Chapter 10
Chapter
Ten
~ Princess Blake ~
I ’m woken by the roar of the crowd. The cries of thousands fill my ears, and I groan as I lift myself up. Grains of golden sand filter through my fingers, streaming from my hair and clothes. My nose itches, and I sneeze as I stagger to my feet, my head throbbing.
“Shade?” Panic sets in, but I spot my crow on the ground seconds later, her body half-buried in sand. Dropping down, I ignore the pain in my head and lift her into my hands.
She stirs, shaking the sand off her feathers. “Well, it’s official. Angels are just as deranged as demons, because this move seems like it was straight out of the demon king’s playbook.”
“You scared me,” I tell her.
“Enchantress?” Alaric’s growl is faint, almost drowned out by the din of the crowd, but it’s enough that I turn my head in his direction. The assassin lifts himself from the ground a few yards from me. He shakes his head, as if to clear it.
I blink, bleary-eyed back at him, and then I turn, searching for the others. My mates are on the sand, all of us separated a few yards from one another. Alaric was the first to wake after me, and Mason is next.
“My mate!” the centaur shifter calls, struggling to right himself. He staggers toward me, but Alaric remains where he is, his gray gaze going to our surroundings.
The others stir as well, and I copy Alaric, turning my gaze to the giant amphitheater we’re in. There are too many rows of angels to count, the curved seating area stretching high into the sky. Some of the angels laugh, bumping one another with excitement, but just as many sit there with dark expressions.
I spin until I spot the royal box, and the golden throne where Queen Vespera smiles down at us. Beside her, Mirelle sits on a smaller but no less lavish throne, the smooth gold of the chair inlaid with sparkling stones.
The sight of the royals sickens me. The queen should be concerned with the fight against the witches. Not busy toying with us.
“I wonder why Prince Callan never mentioned her?” Shade asks, now perched on my shoulder, and I guess that she’s referring to the princess.
“He never mentioned a lot of things,” I reply simply, the wound from the prince’s betrayal still a gaping hole inside me. I knew he was an asshole, but I hadn’t expected this from him.
My gaze goes to the archangel prince who stands a few yards from me on the arena floor, but he doesn’t look at me. He keeps his gaze fixed on the royals. On his sister.
“We shall get out of this, my mate,” Mason says, now beside me in a fighting stance. “I’ve seen worse.”
My lips thin, and I can’t stop staring at Prince Callan. When we’d first met, I’d known he was a dud mate, but this is so much worse than I’d anticipated. “So much for Lady Fate knowing what she’s doing when she made our matches,” I grumble to Shade.
For once, the crow doesn’t have a witty comeback. She merely says, “Blake. Where’s Nate?”
My head snaps to the side as I realize I’d miscounted my mates, and my shifter isn’t anywhere around us. Fuck.
A horn blares, and the angels in the amphitheater quieten, all attention going to Queen Vespera.
The angel queen smiles down at me and my mates. “How delighted we are that you have finally decided to join us,” she says, her shrill voice somehow amplified and ringing throughout the enormous space.
Dante and Mason both stand with me now, and Dante’s tail flicks as he stares at the queen with hatred, his burnt hand still raw, though the flesh is finally starting to heal.
“Where’s Nate?” I yell.
Queen Vespera smiles wickedly. “Well now, I couldn’t make it too easy, could I?” She motions to someone behind her, and the ground beneath our feet starts to tremble. My mates and I move back as the sand shifts in the middle of the arena, and from below, a giant cage rises, the thick golden bars alight with white fire.
I gasp when I spot Nate trapped inside. The shifter is suspended upside down, held by a chain that hangs from the top of the cage. Golden barbed wire covers his entire body, the metal slowly moving as if it were dozens of golden snakes, and a thick layer of clouds covers the bottom of the cage.
No!
Dante lets out a stream of curses beside me.
“Now that you’ve agreed to this little competition, it seems only fair that I create a game befitting the daughter of the demon king,” Queen Vespera says, tapping her long nails on the armrest of her throne.
“You’re playing a dangerous game,” I warn her. “I may have agreed to fight for my mate, but my death could still result in a war.”
The queen sneers. “Your father already played a dangerous game by luring some of my best archangels into that pathetic competition of his. Then he had the indecency to come here, advising me to call on the allied realms for aid when Toralyn is easily the strongest realm of all five.”
