17. Present Day

17

PRESENT DAY

Mendax

I nside the Seelie castle, I paused to kick the marble pedestal below the statue, knocking over the bust of some ancient, dead Seelie. My wings quivered as I walked down the hall to Caly’s room. Neon sun bounced off my black cloak. The statue behind me toppled onto the marble floor with a crash as I continued my stroll toward my pet’s chamber.

No glamour concealed me now. I was bored of hiding, and I was sick of this place.

I stopped abruptly outside of Prince Fuckhead’s to take a hard look at the white-wood door of his room. He would be in there. Everyone in the castle was asleep. I knew because I had watched them all.

Ever since following Caly to this reprehensible place, I had watched everyone in the castle. How else was I to learn what their level of pain would be when they died?

Everyone would die. The more they were involved in hurting my Caly, the more they would suffer. The ones who made her leave me would hurt so fiercely, so relentlessly, their ghosts would weep for an eternity.

I heard nothing from inside the fae’s room.

Aurelius confused me. Caly seemed to actually like him, even be close with him.

For that alone, he would suffer severely.

I’d never had feelings like this before. I didn’t know what to do with them, but I did know even the most minuscule thought of her finding joy in the company of another male made me yearn to pull the veins from someone.

I was also struggling to figure out exactly how involved with this he was. He was spineless and weak, always had been, mostly doing what his mother told him to like a good little marionette as she pulled the strings. Oddly enough though, I’d seen him lie several times to his mother in defense of Caly.

The Seelie prince had a bigger target on his head than the others. Sometimes, he made her smile—the only reason I hadn’t killed him already was because he made her smile and laugh like no one else…including myself.

In my wildest dreams, I couldn’t have imagined the beauty that emanated from her face when she smiled. It started deep in her devious blue eyes as an innocent sparkle, but before I could even prepare for it, the laughter emerged, happy and rapturous. Three lines formed at the edges of her eyes. Four would collect on her left side if she was exceedingly happy. If she didn’t try to stop the smile and pulled her lower lip into her mouth, then her nose would wrinkle just above the cluster of freckles shaped like the Tardeki stars.

I wanted to make her smile like that.

My queen smiled a lot around Aurelius. Therefore, I found myself divided between watching him bleed out or watching him make her smile more. I would ascertain what it was that made Caly smile, and then I could kill him.

I let out an impatient breath and continued walking to her room.

As it stood, I doubted I would be able to end the night without killing him. Unlike him, I was not soft and gentle, and it was probably best if my pet learned that now. She would most assuredly be easier to make smile after she cried anyway.

I stilled outside of her door, hearing a quiet shuffle on the other side—there were two heartbeats.

I ground my teeth together, and my jaw popped.

One heartbeat was quiet, but the other pounded fast—someone angry and full of adrenaline.

He is fucking dead.

If Aurelius touched her with his breath, I would sever his wings and cave in his skull.

Hurrying, I closed my eyes and shadowed inside of her bedroom.

It was quiet. Still.

The room was dark now that the blinds she had made covered the windows. I smiled at how much she liked the darkness. I was about to give her every morsel of darkness she needed.

Caly was lying on the bed with her hair in a messy knot on top of her head. Her eyes were closed, and the blankets pulled up under her chin. She was asleep.

On the bed to her left, the covers were pushed back and showed a large, man-sized imprint.

My back strained and jerked with force as my wings shot out. The tips of my fingers tingled. I twisted around, knowing he was in here.

Already the smoke and flesh of my body fought. The smoke was the victor, as always. I let the darkness take me and familiar inky-black smoke rose, the hood of my cloak shadowing me even further.

I hoped he pissed himself when he saw me.

I released a displeased growl when I didn’t see him in the room. I knew he was there—I could feel his angry heart pounding.

I snapped my head in the other direction as something slammed into the center of my back, knocking me down. Tangled in my cloak, it took me a second too long to rise. Aurelius, apparently having shifted into his fox form, took the opportunity to sink his teeth into my side.

From under the cloak, I shadowed, leaving both it and my shirt behind, and rematerialized a few feet away. He and I had fought one another many times, but not once had he fought me shifted.

I cracked my neck and urged my smoke out, ready to suffocate the bastard, when I saw the massive gray wolf snarling at me from atop my abandoned cloak.

It was Walter, my cousin and friend from Unseelie.

“What in—” I began.

Walter sprang at me as a snarl ripped from his chest. I fell back into the wall, feeling his teeth around my throat. I grinned. “Go on then, get it free from your system, shifter. I deserve worse for leaving you in this Seelie rat nest so long. No pun intended, of course.”

I shoved the wolf from my chest, noting the way he purposefully drug his nails across my bare chest as he went.

He shifted in a blur, transforming himself into the large fae I had grown up with.

“You dropped me off the roof of our fucking castle! You piece of shit,” he ground out with nearly the same growl as his wolf’s.

His furious brown eyes ripped into me. At well over six feet tall, Walter wasn’t a small fae. We had trained together since we were kids, and I knew that he could still get a blow in if he wanted to. He was one of the few that could.

“Get over it. I knew there was a portal there,” I said, stepping into him. “Why are you in Caly’s room?” I asked, feeling my anger flare again.

“Leave. Now,” he bit out, stepping into me.

What the fuck?

“Listen, I’m certain you’ve been the scary bad boy to all the Seelie ladies, must’ve been nice to be feared for a change.” I pressed my chest into his. I was still a few inches taller. “But if you try and get in between me and my pet, you may as well have died because I’m going to kill you,” I said, giving a small shove to his chest.

My neck cracked, my head whipping back when Walter landed his punch square on my jaw. I could feel the dimples in my cheeks popping with my smile. “Do that again, Walter. I dare you,” I whispered, tilting my head at him.

