Not bothered about her new pain, Anastasia threw her dagger towards her chest and twisted her hands in the air. The dagger followed her command and twirled inside Maple's chest. More blood spurted and she fell on the ground writhing and screaming in pain.
Anastasia looked at her with clenched fists. Dragging her wings on the ground, she walked to her and said in a menacing voice, "What kind of a fae do you think I am now?" She commanded her dagger back in her hand. She addressed Ileus as she stared at her and said, "I want her alive because now I am going to tie her in a dungeon and whip her. But I won't let her die soon because I am going to make it very slow and very painful!"
He threw a thick beam of white lights at her, which coiled around her like a snake. And as they coiled, they burned her skin. A primal scream left her mouth and she gasped for air. She sweated copiously as her hands and legs shook with tremors that surged through her body. "Aed Ruad is going to find me and then kill you for this!" she said, her voice a mere whisper. Her eyes were closing as her body slowly drifted into a shock.
"Nuyyn!" Ileus cast a spell on her to arrest her movements. "Where will he search for you?" Ileus snarled.
Anastasia's body felt heated. Her heart was thrumming with so much energy that she thought she was going to explode. "Ileus!" she held his arm and leaned against it. He enveloped her in his arms tightly. The energy in her was so intense that if she didn't release it, she thought it would explode her body into pieces. "I—" she snagged against his chest, trying to hold the energy in, but every second it increased. "I think I am about to—" she closed her eyes tight shut.
"Anastasia!" he called her. "Talk to me."
She burst into the shadows and then she was gone.
"Princess!" he shouted, feeling helpless, spinning in his place with wide eyes.
—
She opened her eyes. Did she die? Her body had blown into pieces? She could see the world but why couldn't' Ileus see her? She poked him but her finger went right through him. She looked down at her feet and found that she was floating in the air. "Oh god!" Was she dead?
The sun had risen up, bathing the ground in its golden rays, highlighting the crimson trees and strew limbs and rolled heads. "Ileus," she called him.
"Welcome Anastasia," a familiar voice came from behind her. When she turned sharply to see who it was, her eyes widened.
"Nyles!"
"I have been waiting for this moment for so long that you can't imagine," Nyles said with a smile that didn't reach her eyes. She was flanked by four faes who looked at her with killer intent.
Anastasia looked at each of them nicely as if to study them. "I am sorry but I don't feel the same. Where is your fiancée?" she asked with a snicker. "Isn't he happy with you or has he left you?" She realized that for the first time, she had burst into shadows like a real fae. And it felt good. It felt powerful.
The four royal soldiers spread around her with magic crackling in their hands.
"You have two choices," said Nyles. "Either you come with us or you die." She circled around her. "I don't want you to come with us. Do you know why?"
"It beats me," Anastasia tsked. "After all I don't own that twisted brain, though I can ask my husband to peep in it."
Nyles ignored her statement. "Because I want to kill you. All the blame will come on Maples."
"Ah, I see," she replied casually, masking her panic. Since she had burst into shadows for the first time, she didn't know what all she could do and she darted her gaze attempting to take in everything in her current environment.
"That's an interesting plan," Anastasia replied as she judged her enemies. If magic crackled in their hands, she was sure that even she could do it. "But you see, there's a flaw."
"You were always this confident Anastasia," said Nyles. "I hated you so much for it."
"That's princess for you, handmaiden," she snarled. "Don't forget your manners."
"You fucking bitch!" Nyles said and charged at her with thin streaks of red light.
"What is this?" Anastasia asked with a frown. "Is this all the magic you can conjure, handmaiden?"
"Now!" Nyles shouted.
Instantly all the four faes around her flung their hands at Anastasia and thick beams of red and yellow lights shot at her. But Anastasia had anticipated it. The magic that was thrumming inside her throbbed and exploded out of her chest. Intense white beams pulsated and surrounded her from all the sides, blocking the magic of the faes. The white light expanded and Anastasia became encased in it. Her wings flared and she looked like an angel with white light bursting out of her body, afloat in the air. She heard shrieks and grunts. When she opened her eyes, they were purple. She lifted her sword. She held it out and then swirled in a circle, slicing the heads of the soldier in one go. As if in a daze, she turned to look at Nyles. Nyles was trying to run away. "Not this time, handmaiden."
Anastasia called back her magic inside her. Once the magic ebbed, she strode towards Nyles and lunged at her with her sword. It struck her arm. Nyles shouted with excruciating pain when she saw her arm fall off to the ground. Not able to understand how this happened, Nyles still ran looking backwards. Suddenly she bumped into someone and fell again. Before she knew what she had bumped into, a sword sliced her other arm too. Screaming like a wounded animal, Nyles flapped her wings to rise in the air, but Anastasia came right behind her and cleaved her left wing. Nyles dropped to the ground, shrieking. "Leave me!"
"No handmaiden," Anastasia's voice was thick, laced with menace. "This is for all the years you spent poisoning me."
Breathless, she begged. "I am s— sorry, Anastasia! Please spare me!"
Anastasia cleaved her right wing and said, "That is Your Royal Highness for you! Did you think it was so easy to kill me?"
"Ahhhhh!" Nyles rolled on the ground. She didn't know that the pain of having no wings was so terrible. Anastasia was killing her slowly by chopping her limbs one by one.
"You betrayed me the most. I treated you like my sister, depended on you and trusted you for everything because I thought that you were my eyes and ears, but I didn't know that you were the eyes and ears of Maple." Anastasia growled as she circled her. "All the while you knew the conspiracy going on against me while acting that you were my benefactor." She stopped right in front of her and wiped her sword with Nyles' white—now red shirt. "For me you are worse than Maple. At least Maple's hatred was evident, but you—you hated me, masking it with love. A viper who I won't forget!" She hissed and swiveled her sword. In one swift movement, she slashed her legs.
