49. The Second Battle pt. 2
49
THE SECOND BATTLE PT. 2
" T his way," Graves called.
Luella followed in his footsteps as the raven shifter led her to the heart of the village, right where Az and Tharen stood proudly amidst their defeated foes, the mage wiping blood off his blades with the edge of his shirt. Sweat dotted both of their brows, but they didn’t seem tired, if anything, they appeared rejuvenated. The soft and resigned exhaustion that had marred Az’s features the last few days was gone, replaced by wild fury.
The last few enemies dropped, Az knocking the hilt of his sword against Tharen’s shoulder in a strange camaraderie. It seemed out of place here in the middle of this bloodied space. Too familiar.
A circle of fallen bodies lined the village center, and Graves barreled right through, Luella stumbling behind, tripping over errant limbs and discarded weapons.
She swallowed thickly, smoke clouding her sight. Lifeless eyes were all around, littering the dirty, hard ground. A female with gaunt cheeks, one hand outstretched as she lay dead; her eyes were slanted open and a grizzly, gaping wound was cut into her neck. A male with his leg sliced clean off, blood coating every bit of him where he lay slumped against the side of a crumbled building. She saw white bone peaking out where his leg should have been, red fleshy pieces hanging from the stump in tatters.
Luella shuddered. Graves tightened his hold on her.
Vultures cawed overhead, already preparing to descend and feast.
Az dropped his sword at the sight of her, both of them bloodied and bruised.
"Lu." The demon stumbled forward, wrapping her up in his strong arms.
She nosed along his chest. He smelled sweaty, and she detected the faintest tinge of iron blood that marred his clothes, likely from the few cuts littering his tanned skin—a rather deep gash on his forearm, which she viewed with trembling lips. Luella didn’t care that his blood mingled with hers, little smudges smearing over her already dirt-lined skin as he held her face between his hands.
Luella was safe.
A hand settled on her nape.
"Little lamb," Tharen intoned, pulling her roughly away from Az and keeping her pinned with hands on her shoulders. "You ran from me."
Her mouth parted, and she met Tharen’s icy eyes, attention snagging on droplets of blood against the sharp points of his cheeks and the line of his jaw. Her whole body shook.
The memory of Graves’s lips against hers was fleeting under the harshness of the raven shifter’s stare, where he watched from the sidelines. Watching her wrapped up in the mage, watching as she tried to cower back into Az. Always watching.
"And I would do it again," she said, utterly soft, words broken with a whimper but true . And truth always did have a way of snaking its way into the light.
The mage grew pensive and leaned down, face a mere breath away. Tharen’s nose swept down the length of hers, tickling against her jaw and down to her neck as he inhaled raggedly. A groan escaped him. "Even coated in blood, you smell fucking divine. Even mouthing off"—he brushed his nose over the bow of her lips—"you sound delectable."
Before she could respond, or say something , all three males looked up in unison, right toward the knoll, barely in sight from the fallen buildings around them and the thick smoke lingering in the air.
Tall and proud, a pure white steed graced the top of the hill, another pure black steed slightly behind it.
Reins held in strong, powerful hands, pulling back and forcing the horse to come to a stuttering stop.
Luella’s eyes drifted up and up, right to the faint visage of regality perched upon the back of the white steed. King Vale—no longer a dragon—had come to take her away. And on the horse, black as night, Bastian.
The smoke filtered over them, making their faces hard to discern, but she knew the exact moment they called their steeds onward, racing down the knoll and into the village. Out of sight. But not for long.
She heard thundering hooves against stone; the sound was a muted twin of his dragon wings as they had beat above earlier. No matter how King Vale chose to arrive, he always did so deafeningly.
The horses stopped before them, and the King and the Advisor dismounted with ease.
Luella couldn’t stop herself from staggering back until she could no longer move. Hands against her shoulders kept her steady and still. She would be forced to endure whatever the King would make her face.
Punishment.
Her lower lip wobbled, and she couldn’t help the whimper that escaped her.
Green eyes glinted through a haze of lingering smoke and ash as King Vale approached her, Bastian on his heels.
The King was without his crown, and the sight was so strange. The unpolished look fit him. Scruff lined his jaw, hair wild, and eyes even more so. He looked so savage, broken down to the basal nature of a possessive beast.
Bastian didn’t look any better; the vampire looked out of sorts, less the sensual and put-together creature she knew him as and more of a haggard and vicious, blood-driven thing.