“I know you could and obviously would kill me, Mendax. But you are going to have to if you want to get to Caly. I’m sorry, but I won’t let you hurt her anymore. I don’t know what happened after I left, and I can’t fathom how she managed to get away from you. I imagine it must’ve been bad, considering you entered Seelie to kill her?—”

“I need her, Walter. I’m inescapably in love with her.”

His mouth fell open as he stepped back.

“She isn’t who you think she is. She killed me. She’s magnificent,” I said, feeling the creases tug at my eyes as they always did whenever I thought about her darkness.

“She what?”

“Well, she thought she killed me until earlier today,” I said as Walter nodded, his mouth hanging open again.

“You mean you know what she is? How?” he asked, the shock clear on his face.

“Of course I know she’s an assassin. I knew it the whole time. If you recall, I’m the one she tried to assassinate,” I grumbled.

“No, that’s not what I—” He shook his head.

“We bonded, Walter. She will be my queen as soon as we go home to Unseelie. First, she wants to get the other half of her heart.”

“That’s not what I me?—”

But my thin patience was nearly gone. “She is mine, Walter. That is the only thing you need to understand. Take her with you to Unseelie tonight. She may fight it, but I will take out the Lumin guard stationed at the portal and get you two out. I need you back at the castle as soon as possible. I dislike leaving Mother alone with all of the Fallen’s recent activity?—”

“Mendax, no,” Walter interrupted, surprising me. “Caly, she’s…she’s Artemi.” His eyes were as big as plates.

My entire body went cold. “No, she?—”

“She is not human, Mendax. She is a fucking Artemi.”

“It’s impossible,” I answered immediately. “We would have known. Alistair would have…” But I trailed off, recalling my panther friend’s declaration that he couldn’t understand it, but he wouldn’t harm her.

“They are holding half her heart hostage—the half with her powers. That’s why my shifted form is so drawn to her,” he added.

She couldn’t be Artemi. That meant?—

“I found Versipellis at the docks. Remember, the old Seer who runs the apothecary in town? The cat shifter who was close with Alistair? Well, that smart old lady sold me as a pet?—”

Something sharp whipped across my cheek at the same time something cracked into my stomach with such force it sent me to the floor. I felt the cold, black blood drip from my cheek as I shadowed a few feet away from the attack.

Caly stood next to a stunned Walter in her plaid sleep shorts and white T-shirt, braced and ready for a fight. She instantly refocused on me when I reappeared, adjusting her stance and raising her tiny weapon as she prepared to charge at me.

Holy Tartarus below. I had never been so fucking excited in all my life.

“Weird. In all our catching up tonight, Caly, you somehow forgot to mention that you two are in love.” Walter smiled, shifting glances between the two of us. “I wouldn’t have snuggled you so much had I known.”

A deep rumble ripped from my chest. He had snuggled her?

“ He is in love,” she snapped at Walter. “I hate him! He’s been following me, scaring the wits out of me!”

She charged at me, moving my arm and stabbing her curved karambit deep into my side.

“Fuck, that hurt!” I bellowed. I kicked her legs out from under her, and she fell to the ground with a growl.

Walter sighed and rolled his eyes. “I’m going to leave you two to work this out while I search the castle for her heart. I’m drawn to her powers as a pure shifter, so I will have a better chance of finding it than you two anyway,” he said as he shifted into his rat form and scurried over to the door with a squeak.

I walked over to the door to open it, but Caly had somehow gotten there first and wrenched it open, smashing it into my head and splintering the wood.

Fucking Kaohs, I wanted her.

“You are detestable!” she exclaimed.

Walter scurried down the hall, while Caly took off in the opposite direction.

“Running to your golden boyfriend, huh? He won’t be able to keep you from me,” I goaded, stalking after her with thundering steps. “Go on then, love, make it easy for me to slaughter him. Shall we do it together? Our first couples activity?”

She stopped dead in her tracks.

It gave me enough time to grab her around the waist and throw her over my shoulder. My hand squeezed her round ass cheek before slapping it as hard as I could.

She yelled, then blasted the back of my knees with her fists, forcing me to fall to the floor.

“I thought you were dead. I thought I killed you,” she said shakily before she punched me in the face.

I scowled at her. I was trying to be gentle with her, but I could only restrain my temper for so long. She was mine, whether she liked it or not. Whether she liked me or not. “And I thought you were human. Still, I will not be without you,” I said, prodding my jaw with one hand while the other held her ankle tight as she tried to squirm away.

I released her ankle for a fraction of a second as I stood.

Before I could grab her again, she rolled out of my reach and leaped to her feet with the grace of a fucking cat. “I’m not going anywhere with you, you psycho,” she said, taking a step toward me.

Never had I witnessed her in such a striking, undisguised manner as she was now.

I needed to touch her.

I shadowed in front of her and pushed her back against the wall. My bare chest rubbed against her thin T-shirt, and I shuddered, nearly crying out with joy at the feeling of touching her again.

“You will come with me, pet. It isn’t an option, and we both know you don’t really want it to be.” I leaned down until my face was barely half an inch from hers and closed my eyes. I needed the feel of her in front of me. I needed her lips.

Caly bashed her head into my face. She grabbed ahold of my arm and twisted it so hard, it would have snapped like a twig had they been weaker human bones.

My love was out for blood, and I would give it to her.

My smoke shot out to grab her, but she had already started to run down the hallway.

“I don’t belong in Unseelie with you. I need to be here,” she cried, running down the stairs two at a time.

I was so close to her, I could smell her lavender shampoo as I stalked behind her.

“You belong with me. In the Elysian Fields with Aether or the depths of Tartarus with Kaohs—you will always be mine. Always.”

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