Plot Armor Is Overrated

Chapter 2: A Pawn Just Committed Regicide

He grunted. That was the first real sound of pain he'd made.

But again, he smiled.

"You're pushing me," he said, a little breathless. "You're actually pushing me."

And then he came at her with intent.

No longer smug. No longer toying.

Now it was two animals fighting in the dirt.

She blocked with her forearm, feeling the jolt all the way to her spine. She used a collapsed column to vault over his swing, landed on shaky legs, and rolled beneath his blast of light. She grabbed a broken chunk of marble and hurled it, not at him, but up. The light from his body caught it just enough to cast moving shadows across the field.

He squinted.

She moved through those shadows like water.

She appeared behind him, aiming a hard palm strike at the back of his neck, but he twisted, caught her wrist. She pivoted, twisted too, using his grip as a fulcrum to slam her knee into his stomach.

He coughed. He bled.

He laughed.

And finally, finally, Nyx understood.

He wasn't just the golden bastard. He wasn't just power and arrogance and shining perfection. Lux had always been strong, yes. Always victorious. But this? This chaos? This pain and mess and clever, unrelenting resistance?

He'd never had this before.

And now he was addicted to it.

They stood in the dust and blood and cracked stone, circling. Two silhouettes under a sun that felt too close.

"You know," Lux said, voice hoarse but amused, "you might actually be worthy of killing me."

Nyx spat blood into the dirt. "Good. Because I plan to."

The moment shifted, Nyx felt something in her bones, a tension that split the air like a scream you couldn't hear. Lux stopped smiling. Not because he was angry. Not because she had wounded his pride.

Because he was interested.

The light around him surged.

No, detonated.

It exploded outward in a silent pulse, a corona of raw, radiant magic that turned the air into a furnace. The pillars that had sheltered her began to crack and crumble, vaporizing under the pressure. Dust lifted in a wall-choking haze, but it did nothing to hide him.

He was the sun in the storm.

And then, he vanished.

Not a flicker. Not a blur.

Gone.

Nyx's breath caught. She twisted, eyes scanning every angle, senses screaming. She ducked by instinct.

Too slow.

A white-hot fist collided with her ribs, no, through her ribs. The sheer force lifted her off the ground, sent her skidding like a ragdoll across jagged stone. Her shoulder bounced off a chunk of broken debris, something snapped, she didn't know what, but it wasn't the worst pain.

That came next.

She hadn't even finished the fall before Lux appeared above her, descending like a spear of divine judgment.