The King drew closer, and Luella flinched away, Tharen’s hands on her shoulders keeping her from cowering fully.
"Luella." King Vale said her name like an answered prayer.
She looked up at him, and he took her face in his hands. Two scorchingly hot palms pressed against her cheeks, turning her head this way and that as the King scoured her whole body.
When King Vale found Luella unharmed—or as unharmed as she could be, save the shake of her limbs and her too-pale face lined with scratches from gravel and flakes of her dried blood—he took her into him, enveloping her with his strong arms and firm body.
His hand cradled her head, pressing her face into his chest. She was rigid against him.
"Luella, Luella ," King Vale uttered, the mark of a possessive dragon as he held her to him. He smelled of still-burning smoke. "Never leave me again." Both a threat and a plea.
She looked up, bewildered. The King was wild, and he held her with a dominating strength like he had been starved of her.
"You’ve had enough to sate your dragon’s possessiveness, Vale," Bastian announced, tugging her from the King, who let her go with reluctance, hands staying on her as long as he could before the vampire took her in his icy grip—so different from the King’s unnatural warmth of hidden dragon flame.
Bastian smoothed his fingers over her cheeks, rubbing away the smears of dirt and blood. He shook his head, black silky hair falling over his temple.
"Dragons do not fare well when their hoards are taken from them." Bastian breathed in deeply, tapping a finger over the scratch on her cheek, then picking up her hand and drawing a line over the abrasions on her palms.
She barely thought of how her blood was on her skin, and he was a vampire who looked primed to tear into her.
"This is the only blood that is yours." The vampire sounded relieved, but he spoke to the others and not her. As if reassuring them she was relatively unharmed.
Bastian sucked his thumb into his mouth, wetting it before wiping away more of the blood and dirt on her skin, eyes lined with red from the faint taste of her essence on his tongue. Luella leaned into the touch, starved for anything to break up the haze of disbelief. With every soothing touch, she grew more steady, as if awakening from a deep sleep. Or a nightmare.
"Oh, pet," Bastian crooned. "You never should have left." He looked away from her to where Az was standing by Tharen. "And you never should have fed into her illusions of freedom. You knew it would never happen, but you still went along with it. Still helped her."
Az didn’t seem cowed by the vampire’s angered words, for he stood his ground and said, "How could I resist? I’ve always been the one to fight for her, even over you."
Bastian scoffed, lifting a hand to rub against his chest. The black material of his shirt pulled down from his searching touch, and she glimpsed the faintest hint of black swirling ink on the pale skin of his chest.
As they spoke, she grew more weary, her ankle throbbing from how she stood on it. She wanted to rest.
"I fought. But unlike you , demon, I know when to choose my battles. I know how to wait." Luella shifted, leaning into the vampire’s side. He locked an arm around her waist, humming under his breath. "And it looks like it worked," Bastian taunted.
Az growled deeply, and only Tharen’s strength—hands quickly reaching to grab Az’s upper arms—kept the demon from stalking forward.
Luella placed a hand on Bastian’s chest, pushing away from him, he allowed her to go but kept a hand notched against her side, a short leash that kept her tethered close to him.
"Nothing worked," she managed. "I escaped because I could not stand to be held captive any longer. And believe me when I say I would do it all over again. The only thing I regret is that you found me."
"You’ll be punished for this, pet." Bastian ground his jaw.
King Vale grew rigid beside them, affirming, "Absolutely." A glint in his eye.
Az struggled against Tharen’s hold, and her eyes flicked to Graves, who stood nearby, silent, as he polished a knife with the edge of his cloak. His hood was over his head, obscuring his features.
The raven shifter seemed to bloom in her presence, but around the others, he was back to his one-worded quips and simple statements.
"Oh, demon, she’ll like it," Bastian said. He skimmed a hand down to her backside, fingers skimming over her hips.
Luella jerked away, insistent this time to be let go. Her ankle rolled in her boot, and she yelped at the sharp lance of pain.
Bastian grew rigid.
"What hurts?" King Vale stepped to her, nearly crazed, as he braced a hand on her shoulder to help her.
"My ankle," Luella gritted out, shrugging his touch off.
Something dark sparked in the King’s eyes at her dismissive actions, but before she could investigate further, Graves finally stepped in.
The King held back his brutish persona with a struggle, eyes never straying far from hers—even when he looked to the others, it was never for long. A roiling storm of green called to fall on her like the inevitability of the stars that dotted the night sky.
"Go sit," the raven shifter ordered.
