Chapter 35
Tenebrys didn't hesitate for a moment. He lifted Delphi in his arms and barked orders to the shifters.
"We have humans incoming, and Delphi says there is other magic in the woods," he called.
As one, all the joking smiles faded, and they closed in, alert and ready. "Felix, run the ward line and check that no one is going to try to come in behind us. The rest of us will head to the main road in."
Eiran glanced at Delphi. "Kesari, she should go inside where she will be safer."
"No way. They are coming for me, and I need to meet them. Maybe if I tell Narcisse to fuck off, he might actually listen," Delphi argued. "They can't get through the wards anyway."
Tenebrys struggled internally for a long moment before relenting. "Very well, but you will not leave my side for any reason, and you will do as I say."
"I promise," Delphi said and touched his cheek. "We are in this together, love."
Tenebrys moved, a shadow of coiled fury, his powerful form devouring the ground between the chateau and the edge of the wards.
The dread that had settled in Delphi's bones since Luna's arrival was now a living thing, a serpent twisting in her gut.
She could feel Tenebrys's rage through their bond, a silent, thrumming baseline beneath her own fear—a promise of violence she was desperate to both unleash and avoid.
They broke through the last of the gardens, the stone path leading into the Mistwood before them. The evening air felt brittle, stretched thin and humming with a discordant magic that set her teeth on edge.
Where the fuck was that coming from?
On the other side of the shimmering barrier of the wards, men began to appear from the woods.
Narcisse was in new clothes and looked more sober than she had seen him in years. Beside him, Louis leered, his pretty face twisted into a mask of smug triumph. Behind them, twenty of Louis's men formed a grim line, their swords drawn and their expressions a mixture of fear and bravado.
"Delphi!" Narcisse's voice was sharp with frantic possession. He took a step forward, pressing against the unseen ward. "Come back to me. This beast has kidnapped you and twisted your mind."
A laugh, sharp and humorless, escaped Delphi's lips. "Twisted my mind? I know everything, Father, so don't bother lying to me. You're the one who cursed him and his people."
Fear and anger flickered in Narcisse's eyes. "He's a monster! A dark creature who will consume you. We are here to save you from him."
Save me. The words were so absurd, she nearly choked on her laughter. Narcisse had never saved her from a fucking thing in her life.
"No, I'm staying here," Delphi said, crossing her arms.
Narcisse's face turned red. "Are you mad? You would rather stay here with these…these beasts…than be with your own kind?"
Delphi raised her chin. "I am with my own kind. This is where I belong, and I refuse to go back and live amongst humans who hate and burn women just for being different. I won't live with that kind of fear anymore."
"Enough of this nonsense! Listen to your father and come along, witch." Louis stepped up, his gaze fixing on the delicate black horns rising from her hair. "This creature has deformed you with some dark magic, but I'll take great pleasure in sawing those ugly things from your head myself."
"You won't ever get to touch her while I have breath, lordling," Tenebrys snarled, a guttural growl rumbling from his chest. His hand found Delphi's, his grip a crushing anchor in the storm. She felt his intent through the bond. He was going to rip the man's throat out with his teeth.
"If you won't obey me willingly, then I will take you by force.
" Narcisse stared at them, holding hands, his focus solely on Delphi.
His face turned from anger to a portrait of desperation.
"I don't want to do this, but I don't have a choice anymore.
You brought this on yourself, and what happens now is your fault. "
He raised a hand, palm outward toward the ward, and began to chant in a language that slithered through the air, oily and wrong. The air crackled. The invisible barrier flickered, showing itself as a web of silver light.
"Narcisse, stop!" Delphi cried out, cold dread seizing her.
"I tried to reason with you," he said, his voice straining with the effort of the spell. "But I can't stop this now. I won't."
The silver web of the ward began to fracture, hairline cracks of darkness spreading through the light.
"There is only one way you could have power like this. What have you done?" Delphi demanded in a horrified whisper.
His face was pale with sweat, but his eyes burned with a feverish light. "The only thing I could do," he panted as the final thread of magic snapped. "To get you back."
