21. Present Day
21
PRESENT DAY
Mendax
“ N o. I’m not leaving this realm until there is a leash attached to her throat and she is latched to my side.”
My fist slammed into the doughy gut of the dead Seelie hanging from the tree in front of me with an echoless thud. His headless body swayed back and forth in the cheery sunlight. It must’ve been the tenth Lumins guard I’d killed in half as many days. After killing the first one, chaos and panic rippled over the realm, but then nothing. They were either trying to keep it quiet and hide my arrival, or they were planning something knowing I was very much alive.
“Leave her, Mendax. Now. Are you really about to throw everything away in Unseelie for an Artemi? Afte what they did to our kind?” Queen Tenebris scolded. My mother shifted the black-feathered skirt of her ball gown, lifting it from the mossy forest floor with a look of pure disgust.
“I will never leave her. Human, Artemi, it makes no difference now; her only classification of concern is that she is mine,” I snarled as I clenched my fists, attempting to keep my rage in check.
“Fine. Grab the bitch and bring her back with you to fight the Fallen fae. She’ll die before you cross the front forest.” The dark queen opened her palm to let one of the many luna moths that had followed her through the portal land on her hand.
“She is a powerful enemy with deceit in her blood. Don’t you see? Either way, now Saracen has the advantage. Somehow the sneaky whore did it. Let’s say you do manage to find and restore her heart and powers. Who do you think she is going to use them against?” She stepped close to me, dropping the hand with the moth. “The man who is trying to tear down and murder the people she calls family? Or perhaps she will use her powers against one of the Smoke Slayers that is credited with forcing her entire race to die or go into hiding? Yes, that seems promising,” she said with a glare.
“I would harness that tongue of yours,” I stated as black-blue smoke clouded my feet. “Her reciprocation of my love is unneeded. I would never require her to hold the same attachments as myself because it is an impossible feat. I am possessed with a cruel and bloody love that collapses and suffocates, squeezes and rips until scars and bruises are the only traces left. She is the noose that hangs me, the rope that strangles and chokes at my soul, and no one — not her or anyone—could ever be left as breathless as I am.”
Queen Tenebris’s sharp blue eyes held pain before she closed them. Her raven-black hair was wrapped elaborately around the black crown on her head.
“That is the greatest downfall of a Smoke Slayer—once we feel our soul has chosen, we cannot exist without them in our grasp, no matter how undeserving they are. Believe me, I understand, but our souls are infantile and demonic. Have you learned nothing from what we went through with your father? How could I have not recognized her?” She was shouting now, her own ashy smoke pouring from her in a silent plea. “The Artemi are too powerful to be allowed to return. Unseelie will be the first thing she destroys.”
“You are the one who has left the castle while it’s under attack,” I growled back, frustration bleeding into my words.
“I left to retrieve you! This is exactly what Saracen wanted—to distract you while the Fallen take our castle. You’re an idiot, and not the son I raised, if you think for one moment she doesn’t know you are within her walls. With an empty throne and a tired queen, the Unseelie court has never seen a more vulnerable time, and here you are trying to bed the enemy!”
“Return to Unseelie. Tell Dirac to get his father’s army. They have the Ladon. We won’t require such measures against the Fallen, but it will send the desired message. At any rate, his father’s dragon will be heartily fed when he returns,” I said with a grin. That would terrify the Fallen.
My mother looked up, sadness in her eyes. “Mendax, the Fallen have gained control of the Lindwrym.”
“The Lindwrym? How?” I asked.
My skin itched with frustration. I cast a stream of smoke over my mother’s head sharply, breathing only when it cracked into a squirrel eating on a log behind us. With a small clap, it was consumed entirely by the black cloud.
I needed to kill something. Now.
“They have grown more powerful since you have been gone,” she whispered. “We think they are under new leadership.” She didn’t need to say who she thought could be behind it.
“Return to Unseelie. Do exactly as Dirac tells you, and for star’s sake, listen to his instructions if your powers are needed.” I turned to face the unsightly gold castle, only a speck in the distance. “I will return to Unseelie tonight. Caly will be safer in the Seelie realm, at least until I can find her heart.” Even as the words poured from my mouth, fury and pain rippled through me at the thought of leaving her here.
“Listen to me, you must find her heart and destroy it before she gets ahold of it and receives her powers, or I promise you, my son, she will ruin every piece of you there is left,” Queen Tenebris bit out with a stiff jaw.
“She already has.”
We nodded goodbye. Mother stepped into the ring of mushrooms and disappeared with a puff of smoke, and I started the walk back to the Seelie’s castle, killing every living thing that presented itself to me.
The thought of adding any amount of distance to what I already felt from my bonded made the splintery crumb of a soul I had ache. I couldn’t risk her death in Unseelie. If it was as bad as Mother made it out to be, Caly couldn’t be there without her powers. Still, I couldn’t bear to leave her here…unprotected. The goose bumps on my skin prickled with the need to violently slaughter something and release a fragment of the rage that burdened me.