With reluctance, Az interjected, "We’ll have to go back to… Serpentis." He flexed his muscles, jerking out of the mage’s hold. "A healer can look at her there."
Tharen smirked, an utterly wild thing, as his tongue darted out to lick along his bottom lip. "I’ll look at her." Eyes of pure ice fell over Luella’s frame as she leaned heavily against chunks of rubble, sitting down without grace, her injured leg outstretched and features pinched in pain. "I can examine her in my apothecary." The way he stressed the word, examine , made it known that the examination in question would not be strictly professional.
Bastian shook his head. "Not alone. You know better."
Petulant, the mage knocked a fist against Az’s shoulder.
Children, the lot of them.
Even as Az’s words expressed reluctance to go back to Serpentis, something in his body language gave away that he was not as unhappy about it as he seemed—his posture was too open, eyes not as weary and dull as they had been deep in the caves of the Silva Noctis.
It was almost as though he was glad not to have her in his care alone. They were similar in that regard, forced to be alone from circumstances but forever left wanting more.
Graves absently rubbed a gloved finger over the chain of his amulet, and Luella watched the faint swirls of white trapped within the purple stone. He was always so reserved, so reticent in sharing. She knew of the others and their place in King Vale’s circle, but Graves was forever a mystery to her. An enigma of the darkest sort.
She remembered what Az had shared with her—the raven shifter had secrets. But he would share them with Luella. It looked as though she would have the chance to ask now.
Head thumping against the back of a stone building, part of it crumbling and broken, keeping the inside hidden from view, Luella let her eyes flutter shut.
She didn’t want to look anymore. Not at the mass of dead bodies, not at the gore and violence that coated the grounds, and not at the red blood that stained her palms.
Snarling howls made her pause, and Luella slowly opened her eyes.
Tharen’s trio of wolves padded into the village square, sniffing the bodies that decorated the ground and licking bright blood from their maws.
Her hands gripped the rubble underneath her, and a tremor wracked her frame as she huddled against the stone.
Bastian was the closest to her, and the vampire looked at her as the wolves prowled closer. "Scared?" he asked.
Her tongue was heavy in her mouth; Luella merely nodded.
Graves knew. He knew why she was so fearful of the beasts. He shifted closer to her, standing partly in front of her body. He still kept his distance, they all did, leaving her to curl on hardened stone—little pieces of someone’s home, now her place of rest.
"You should be," Tharen called. He reached down to stroke a hand down the smaller wolf’s coat, the beast preening under his master’s touch.
King Vale cleared his throat. "The Umbra has come further than we thought."
"The scouts never reported they were this far into Terra," Bastian said, placing a hand on his hip. He looked down at the bodies around them, expression grim.
"The Umbra," Luella spoke up.
All eyes looked toward her.
Hesitantly, she continued, "I thought… I thought the Umbra was a person."
Graves adjusted his cowl. "The Umbra is many. Not just one."
"An entity," Bastian supplied at her look of confusion.
"The Umbra has invaded not just our lands but every kingdom. No place is safe from its touch. Turning brother against brother." King Vale gestured to the destroyed village around them. Fae bodies—male and female, old and young. Luella swallowed thickly. "It is a disease upon our lands. One for which there is no cure."
A hand fluttered to her throat, ghosting over the memory of thick blood splattered against her neck and chest, the way Graves had been so quick to clean her of it.
"How?" Luella asked, chin trembling. "How did I not know?"
Too many questions. Far too many to discuss amid such death.
Bastian seemed to be privy to her thoughts. Maybe he was. How was Luella to know how Mind magic worked? If there was a disease spread throughout all the kingdoms, hidden from her for her whole life, everything else she had ever known could also be a lie…
Tears burned the back of her eyes.
It was all making sense. Partly, at least. The secrets, the maze of lies. The way her maids at Solis treated her with such resentment; the hidden conversations from her parents, hushed words harshly whispered, abruptly stopping whenever she entered the room.
What else?
What else was a lie?
They talked, and she listened. Words cascading over her, not truly understanding, not truly listening.
Luella was too grief-stricken—too overcome by a haze of pressing shock—that she could not sift through the meaning of their words.
And that shock was what caused her to miss it.
A soft crackling from behind her like footsteps crunching slowly over stone.
She watched the King and his circle, entirely wrapped up with each other. Luella was alone, tucked in the beginnings of shadows created by the half-broken pieces of crumbling structures.
Leaving plenty of opportunity for a lonesome watcher to pounce.