36. Keira
Chapter 36
Keira
I am startled awake the morning after Caitlin left as a heavy weight crushes down on me. My eyes fly open to inky darkness, but I can just make out a face hovering over mine. Panic rears within me as I jolt, then try to fight them off, but I can’t move my arms. I am pinned beneath the blankets. Hands press my shoulders into the mattress and a knee cuts painfully into my chest, with a man’s weight behind it.
I recognize the scent of his perfume, and thrash wildly, kicking and bucking, trying to flip him off me, but it is no use.Fear blooms within my chest.
Deranged laughter cackles out of my assailant, ending in a high-pitched note. He leans down and speaks into my ear.
“I told you I would get you back.”
My blood turns to ice at that voice, as his fingers curl painfully into my flesh. At Finan, forcing himself on top of me in my bed. A maddening horror whips through me, making my frantic thoughts whirl faster and faster until I can’t hear anything over the top of my own internal screams.
No. No. No.
This was not meant to happen.
He was supposed to be out of my life.
Never able to touch me again.
“Are you happy to see me?” he purrs softly. My sudden stillness has him dropping his guard, moving slightly and loosening his grip on me.
I reach my legs up and kick him hard in the stomach through the blanket. The impact of my bare feet hitting his breastplate reverberates through my bones, but he jolts back far enough for me to scramble out from under him. I grab the dagger from under my pillow as I roll.
“Don’t you dare touch me!” I growl. “I should kill you right here for everything you have done.”
His eyes widen on the blade, then flick to my face. Betrayal flashes within that ice-blue gaze, and a primal rage is born within me, because he expected me to welcome him.
I come to my senses and pull on my magic. My hair rises as a breeze circles around me. I reach for the trunks of the small pine trees that grow as support beams in the walls of this cabin. They bow toward us threateningly. I could easily pull a splinter from one and kill him with it.
Tongues of flame ignite across my fingertips and dance there, ready to burn him alive. Is it better for the war effort to kill him or capture him?
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” a deep voice says from the doorway.
I slowly turn my head to where a guard in royal purple holds a knife to Diarmuid’s throat.
My entire world condenses down to those two figures, illuminated by bright moonlight. My brother stands completely still, his eyes wide and his lips mouthing an apology.I stare at him as I let my magic go. I would sacrifice everything to ensure he lives.
A blow cracks across the side of my head. I collide into the wall and fall into a seated position on the ground. Diarmuid’s cry rings out, but I am too stunned to move.
“You told me you wouldn’t hurt her!” my brother screams.
Finan crouches down in front of me, peering into my face. A single black ringlet falls between his eyes. “Do you see what you made me do?” He runs a tender hand down my cheek, making my skin crawl, then slaps my face hard, venom spilling from his lips. “I should punish you for making this war necessary. For taking that fucking fae to your bed.” His features calm again. “But I’m in a forgiving mood. I have already taken my anger out on…others.”
A slow smile curls his lips. The exact expression that once made my stomach tumble and heart flutter now makes me sick.
“Who?” The single word escapes me as I picture another attack on Fort Blackrock.
He grabs me roughly by the arm and tugs me to my feet.“Oh, you will see.” He laughs. “Should I ruin the fun, Jaxon?” He looks to the guard still clutching my brother, then whips his head back to me. “You see, it was incredibly easy to get to you after a Southern lord tipped me off that the priestesses visited him and were spreading lies. I left the Mothers of Magic in the capital no choice but to bring us here, especially after I slaughtered my way through their sanctuary.” He tsks. “No guards at all in these places.”
“We shouldn’t need guards, you monster!” I yell. “No one thought you’d descend to such atrocities and sacrilege. Are you not at all afraid of the gods’ wrath?” I shake with rage and the need to smite him with my power. But I am not faster than that soldier with his knife at Diarmuid’s throat.
“I AM THE KING! Appointed by the gods!” Finan grabs me by the throat and shoves me against the wall. “And you will learn how to speak to me properly.”
“My king, the potion,” Jaxon says nervously, glancing over his shoulder. It is only then that I notice the screaming and wailing coming from outside this room.
Finan grabs a vial from his pocket and uncorks it with his thumb. I struggle against him, jerking my chin up and clamping my teeth. Finan is the same height as me, and not a whole lot wider. I throw out my elbow to knock the poison from his hand, but he uses his grip on my throat to smash my head against a wooden beam.
The impact jars my brain, and my vision turns black for a heartbeat. I stomp on his foot, then raise a knee that feels disconnected from my body and slam it into his groin, but it meets his damned armor again.