My stomach twists, because the queen isn’t entirely wrong. King Dalton had made some angels lose their lives, all so I could find my mates. The angels may have come to the ball willingly, but if they’d known about the competition they might have stayed away. “He came here to help and to warn you about the witches and their plans.”
“Your father is a fool, and he spouts the idea of unity after wasting innocent lives,” Queen Vespera spits. “And now justice must be served.”
“Then take it up with the demon king,” Alaric growls. “Or are you in the habit of convicting innocents yourself?”
“Unfortunately, murdering the demon king would have dire consequences, though I had been weighing my options when you so happened to walk into my palace,” the queen replies, giving me a gleeful smile.
“So, this has nothing to do with Nate,” I say coldly.
“Oh, let’s not get confused,” she replies. “The thief must die for attempting to kidnap my daughter. But you know the saying…two birds and all that.”
I scowl.
There’s a muffled sound, and I turn to where Nate is still hanging. One of the wires is wrapped around his mouth, and when he tries to speak, it makes shallow cuts in his skin. The queen flicks her hand in the air, and the clouds below Nate dissipate. Hundreds of gold-tipped scorpions come into view, crawling around the base of the cage.
Alaric growls in the back of his throat.
“How bad are they?” I ask him.
“Those are creatures made of magic. One of the assassins in the order got his hands on one once,” Alaric explains. “He intended to use the creature on his next target, but somehow, he got himself stung. Their venom targets the magic in our blood and will inflict a true death. They found him the next day, nothing but a husk of the male he was.”
“So, it’s really bad then,” I say, nodding like it’s no big deal.
The chain fastening Nate to the top of the cage rattles and starts to lower. It’s moving incredibly slowly in small increments, but it’s enough for me to realize Queen Vespera’s intentions.
“One day I will be queen,” I tell her. “We could be forging an alliance rather than battling as enemies.”
“An alliance?” Queen Vespera laughs. “Your father didn’t care much about that when he took my angels, but if you defeat my soldiers and survive this, perhaps we can discuss it. Free your shifter, and in turn save yourselves, and I might even call on the allied realms after all.”
Dante and I share a look, his midnight blue eyes piercing into me. “We can do this, princess,” he says casually, though his body is rigid.
I don’t bother to entertain the thought that the queen might actually let us walk. I’ve been around enough psychos in my life to know the queen doesn’t intend to let us leave here alive. After all this fanfare and her admission about wanting justice for my father and Nate’s crimes, she knows there’s only one real way that I’m leaving here. And it’s if I take her head from her body. Something she has no intention of letting me do.
Nate lowers another inch, and the queen clucks her tongue. “Better hurry now, your highness .”
I let a breath out through my nose and think of the different rules Dad taught me when I was young. Rule number one: Never show weakness; Rule number two: Never show mercy; and Rule number three…Never surrender.
At least fifty angels swoop down from the open space in the middle of the stadium, and they land in perfect formation, their boots slamming to the sand as they form a long line to one side of the arena. Dressed in gleaming battle armor, they face us, their helmets pulled low, and their wings flared out behind them.
Nate growls, trying to struggle against his binds, but the golden wire only tightens, trails of blood trickling from various places on his body.
“He can’t shift,” Alaric growls. “The wire will only tighten as he tries to change.”
Mason, Alaric, and Dante move with me, the four of us taking up battle stances, but Prince Callan stands apart, that lost expression still on his face.
“And what about your son?” I say, staring down the queen’s angels. “You would condemn him so easily?”
“He never wanted to follow the path I set out for him,” Queen Vespera replies. “And I’ve grown tired of having to manage his…outbursts. I have long since known that he worked with the shifter to try and organize my daughter’s kidnapping, and she is worth one-hundred sons. Prince Callan chose his fate long ago.”
“She knew?” Prince Callan mutters under his breath, his gaze finding his sister again.
My mind works as I struggle to understand. Struggle to fill in the missing pieces of Prince Callan’s story. I think of the recording we’d heard of Prince Callan getting tortured. The sound of the flickering flames is still vivid in my mind along with the voice of his sister…urging him to tell the queen about Nate. To blame it all on the shifter. I’d thought the sister was trying to help him, but those flames…was she the one burning him?
