The Dragon Slayer's Queen
she gestures, and the wind slams inward, pinning them in place “—are mine to break.”
Bella’s jaw clenches. “You’ll have to do better than bad metaphors and secondhand magic.”
The figure laughs, and the mask fractures around the mouth, revealing teeth like splinters of emerald. “You know nothing of my magic, child. But you will.” She unfurls her left arm, displaying a scepter of green glass shot through with veins of silver. At its crown, a shard pulses in perfect time with the storm above. The artifact is older than the stone circle, perhaps older than Cordiva. The runes along its length crawl and twitch, hungry for blood.