When he shoves my head into the trunk of the pine a second time, my magic takes hold of it, tearing its branches out of the wall and whittling their tips down into sharp points, bringing an entire cage around us, its barbs pointed at him. On the third and most brutal impact of my head against the wood, pain sears through me so intensely that all coherent thought escapes me and I drop the threads of the magic.
The metallic taste of blood hits my tongue.
Finan’s fingers bite into my chin as he grabs it and yanks my head toward the doorway. “Have you already forgotten about poor Diarmuid?”
The guard slashes the skin of my brother’s neck and blood trickles down it. My heart stops until I realize it is a shallow wound.
Finan leans in closer to me until I can smell the wine on his breath. “Maybe you don’t care about him as much as I thought, and we should kill him now. OPEN. YOUR. MOUTH.”
My shakes intensify and I let out a small sob as I stare at Diarmuid. He looks so young and terrified, his skin bleached of all color, making his many freckles stand out. Too young to die or be brutalized.
I close my eyes hard, tears stinging their corners, and I open my mouth. Humiliation floods me, but there is little I wouldn’t do for my family.
The liquid burns as it goes down. Finan doesn’t release his chokehold on me until the bottle is drained, then he wipes a drop of the poison from the corner of my mouth with his thumb. “Now, that wasn’t so bad, was it?” he whispers in my ear.
I feel dirty.
Vulnerable and helpless.
Worst of all, I have allowed myself to fall within the control of this insane man once again. I can see no way out, especially as an oily barrier forms around the well of magic within me, like the numbing of an essential limb.
I don’t get the chance to panic at the loss of the one thing that empowers me, because Finan pushes me out the door of the hut with his hands on my shoulders, and I behold the source of those screams beyond.
The sanctuary is in absolute chaos. Multiple cabins are on fire. Women run in different directions as soldiers in full armor chase after them and cut them down with longswords.Splatters of blood arc through the air. Druids on their knees try to block the swipe of blades with their bare hands. Some Mothers of Magic fight back with their power, but none were prepared for this, and we are greatly outnumbered.
One woman is being pulled by her long, blond hair by a soldier who laughs as her heels dig into the ground to fight for purchase. I shiver at the thought of her fate.
So many bodies are scattered across the ground, and I whimper as I am forced to step over them. Lifeless eyes, staring but unseeing, become burned into my mind, along with the sensation of stepping barefoot into the warm pools of their sticky blood.
In my mind, I scream and I scream and I scream.
I reach for Aldrin and push the vision of everything I see. Everything I feel. I tell him over and over that Finan has taken me. To come and find me. I don’t know if he will hear me cry for him, but I can hope. It is all I can hold on to as my magic slowly slips away.
The lack of the power I have known my entire life feels like I am suffocating. Like I cannot drag in a full breath, only shallow pants that surely won’t sustain me.
I focus on the back of Diarmuid’s head and the glimpses I get of his face, and try to slow down the whirlpool of my mind at the chaos around me. I block out the cries of women and grunts of men. The metallic taste of blood on my lips and the scent of ash and burning flesh.
Most of all, I watch the blade at my brother’s throat with trained focus. The moment it slips away, even for a heartbeat, I will make a move.
I am not completely helpless without magic.
Finan clutches the base of my skull and turns my head, forcing me to look at the carnage. “This is your fault,” he murmurs close behind me. “Their deaths are on you, Keira. I shouldn’t have had to go to these lengths to get you back. Not when you belong with me.”
“Tell yourself whatever you need to, Finan,” I spit at him. “You are a murderer. An abuser. A kidnapper. I never belonged to you. We didn’t even commit to an engagement.” I thrust my elbow back sharply, connecting with his arm hard enough to make him swear and drop his hands from me. I wait for a blow to come from behind, but he seems to pause in his conviction for a moment.
The victory is short-lived when a crowd of guards surrounds us, and Finan grabs my wrist and drags me through the portal. My vision blurs from unshed tears as I leave the priestesses to their fate.
We step out into another sanctuary that is as still as a graveyard. There are bodies tossed everywhere, like discarded ragdolls. Their eyes stare and their limbs are thrown at odd angles. These women were innocent. They gave their all for this kingdom.
I can’t help the bile that rushes up my throat. I pull away from Finan’s weak grasp and fall to my knees, vomiting into a bush. From the corner of my eye, Jaxon whirls with the knife still at my brother’s throat, instinct telling him my fast motion was an attempt to flee.
I could break away from Finan. I could try to run, but all the hand-to-hand combat training I have had throughout my life can’t help me against this many guards. Besides, I can’t stop retching, emptying my stomach until there is nothing left.
Finan’s fingers dig into my shoulders as he tears me to my feet. “Get up. I know you have seen worse than this on a battlefield.”
