fellows.”
He blinked as if he was just waking up. “Right away, my lady. It’s on the house, the finest, and I insist.” This time, he was smooth and pushed the gold coin back toward me. He wouldn’t accept it, and he no longer called me lass.
He glided away to fix the drink for me. He was probably the only one here who didn’t want me dead. If I had the chance to bring down this nightclub, I’d make sure he was spared. One did not pay back kindness with nastiness.
The bartender really thought I wanted a drink. In fact, I was planning my next moves before I went toe-to-toe with the angel of death. The next bout would be a magic match. My water element would allow me to turn the drink into a flood, then my ice spears would cut into the mercenaries while I died trying to take down the angel of death.
“It won’t come to that, Morrigan,” Azrael said, strolling toward me as he leashed his death power, his hands in the pockets of his pants. “Our fight is over. Let me buy you that drink. I just wanted to see the Morrigan in you. I got what I came for.”
“You chased me through world after world just to see if I’m of the bloodline?”
“You are,” he said softly. A mix of longing and pain and regret flitted through his perfect eye, and I caught it in a nanosecond.
Something clicked. He had a history with my ancestor goddess.
He flicked his wrist, and my sanjiegun flew into his hand from the wall. He offered my weapon back to me as a truce. I took it, snapped it closed, and placed it in front of my drink.
Ace provided a five-star service this time.
I took a sip and didn’t taste happiness in the cup, but I was glad that the angel of death didn’t want to murder me.
“You say you’re buying, Bran?” I asked, arching an eyebrow. My body still hurt from all the fighting.
Just when Azrael was about to take the seat I offered, a barrage of spells shot toward me like a rain of arrows. The mercenaries weren’t done with me, because their reinforcements had just arrived.
The angel stepped away and shrugged. “Later, Morrigan.”
It was my fight.
“This is what I call rude,” I told Ace with a sigh and put down the drink. “And this is where I draw the line.”
The bartender nodded. “I’ll go fix you another happy shot, for good luck.”
My ice magic had formed a shield around me and extended to Ace as well. I didn’t want the spells to find him by mistake because of somebody’s shaking hands.
A variety of vicious spells bounced off my shield like a dark light show.
And this time, I had a new magic—the Morrigan power had activated in me. I took a morsel of it to enhance my shield instead of unleashing it ruthlessly. Something had tipped in my favor, so I wouldn’t go for absolute destruction.
When I was a child, my mother, the Queen, had lectured all her children—my brother, my sister, and me—on the dark side of the Morrigan power and the price we had to pay when deploying it.
The Morrigan power was best used in the battlefield on a great scale as a last resort to slaughter everything in your path. When it was unleashed, we, the bloodline, would become mere vessels for the dark power and would no longer be ourselves.
I was Morrigan’s descendant from my mother’s side. I didn’t know if my siblings had the power or not, but it hadn’t passed onto Mom, or she’d have used it against the Ice God when he and his army invaded our realm. But then, even with the Morrigan power, it might still not be enough to take down Ragnarö. After all, I wasn’t Morrigan, the war goddess herself.
But now I knew the dark power answered to the war drum in my blood and was no longer dormant. The angel of death had brought it out.
I had yet to work out why he had traveled across the worlds to track me down. I had to know if he worked with my ex-mate.
The spells kept coming, as if the mages and witches had an endless supply of nastiness. Most of the spells dissipated when they hit my shield, but two got through and scorched my shoulder.
They contained black magic.
I needed to end the fight soon before the net of spells shattered my shield.
While I swayed, the first wave of mercenaries rushed me. Adrenaline coursed through me and I threw up my hands. Ice spears formed and surged toward my adversaries, piercing a few chests and cleaving off a couple of heads.
The second wave of the onslaught reached me. The witches in the back were chanting urgently, wrapping their team in a protective ward. A new net of black spells darted toward me, aiming to trap and bind me. I had no choice but to summon a bit more of Morrigan’s dark magic. It came, hissed, and shattered the witches’ net and their ward as well.
I’d have to deal with the cost later.
I pushed the Morrigan power back as it tried to dominate. Ice magic returned to me, forming another wave of ice blades and lashing out. While it neutralized the foes closest to me, I slid across the floor, ducked a witch’s spell, and swung my sanjiegun at her knee. The force shattered her bones, and she dropped to the ground and screamed.
Another mage threw a potion at me. I rolled away at a dazzling speed and stabbed the sharp spearhead at his tendon before cutting it all the way. He howled in pain, but I had moved on to another target.
Cut, slice, stab, and duck. Rinse and repeat.
Stay cool and detached like a surgeon.
I wanted the witches to suffer, as they’d once inflicted fear and pain on those who were weaker than them. They gleaned power through others’ sufferings.
More mercenaries swarmed in. The glass ceiling broke open. A dozen heavily armed military types descended via automatic wire, their heavy-duty machine guns trained on me, about to riddle me with bullet holes and blow me to bits.
I wouldn’t survive this—my ice magic wasn’t enough in this scorching realm—unless I unleashed the horror of Morrigan.
I smiled coldly, ready to let go.
A wolf howled chillingly.
A tidal wave of hellfire blasted out like an atomic bomb, burning every mercenary and the mob of attackers to cinders.
The heat of the hellfire washed over me but didn’t scorch me. Instead, it caressed me with a lover’s whisper and comfort.
The king should have known by now that I was his mate, since his magic could never harm me. It acted on its primal instinct and protected me when true crises arose.
