Chapter 32 – A Princess Defiant

Time slowed as Lillia ran at Eisel. At least, Lillia thought it had. As the seconds dragged longer and longer, she realized she was still breathing at the same pace. Her thoughts raced just as fast. Even the soreness in her muscles seemed to take longer to bloom.

When Eisel moved, he moved at his own tempo. His eyes locked on the slowed Lillia and he shook his head.

Lillia heard his voice in her head. Eisel’s lips did not move.

“Allow me to teach you this lesson once, little princess.”

The world flashed white, becoming a solid wall of color that Lillia was sprinting toward the center of. On Lillia’s next step, a single crack appeared down the center. Then another. Then another.

Lillia slowed and the world shattered in front of her, white conceding to a cascade of color. The ground under Lillia’s feet broke out into a thousand panels of stained glass. The walls erupted into sun-streaked windows of the same colors, pouring rainbows of light across the room.

The light burned Lillia’s eyes and she stumbled. Her vision swam in the brilliance as a thousand colours she’d longed for all week stabbed into her strained eyes. The princess kept trying to look up. Kept trying to see where Eisel had gone. Kept trying, only to have to turn away from the sun she used to love.

She couldn’t see, but she had reach. Lillia swapped weapons and lashed out. Swinging the Bramble Slasher around herself in wide arcs, hoping to catch the man if he tried to come close to her.

The princess’s eyes adapted to the light and beauty. Eisel was still standing at the same place on the far side of the room. He looked bored. The pressure of his gaze threatened to crush Lillia despite his apathy.

“Do you feel it yet, little princess?”

He still wasn’t talking. It was all in Lillia’s head. She locked her eyes on his, and brought the Bramble Slasher to bear. Eisel shook his head.

“Stubborn girl.”

“Spoiled brat,” Lillia spat back, using one of the insults that had been thrown at her over the past five years.

Eisel’s eyes flicked from Lillia’s face to the blade in her hands. He chuckled. Lillia charged. She just had to get close. Eisel looked soft. There was no way he could take a bardiche to the chest and he wasn’t even carrying a weapon. He had been counting on her surrendering.

Thirty feet. Lillia’s footfalls clicked against the stained glass. Several times she heard the spiderweb cracking of the glass giving way under her feet.

Twenty feet. The sunlight from the false windows set fire to the floor and across the battlegown. A dazzling, spiraling infinity of color spread between Lillia and Eisel.

Ten feet. A spike of glass erupted from the ground and stabbed Lillia in the chest.

The glass spike failed to punch through the chitin, but the strike still rocked Lillia hard enough to make her ribs scream as the floor launched her into the air. Sunlight caught the jagged edge of the glass. She could see shards of chitin within it, stripped from her armor.

“Oh. You can get hit twice?” Eisel’s voice said inside her head.

Lillia reached the weightless apex of her flight. The glass ground beneath her swelled to meet her, panels merging into a horrific spike. She kicked.

The boots shot Lillia high into the air, just out of the reach of the glass spike attempting to skewer her. There was heat above her.

Lillia smashed into the bottom of the chandelier, not hard enough to hurt now, but enough that it would tomorrow. The princess threw her hands up, trying to grab onto the wrought iron arms for salvation. She found her grip.

The Bramble Slasher tumbled to the floor.

Lillia held onto the bottom of the chandelier with both hands, hanging over the now-shifting stained glass floor below. She had dreamed of doing this as a child. It didn’t seem very fun now. Her arms were already burning.

“Lillia. Behave.”

Eisel was looking up at her. His gaze was the only part he’d bothered moving. Smoke curled into Lillia’s eyes as she clung to the chandelier arm. The metal was hot, the wax tacky, and every shift of her weight made the whole structure groan.

The princess felt her grip giving way. Sweat formed on her palms as her fingers and strength faltered. Lillia kicked her legs, there were no charges left in the boots, but she wasn’t trying to fly.

Just ahead of her, the next arm of the chandelier was lower than the one she was on. Wax and fire covered the wrought iron branch. She just had to get to it and—

The world flashed as one of the windows broke inward and the glass flew toward Lillia. She jumped.

Lillia’s fingernails dug into the dried wax and she caught the next arm of the chandelier. She pulled herself the rest of the way up. The second she had a free hand, she pulled out the burnmite cloth and crushed it. She almost couldn’t see the iridescent dust as it swirled into the vibrancy of the room.

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As the shards of glass streaked toward her, Lillia rolled across the chandelier arm and straight through a row of candles. She’d only had one burnmite cloth. She was barely covered at all. She felt wax clinging to bare skin. She felt flames licking at her hair.

Lillia kept rolling and dropped off the arm.

She was so high in the air.

Lillia tried to remember the hand symbols of the Backdraft spell. The fight with the Architect. The Ambusher.

Nothing came.

The light changed as the stained glass window arrived, just inches away.

Lillia crushed the chitterpede cloth. Skirt gave way to gown. Wax shattered off Lillia’s skin.

Glass spears slammed into the princess mid-air. Everything blurred. All Lillia could feel was pressure and wind.

Lillia was on the ground on the far side of the room. Glass dust rained down on top of her. She felt cool air where the chitterpede gown had been shredded—torn apart in the act of protecting her from the spears.

“Are you done?” Eisel asked. He was still on the far side of the room. He hadn’t even bothered to move.

The light of the room glittered, filtered through the shattered glass around Lillia as she struggled back to her feet. She hadn’t been hurt, but her body couldn’t believe it. All her limbs could do was imagine the pain that she was supposed to be in right now.

How was this better? How was this better than giving in? How was this better than letting someone else tell her what to do? It would be so easy to lie down and listen to him. She was good at that. Lillia was good at choking down the tears and listening. She had so much practice.

Lillia coughed and held out her hand. Without needing to reach into her dress, she called the Spellmaul into her right hand. In her left, she summoned two of the Ambusher feathers and snapped them between her fingers.

Fighting here wasn’t better. Fighting here wasn’t easier. Fighting here was stupid. Lillia should have been lying down, but she wasn’t.

Stupid girl, maybe, but she’d been called worse.

The Usurper’s Cloak clasp was fiery and tight around her neck. She could feel how much power had been stored in it from absorbing those attacks. She just needed to get close to Eisel. She just needed to hit that pretty boy once in the mouth.

Dammit, why did he have to be so pretty?

“You know this next time is going to hurt. Right, princess?” Eisel asked. He still wasn’t bothering to move his mouth to speak. Somehow that made it all worse.

Lillia took a deep breath as the feather petticoat finished forming around her.

It was going to hurt. Wasn’t it?

She was already running halfway through the thought. One hand held the maul steady while the other called up the chitterpede chitin. Lillia’s shoes changed between steps, heel and shape adapting into riding boots on each foot as they were in the air.

She was close again. This time when the ground swelled, Lillia caught it happening to her right. She dove to the side as the stained glass morphed into a lethal spike.