He doesn’t understand, because he hasn’t been on a battlefield. This is different. So, so much worse.
I am led through the underworld that has become the sanctuary, the rushing of blood in my ears the only thing I can hear. It is not until we reach the edge of the gardens of tall, lush trees and carefully sculpted bushes that the sounds of a city waking up reach me. The clopping of hooves and boots on pavement. The low murmurs of voices and the scratch of metal on stone as the rollers on shopfronts are dragged open.
A royal carriage awaits just beyond the tall wall that surrounds the priestesses’ sanctuary in the capital city. It is a ridiculous-looking thing. So much of it is coated in gold—the spokes of the wheels, the axles, the frame of the cabin itself. The rest is in that deep purple I hate so much. The golden crown painted on the door turns my stomach.
A guard rushes to open the door for us, and Jaxon climbs in first with Diarmuid in tow. Another pair of armed guards enter before Finan pulls me in with him. I have lost the will to fight him. In this dark mood, he wouldn’t be above beating my kind, gentle brother within an inch of his life just to antagonize me.
Cold sweat drips down my back.
This cannot be my reality.
Being Finan’s prisoner again, forced back into the oppression of the royal family.
Finan talks to me for the entire brief carriage ride to the palace, making promises of the life he will give me, but the words rebound off my mind. This is not the life I want. Aldrin will never allow it. My father will storm this city to prevent it. I tell myself these things again and again as a sense of doom falls over me like a heavy black cloud.
We are yanked from the carriage and hauled through the palace. I stumble along the dimly lit corridors, desperately holding in the hysteric sobs that grow within me. The pressure builds to such an unbearable point that I struggle to drag in a breath through a closing-up windpipe.
Only Diarmuid’s constant presence keeps me sane. The long glances he gives me. The squeezes of my arm or hand whenever he can reach out to me. They say, We will get through this together.
Our party stops abruptly in a small, opulent hall with gilded walls and a great marble mosaic of a huge multi-pointed star beneath our feet. Finan grabs my chin tightly enough that it hurts and tears my gaze up to meet his blue eyes. They sparkle with predatory delight and a half-smile curls on his face. Then, quick as lightning, he forces a crushing kiss to my lips before I have a chance to rear back.
“I will see you tomorrow. Perhaps you will be more reasonable by then.” There is such arrogance in his words that I want to slap him. He turns and walks away.
I am still glaring at his back when a guard grabs me by the arm and tries to pull me along. I stumble and trip, caught by surprise, but he catches my fall.
“Don’t make this harder than it needs to be,” the man mutters. “I have orders, you see.”
He drags me toward one corridor leading off the small hall, and when I toss my head to look for Diarmuid, he is being dragged in the opposite direction. I cry out his name and try to reach for him, but I am overpowered as more guards converge on me.
I desperately scramble to summon my magic, but there is an impenetrable barrier around it.All my abilities are at my fingertips, but I can’t access the reservoir of raw power to fuel them.
“Let me go, you bastards!” Diarmuid yells as he frantically wrestles with the guard’s hold on him. “At least have the decency to imprison us together!”
His fight unleashes something feral in me. I stomp on the foot of the man who restrains me, then elbow him in the face. Dipping low, I kick another in the kneecap who throws out his arms to catch me. I take two running steps toward my brother, who thrashes at the multiple captors restraining him. One punches him in the face and it sets my blood boiling.
I plan the leap I will take to barrel into two of the guards, dislodging them from Diarmuid, but a guard from behind grabs me around the waist and slams me into the wall. The breath whooshes out of my lungs as my body rebounds off the stone, and I am left spluttering and wheezing.
My vision turns black as I struggle for air and my ears ring while my mind turns completely blank. I blink multiple times before the sensations of the outside world crash back into me. Diarmuid is further down that corridor, blood dripping from his nose.
If we could just get free, then we could…we could…do what? Go where, with a dozen guards on our heels?
“Please. Don’t separate us.” My voice is hoarse.
“I told you. We have our orders,” the first guard says.
I fall into a daze as I am dragged away from my brother and thrust into a dimly lit apartment. I stand just beyond the door, swaying on my feet and ready to drop, but a pair of maids already wait in the room, startling me when they move.
They take my hands, leading me with soothing words to a bathing chamber and into a brass tub filled with lukewarm water. It immediately turns pale red as dried blood diffuses from my skin into the water in swirling patterns. I hardly notice the maids as they scrub me with hard-bristled brushes, dress me in a nightgown, then tuck me into bed.
Sleep swallows me up, the darkness of oblivion wrapping tightly around me. Perhaps I will wake upand find none of this really happened.