Ruthless Enemy: A Spicy Fantasy Romance by Marion Blackwood

Author:Marion Blackwood [Blackwood, Marion]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Black Dagger Publishing
Published: 2023-06-25T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 21

Steel whooshed through the air. Spinning around, I slashed the sword again before leaping back and yanking it up in a defensive position. The oil lamps in the ceiling cast dancing orange light over the vast space. I fell into an attack stance again and lunged.

My every move seemed to echo throughout the deserted warehouse. Most of my clients had picked up their goods at this point, leaving the large room more or less empty. Compared to how it had looked these past few months, the building now felt like a completely different warehouse. At least it gave me ample room to run through my daily sword drills.

Sweat rolled down my spine, and my muscles burned from the effort, but I was almost done so I pushed myself to keep going. While I trained, my mind once more ran through the events of the day.

I had found a way into that building. And this time, I had given Levi an accurate report. Maybe I shouldn’t have. Maybe I should’ve messed with his plans again. But if I did that, he would become suspicious.

Or at least, that’s what I told myself.

The truth was much more complicated.

Levi was… strange. Half of the time, he acted exactly like I had assumed he would. He fought me, threatened me, and bossed me around. But the other half, he surprised me. Surprised me by caring about random civilians. By answering my questions with surprising honesty. And most of all, by caring about me.

When he had seen those scars on my back, he had looked like he wanted to hunt down the people responsible and slaughter them for hurting me. That had stunned me more than I wanted to admit. He had also turned around to give me privacy while I changed. Actually turned around. As if he was some kind of proper gentleman. And even though he went about it in an extremely bullheaded way, today I also realized that he had really been trying to get me to stay in his Court because he wanted to protect me. It went against everything I knew about dark mages.

Guilt flooded my chest.

What was I doing? Was I seriously trying to suggest that the King of Metal wasn’t as terrible as I had thought he would be?

So what if he gave me privacy when I changed or acted as if he gave a shit about me? It still didn’t change the fact that he was a dark mage. A ruthless villain who needed to be stopped before more innocent people could get hurt.

My father’s face flashed before my eyes.

I shoved out the memory and rammed my sword into my invisible opponent.

Damn it, I should’ve taken Levi up on his offer to stay in his Court. I had refused because I still had things I needed to finish here at the warehouse, and also because of how he had… affected me that night, but I could probably find another way to finish everything I needed to get done here.

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