Nate lowers another inch, and I know the time for words is over.
“We’re with you, princess,” Mason says beside me, and he shifts, turning into his winged centaur form.
The queen’s eyes widen with surprise, and the crowd goes wild, none of them having seen his kind before.
Dante winks at me. “Let’s show this bitch queen how demons fight.” And he disappears, becoming invisible.
Queen Vespera leans back on her throne, a pleased smile on her face.
Prince Callan wrenches his gaze from his sister and turns, finally coming up beside me. “There will be a barrier around the royal box,” he says, though I hadn’t asked the question. “And the archangel soldiers will all have a protective shield around them, too. I’d have to be within arms-length of them to use my magic.”
I move my feet, adjusting my stance. “And why should I believe a word you say?”
“You shouldn’t,” he replies simply, and he runs out ahead of me.
I want to shout at him. To curse him for betraying us, but the archangels descend on our position, fanning out, and we need all the help we can get.
“Always knew you’d never amount to anythin’, prince,” an archangel spits as he sends out a burst of water magic, aiming it for Prince Callan’s head. Prince Callan jumps into the air and spins, tucking in his wings as he easily avoids the blast. In a few motions, he’s grabbed the archangel’s sword and has knocked the soldier out.
Half of the crowd boos while the other half cheers, as if they’re all just as confused as we are.
“Kill him!” the queen shouts.
Another archangel cries out, his head taken, and though I can’t see him, I know it’s Dante’s doing.
Electricity zaps into the air from a soldier somewhere to my left, and Alaric snarls, a blow hitting his shoulder before he manages to take the soldier down. More soldiers run at him, but Alaric gives them a dark smile, and his body starts to shift, growing until he’s in his giant form, an incredible mass that looms over us. He stomps around the sands swiping at the soldiers. With one blow, he throws an archangel at the royal box, and the archangel smacks into an invisible barrier not far from the queen’s position before falling to the ground.
Queen Vespera glowers at us, and more archangels descend from the sky above.
Three archangels circle me, and I have two down in a matter of seconds. The third lifts his hand and a dozen sand monsters materialize around me. Mason and I cut through them, moving quickly, before I take the archangel’s head.
One by one we spill blood, carving our way through the archangels. Shade flies from my shoulder watching from above and commentating on the activity. By the time all the queen’s archangels are down, I stand there covered in blood, my chest heaving. I don’t let myself think about the waste of life. At the fact that these soldiers would have been better used defending against the witches. This is the queen’s doing and there’s nothing I can do about that.
Going by the way her face is contorted with anger, I’m guessing Queen Vespera had expected this to be a much easier fight for her angels.
I turn my gaze to the cage. Nate still hasn’t reached the scorpions, and I send a thank you to Lady Fate. All right, now we just need to get him free. I take a step toward my shifter mate, but the instant I do, multiple doors on the side of the arena open, and more archangel’s march onto the sand.
The smug smile is back on the queen’s face, and I know what she’s doing. The queen simply wants to keep me busy for long enough that Nate dies. Once that happens, she knows I’ll be weakened. That the loss of my fated mate will likely distract me enough that she’ll be able to take me down.
Never surrender. The words sound in my head.
Gritting my teeth, I fight the closest archangel, throwing him over my head, and finishing him with my blade through his throat. Two more archangels come at me from behind, but Mason gallops to meet them, grabbing a discarded spear from the ground and throwing it into one of the archangel’s chests, then descending on the other soldier.
In the cage, Nate drops lower. We’re running out of time. Taking a deep breath, I close my eyes and call to them. I can feel them around me, their tiny hearts beating in my mind. There are thousands of them, and they fly from the forest, the tops of the buildings, and the bridges along the waterways. The sky darkens as birds descend toward the stadium, thousands of wings beating at once, and the sound a steady hum in my ears. The fighting pauses as everyone looks up, craning their necks to see what’s above.
Opening my eyes, I lift my gaze to the royal box, expecting to see the queen cowed, but that smug smile is still there, pulling her lips even tighter. Immediately, I know something isn’t right. And then Mirelle lifts her hand. No! No! Oh, Lady No!
My heart slams against my ribcage as streams of white fire race up the walkways of the amphitheater, curving up, racing higher with every second.
