Free Fairy Tale: An Urban Fantasy Novel (The Lillim Callina Chronicles Book 3) by J.A. Cipriano Page B

someone stuffing too much air inside a tin can, and I was thrown from my feet, tumbling backward and crashing into one of the gilded walls.
    The Queen of the Bright and Hot stood, her body a living bouquet of flame. Her eyes burned like stars from within the piercing magma. She took a step toward Kishi, one arm outstretched. A gout of flame leapt from her fingertips. Kishi threw up her arms, and the fire bounced harmlessly off her armored form. The Queen screamed, and it was like a raging inferno. The temperature exploded, climbing upward so fast my sweat instantly evaporated.
    Cloying heat filled my throat as I licked my dry, cracking lips. Kishi stumbled backward, hands reaching to her throat as the Queen smiled, her fiery lips stretched back to reveal a mouth full of flame.
    I reached out with my power and muttered a word. “Come.” My Beretta flew through the air and hit my outstretched hand with a thud. I pointed the weapon at the Queen of the Hot and Bright and fired three quick shots. The first two hit her in the center of the back, pitching her forward. The third caught her in the back of the neck and blew out her throat in a flash of blood and ash. She fell to her hands and knees, fire exploding outward around her like a wall.
    Kishi’s shotgun roared, and the Sidhe Queen was thrown backward out of the ring of flame. She rolled, coming to her feet in an instant and leaping into the air, giant dragonfly wings whirling like helicopter blades.
    “Find cover!” I screamed, dropping the pistol and pulling the twin blades of Shirajirashii from their sheathes. “Shikuhakku Shirajirashii! Shikuhakku!”
    Kishi dove underneath the wreckage of the dragon statue as sanguine clouds burst into being above us, manifesting so suddenly that the Queen was caught within them. She screamed, an earsplitting howl that made gooseflesh rise on my skin and the hair on the back of my neck to stand at attention.
    The first bloody teardrops fell from the clouds, splashing downward in great splatters of crimson. The Queen turned toward me, eyes wide in horror as she plummeted from the sky like a rock. The flame around her winked out as she slammed into the marble floor. I cringed away from her, awaiting the inevitable torrent of horror and emotion that was going to rip through both of us, giving me a front seat view on her own personal rollercoaster of horror.
    Light came back in a rush as a pale, silver moon glinted in the sky where the sun had been. A woman descended from above. Her pale, nearly translucent form seemed more like an apparition than a flesh and blood being. Her hair was like spun moonlight, and her eyes were the pale blue of glacial ice. Her delicate, blue-white wings flapped leisurely, resembling those of a great winged bird rather than an insect.
    As she drew closer, cool, damp air rushed through the room, bringing with it the smells of swampy earth. With a wave of her hand, she banished my spell. Shirajirashii went lifeless in my hands. The crimson clouds winked out of existence, the red rain vanishing mid-fall.
    I don’t know how the Queen of the Hot and Bright managed it, but she turned and shrieked at the descending woman. She stood, her flesh knitting itself together beneath her sheath of flame and raised her hands in the air.
    The room around us shrieked and tore itself asunder as hunks of superheated metal flew upward at the descending woman. She smiled, her pale blue lips revealing a mouthful of starlight as she held one hand out. A whirling dervish of snow and ice exploded outward around her, catching the melted gobs and flinging them away to shatter against the marble floor.
    “No!” the Queen of the Hot and Bright screamed. “You cannot be here. This is the realm of Summer, the land of burning flame and glistening flesh. You have no claim here.”
    “On the contrary,” the woman spoke, and it was like being tucked in at night by your grandma. “These two have given me claim here.”
    “Fools! You have