Aurelius.
My pace quickened. I didn’t bother to shadow back, hoping the walk would make some of my impulsiveness ebb a bit. I didn’t care who saw me. It was vital that I feel his life slipping away under the force of my calloused hands. I needed him to be gone and away from her once and for all.
Fuck her for making me her fucking keeper.
I hoped that she had left the castle, because right now, I wanted to kill her too. She could wait for me just as easily in the netherworld of Tartarus. I wondered if they had officially marked her a Seelie royal or if she had enough Artemi in her that it would count; humans couldn’t go to Tartarus or the Elysian Fields, and I wasn’t going to run around trying to pull her out of human heaven or hell.
Was that a fucking eval?
The barbarous creature snarled at me. It was lucky I thought it was some new gargoyle when I passed it, or it’d be dead too. What the fuck was an eval doing at the front door of the Seelie castle?
I turned back around to look at the large animal for a minute, contemplating if I wanted the fight or not. It snarled at me, flashing its long teeth. It had an odd stare, one I’d swear I’d seen before. The creature stilled, growing as stiff as a statue.
I didn’t have enough time. I had people that needed to be killed.
Servants screamed as I charged into the entrance, the giant double doors slamming loudly when I pushed past them and continued down the hall. It didn’t matter who saw me. What could they do? She was the only one who could ever hurt me.
Platters and trays clanged to the floor, the cymbals in a terror-stricken orchestra. There would be no more lurking in the Seelie castle now, but I didn’t care. It was beyond my abilities to care about anything but her.
Screams pierced the still air of the castle from every direction. The harsh light pelting my face only fed my irritation. Apparently the walk to the castle hadn’t helped calm my rage. I couldn’t recall a time I had ever needed to make something hurt and bleed as much as I did right now.
A door shut with a crash at the end of the hallway near Caly’s room, and the man himself stepped out, looking around for the cause of the excitement. He didn’t look surprised to see me, which meant that my Caly had already told him. I hoped she’d told him how hard I’d fucked her on his throne too.
Not a word was said before we each took off, running head-on toward the other. This—the fighting of our worlds and the weight that rested on us as the sons of enemy families—had long ago reared its ugly head, but this—this was different. Both of us would destroy the realms for her if she let us, but it would be impossible until the other man was gone. Forever.
Aurelius was too strong a fae to impel, or I could have made easy work of him. As it was, I was filled with so much hostility, all I wanted in this life was to destroy him with my own hands.
We slammed into one other, each throwing a punch. Both of us had been highly trained, but none of it showed through as we hurled ourselves at one another. Dents and cracks sequined the walls and doors as the brawl moved into the smoking room.
“Let Calypso be. You are no good for her,” the golden prince shouted. He moved around me too quickly, tackling me around the waist and slamming me into the wall. Gypsum and wood sprinkled and fell around us. I landed a punch to his side, feeling the bones of my knuckles connect with his ribs.
“And you are what she needs, huh? That goddess is a serrated wraith of darkness just waiting to be fed. She’s not some dumb embellishment, made to pump out heirs and go dancing with. You don’t even see the darkness inside her. She was made for me and me alone.” I grunted, taking a rather strong hit to my stomach.
“I will not let you near her, Mendax. She doesn’t know this world. She doesn’t understand what a cretin you are. But I do. You are just like your father, and I will take a sword to my neck before I let you hurt and manipulate Calypso like Thanes did to my mother!” he snarled before he elbowed me in the face.
I didn’t know or care what it was his mother told him about how the Fallen were created. He would never understand what his mother had done like I did. He was a pampered, spoiled child. He had no involvement with any of it.
I, on the other hand, had been forced to take the life of a man I loved and looked up to more than anyone. I had been a part of it.
I would never say that I was nothing like my father because that was a lie. I was very much like him. I just wasn’t as obvious.
In the many, many times the Seelie prince and I had fought, not one of those times had he fought me as hard as he was now.
I laughed softly, feeling the blood trickle from my split lip. “How is daddy Felix? Still rotting in the grave where your mother put him?” I ducked, barely missing the ball of sunfire that ignited the wall a few feet behind us. “Perhaps you should be more concerned with how close she is to your mother. Calypso probably holds more poison and hate in her veins than I do,” I bit out through clenched teeth. I punched him in the eye so hard, he fell back into the wall, knocking a tall shelf of books to the ground.
He rose with a scowl. “I don’t know what rumors muck around in Unseelie, but my father was poisoned by the maid, you dense, gullible candle,” he said, panting.
Aurelius’s warm-shit-colored eyes told me he was telling the truth. He had no idea what had really happened. I knew Saracen had lied to her realm, telling them my mother and father had forced her, which had started the big rift between Seelie and Unseelie, but I figured her own kids would know the truth. I almost felt bad for how witless Aurelius and his sister were.
Almost.