Go back! Please, please go back! I scream in my mind, trying to warn them. Trying to save my birds. I tell them to fly away from the amphitheater, but some of them are already too close and they swoop down.
Stretching out my wings, I launch into the air, spearing straight up. I flap my wings hard, pushing my muscles to get to them.
Shade stares at me as she flaps in the air, panicked. “No Blake, you can’t!”
But I have to try. They’re here because of me. I’ve lost birds during battle before, but not this many. Thousands of the birds are still descending, still trying to get to me and answer the call I’d put out.
“Stop, my mate!” Mason calls, launching into the air behind me, but I only flap my wings harder, rising higher, racing Mirelle’s fire.
“Sister, no!” Prince Callan’s rough voice is a guttural plea to the princess.
“I said go back! Please, go back! Why aren’t you listening?” I scream in my head as Mirelle’s fire keeps climbing.
Alaric reaches up, as if to grab some of my birds. To pull them to safety.
I’m almost to them, almost to the top of the amphitheater, but her magic is too fast. Flames curve around the top of the amphitheater, creating a wall of fire in front of me and Alaric, and I only just manage to stop in time, heat blasting my face as I curve to the side, inches from the flames.
I hear as they fly into it, their little bodies sizzling as they impact with the fire, and their squawks and cries fill my head. My birds turn to ash in seconds, and the flakes rain down on us, the ash so thick it’s like snowfall.
“Oh god, Blake,” Shade’s voice trembles in my mind.
I lift my palms to the sky, cupping my hands like I’m still hoping to catch them. To save them, but the only thing around me is death.
“Selfish. I was so fucking selfish to call them here.”
“It’s not your fault,” Shade counters. “You can’t have known that would happen.”
“They still came here because of me.”
The angels in the stands are silent as the ash falls, the amphitheater a haze of gray flakes.
Cackling comes from the royal box, and the queen’s laughter is like a spark that ignites the fury inside me. I turn to the angel ruler, and the scream that comes from me is a raw, guttural, wounded sound. I’m not sure what happens next. One moment, I’m focused on the anger, drowning in sorrow for the birds, and the next a cold calm settles over me.
Yes, just like that. Let me in, little demon. An ancient voice speaks in my mind, but I don’t have time to realize what its presence might mean. Power builds within me, filling my every pore, and tattoos appear on my body. Only, instead of my tattoos that shine with golden light when I’m with my mates, the intricate lines are like black tar against my skin.
I don’t question it. I direct the dark power inside me toward Queen Vespera, and she’s helpless to stop it. Dark power erupts from me, spearing through the magical barrier around the royal box, and it takes the queen, climbing down her throat until she explodes, becoming a mess of blood and bone.
Mirelle jerks her head, the princess staring at her mother in shock, and I fall from the sky, crippling exhaustion making me drop like a stone.
Down. Down. Down, I fall, the air whistling by my ears and tearing at my wings.
Shade screams in my head, and then there are strong arms around me. Mason.
He flies down, landing on the arena floor, but he doesn’t let me go. The queen’s remaining archangels don’t move around the arena. They merely watch us from a distance, confused now that their ruler has been slain.
“Blake!” I feel Dante’s hands on me now as well, and Alaric is nearby in his smaller form again, his scent of dark chocolate in my nose. The dark power that had been inside me moments before is now completely gone, and slowly, my energy begins to return.
“We’ve got you, princess.” Dante’s voice is soothing, though worry shines in his dark eyes.
Prince Callan’s gaze is full of regret, and he stands near me, but he doesn’t approach.
There’s a muffled cry, and it’s only then that I remember the cage. “Nate!” I’d thought when I killed the queen he would be spared and whatever magic was tied to the cage would be broken, but my shifter is mere inches from the scorpions now. They gather beneath him, their golden tails glinting. White flames still cover the bars of the cage, and my gaze connects with Prince Callan’s.
“Sister!” Prince Callan calls out. “Release him! It’s over.”
Dante gives me a look like he’s reluctant to leave my side, but I struggle from Mason’s arms, and we all move into action, circling the cage and looking for a way to get Nate out. The golden wire is still wrapped around the shifter, but the fire on the bars is the first barrier. Nate struggles more, and blood drips from where the wire has cut into his skin.
Mirelle flies from the royal box, landing on the sand of the arena a few paces away from us.
And she smiles.