A sound like the world cracking in two echoed through the clearing. A tremor ran through the earth, and the air, once humming with protective energy, fell silent. The wards were gone.
And in their place, something else appeared.
He materialized from the shadows behind Louis, not with a sudden rush but as if the darkness had simply condensed and given him form.
He was tall, leaner than Tenebrys, with a grace that was both fluid and predatory.
A cascade of hair the color of fresh blood fell over the shoulders of his fine, dark tunic.
But it was his eyes that stole the breath from Delphi's lungs.
They were blue. Not the pale blue of a summer sky, but the impossible, chilling azure of a glacial rift—the very same shade as her own.
She knew who he was without ever having to ask.
Kaelis.
Louis turned, his sneer dissolving into wide-eyed surprise at seeing what was behind him. The beautiful, blood-haired male smiled, a slow, languid curve of his lips that held no warmth, only a promise of exquisite pain.
"You are in my way," he said in a low, musical voice.
"Don't forget our agreement, creature," Louis replied, trying and failing to sound authorative. "You make me king of Chantelun, and your people will be allowed to come and go with my blessing."
"You and this miserable alchemist gave me acess to the world again. I have what I wanted from you, boy."
Kaelis's hand, elegant and pale, shot out and cupped the back of Louis's head. There was a wet, tearing sound, a spray of red that painted the leaves, and Louis fell, his spine no longer connected to his skull. He was dead before he hit the ground.
Panic erupted. The soldiers, so bold a moment before, broke ranks and fled. They didn't get far.
From the trees, sleek and shadowy figures emerged—the Fae had come. They weren't beautiful like their lord but wild raiders, their teeth sharp and their eyes glowing with malice. The screams of the humans were short-lived, swallowed by the sudden, brutal cacophony of slaughter.
The blood-haired male's gaze swept over the scene, dismissive, before landing on Tenebrys and his shifters.
He lifted a hand, and tendrils of shadow, laced with a virulent green, erupted from the ground.
They coiled around the legs and torsos of the shifters, tightening like chains forged from a nightmare.
Tenebrys roared, fighting against the bonds, but they held him fast, sizzling against his skin. Delphi felt his strangled fury, his power straining against a force that smelled of grave dirt and ancient decay.
Only Narcisse was left untouched, standing frozen in a puddle of his own making.
"Kaelis," Narcisse breathed, his voice trembling. "This wasn't part of the bargain."
The Lord of Plagues laughed, the sound like breaking glass.
"Oh, but it was, alchemist. Long ago, you bargained for power, and in return, you were meant to ensure the destruction of the Beast King and his kin.
" He gestured to the bound shifters. "You couldn't get it right thirty years ago.
What made you think I would leave it up to you now? "
His blue eyes found Delphi, and his smile widened.
It was a terrible, beautiful, knowing thing.
"He wanted power so badly then that he offered me his pretty little wife, Cassia, in exchange for it.
This time, when he summoned me, he could only offer a whore from the street.
Pathetic. Still, I needed a human to break the wards, and he was only too eager to have another taste of magic. "
Delphi's blood boiled. She had known Narcisse had sacrificed her mother, but hearing the fae lord admit it out loud made her want to wring Narcisse's neck. And to offer up another poor woman? She couldn't believe he would be so fucking stupid and cruel.
"Did he tell you about our bargain all those years ago, little witch?
" Kaelis continued, his voice a silken, venomous whisper as he glided closer.
He circled Narcisse like a shark. "He traded me your mother's witch magic and her body for a pittance of my own.
In exchange, he was to finish off the Beast King and his dying minions.
A foolish, desperate deal. Did Narcisse tell you how your mother moaned for my cock that night when I took her magic?
Her power wasn't strong enough to give me the witch fire her bloodline promised, but magic is a strange, unpredictable thing. "
His gaze locked with hers, sending a bolt of ice through her soul. "All the power the bargain promised to Narcisse… It seems it ended up here. In you. How wonderful."
Delphi's hands balled into fists. She could feel Tenebrys's panic and rage through their bond.
She wasn't bound in vines like he was. She kept her face neutral as she fed some of her magic through the bond toward him, hoping he would know what to do with it.