My wings made a soft creak at my back as they extended as wide as they were able.
Aurelius’s own wings widened in return. His hand glowed orange with light as he pushed it to block my smoke.
I shadowed to his side, catching him off guard. He burned my chest with a quick blast of light as my smoke wrapped around him like a snake, binding his arms and legs in a suffocating cocoon. He burst with light as he fought and struggled against the smoke, falling to the floor behind the leather sofa.
“Leave her alone, Mendax! You touch a freckle on her, and I swear to suns I’ll?—”
“You’ll what?” I taunted as I gripped his throat. His pulse quickened under my hand. Once he was gone, Calypso would learn who she belonged to. “You’ll do nothing because you’ll be dead, annoying someone else in the Elysian Fields.”
Aurelius’s eyes widened as if he just remembered something of importance.
My knuckles bent and my fingers folded, excited to feel his heroic gleam finally extinguishing under my grip. She was mine .
“Stop! Wait, you can’t kill me! Wait! Please?—”
I pursed my lips and blew out a puff of black smoke that trailed across his mouth, cutting off his petulant whines. Of course he would be a whiney, weak fae at the end. That shouldn’t surprise me.
“Tell me,” I croaked, “how do you make her laugh? I don’t want her to lose that.” The smoke dissipated from his mouth at my command.
He gasped, “You can’t do it! I’m tied to her, Mendax. I’m tied to Caly. I did it to heal her in Unseelie. If you kill me now, you will kill my girl!”
I recoiled, glaring at him in disbelief. I could feel myself going off the edge of sanity.
“No!” I roared, smashing his face into my knee. “You can’t?—”
“I can and I did. Caly is Artemi, but she has no powers…well, only a tiny amount. I tied my life to hers in Unseelie,” he spat, getting the words out as fast as he could. “After you fucking tried to kill her, you piece of shit. You nearly killed my wife!” he shouted with renewed anger as he continued to fight the constraints of smoke around him.
My knuckles cracked across his cheekbone, leaving a smear of golden blood to trail over his tan face. “She is not your wife!” I shouted as the blood pounded through me.
I had to step away from him. I was going to do something I couldn’t undo, and I could not lose her.
“Aaarrrrggghhh!” I thundered. A shock wave of my power shook the room.
The door banged open, and icy relief doused my hot skin. Whoever was at the door would be taking every drop of rage I had hoped to relieve with Aurelius. They were about to be in a lot of pain.
Walter’s shaggy, brown hair popped into the doorframe.
“Mendax! They have alerted the Lumins Army. They are coming for you!” he shouted.
“Good, let them come. My need for relief will likely not be satisfied until I drain the blood of an entire army.”
“You ogre! It’s not you I worry about. Caly loves Prince Aurelius, Mendax. She has been through more than the both of you will ever understand, and she doesn’t deserve this. She has her own reasons for being in Seelie, and if you get in her way, she will retaliate. She already hates you,” Walter stated, glancing to Aurelius, tied up with ropes of smoke on the marble floor.
“So you think you understand her better than we do, better than me? Huh, shifter?” I said through clenched teeth.
How much more could a person take? Was this what love was? I wanted to rip my own heart out and put a blade through it.
“I think that I’m the only one here thinking about her and not myself.” Walter narrowed his eyes at me. “You have alerted the entire castle that you are alive and that she was unsuccessful in killing you. As far as Seelie is concerned, Caly never completed her task of allegiance and has betrayed the entire realm, and the ones she calls family here. You just doomed the woman you claim to love.”
“It seems you have an awful lot of adoration for someone that is not yours, brother.” I’m not even certain I said the words out loud before I had him tied in twin ropes of smoke, lying on the floor next to Aurelius.
They both wriggled and strained against their cocoons as I stood over them.
I commanded the smoke to adjust them until they were leaned against the edge of the love seat. My glare attempted to burn a hole through their heads as I tied the ropes tightly behind their backs, restrained legs in front of them.
I needed out of here before I murdered them all. Too much rage still boiled under my skin. I was going to combust if I didn’t get it out. Now.
“Apparently, there is still a question of who Calypso belongs to,” my rough voice grated out.
Racing heartbeats roiled like a symphony in my head as I walked out the door, leaving Prince Puppet and Walter bound and gagged in the smoking room.
The thud of my boots reverberated across the hallway.
A collection of poorly armored Lumin guards at the far end froze upon seeing me.
I grinned at them and opened my hands, sending a barrage of smoke into the air that twisted and morphed until it formed three antlered wendigos of smog. The demon creatures overtook the guards, easily ripping and tearing into the weak-armored fae.
Screams and grunts rang out around me as I walked, a tendril of rage trailing after me.
I shouldn’t be near her yet, but I needed to see her before I left.
My mind strained under the pulsing rage. I whispered out a shield barring anyone from entering the hallway. It wouldn’t hold for long, but I didn’t need much time.
I shadowed into Calypso’s room.