"I've been trying to lure this fool into the woods for months," Kaelis continued, nodding at a whimpering Narcisse. "But you were the one silly enough to go in on your own, Delphinium, and straight into the arms of my sworn enemy. I would think a child of mine would have more sense."
Delphi's world tilted. The blue eyes. The witch fire. The reason Narcisse hated her and feared her as she grew older… Even her hair was so red she struggled to keep up with dying it.
Kaelis wasn't lying to her. Narcisse wasn't her father, and he knew it. This… This monster was.
Bile rose in Delphi's throat. She had considered it a possibility, once she had learned that he had offered Cassia to Kaelis. It was one thing to imagine it, and another to know it for certain.
"She isn't crying or wailing, Narcisse," Kaelis said, with an amused grin. "This is why we fae loved our witches so very much. One fuck is all it takes to get an heir."
Kaelis stopped before her, just beyond Tenebrys's reach. "So now, we make a new bargain, daughter. I'll spare Narcisse. I will even give your pet beast here the cure for the poison that eats away at his soul. A permanent cure."
His offer hung in the air, glittering and deadly.
"In exchange, you will either come with me and serve by my side.
Or…" his smile turned razor-sharp, "you will give me what is rightfully mine.
Your witch fire. The extraction will be unpleasant, but it will leave you as you were always meant to be in this world: a normal, powerless, utterly breakable human.
I can't promise removing the magic will protect you from the pyre.
Having no magic left certainly didn't protect Cassia from it. Isn't that right, Narcisse?"
Delphi stared at Narcisse, willing him to deny it. He wouldn't even look at her, his face gray.
"The woman in Montcrillon…" Her voice broke, as the revelation tore her apart. She could believe that Kaelis was her father, but this was unfathomable.
"She got sloppy and got caught! I couldn't save her. Not without condemning you and me!" Narcisse shouted, lashing out in sudden anger as he always did when he was guilty.
Delphi rocked back on her heels, her stomach roiling. Narcisse had made her watch her own mother burn and told her it was a lesson to always hide who she was. A lesson.
"You see, Delphi, humans are the real monsters," Kaelis said, clicking his tongue. "Stay here and you'll become kindling. Return to Faerie with me and rule. Forget about this uncivilized place."
Through the bond, Tenebrys raged in defiance, a wave of pure, possessive fury. The bindings groaned around him, but they held despite the magic Delphi had tried to send to him.
Delphi knew Kaelis would never let Tenebrys live, even if she did agree to his terms. He was too much of a threat to his plans to get the fae back into the human world.
Tenebrys was the only one who had ever cared for her, and if she asked Kaelis to cure him, she would lose him forever.
Delphi's horror at the thought of losing him crystallized into a diamond-hard point of rage, and the world of magic opened to her like a veil passing over her eyes.
The shadowy tendrils around Tenebrys and the others weren't just vines. They were a complex weave of sickness and decay, a net of intricate knots and threads. She could see the seams, the points where the power was gathered and twisted. They could kill them instantly if Kaelis wanted them to.
Her focus narrowed, pushing past the carnage, past the monstrous revelations, past the impossible choice. She zeroed in on the central knot of the spell binding Tenebrys, a pulsating nexus of green-black energy.
Delphi met Kaelis's chilling eyes, her own sparking with the fire inside of her.
"Do I look as dumb as Narcisse?" she bit out, the words laced with venom. "Even children learn never to make a deal with the fae. You think I would fall for your promises so easily? Pathetic." She threw his own insult back at him.
Kaelis's eyes narrowed, and he shook his head. "You would rather stay in this doomed world of monsters? I'm giving you a chance to be a queen!"
Delphi raised her head and stared him down with all the rage in her heart. "I'm already a fucking queen."
She reached for the magical bindings not with her hands, but with her will, her witch fire turning white hot. The gossamer thread of power holding the entire construct together sizzled and snapped.
With a roar that shook the world, Tenebrys exploded from his bonds, the poisonous vines shattering into dust. He launched himself forward, a blur of muscle and midnight fur, claws of obsidian extending to meet the beautiful, monstrous face of the Lord of Plagues.