Chapter 3
Chapter Three
Treason.
You’d think I’d be used to it by now, familiar with the sensation, the graze of metal on my skin. The axe constantly swung pendulum-style overhead.
Hezarwick led the procession through the bowels of Elite Academy, guards stomping heavy-footed on either side. They gripped my elbows, prickles of power rippling beneath my skin when they lifted me off my feet.
But when I kicked out, a vain attempt at escape, they slapped magic-damping cuffs on me and the power bubbling in my gut winked out. The cuffs provided a barrier between us, one I couldn’t punch through no matter how hard I tried. No magic sprung me free. The manacles cut off everything.
“You can’t do this!” I screamed. “You have to help them. You have to do something. Someone open the portal!”
This Tywin was no better than the one we’d left in a coma. The gleeful malice in those beady eyes would stop lesser Fae cold with their determination.
His expression only pissed me off.
Mike stepped in front of his father, rebellious. “What are you doing? Let her go! Treason?”
“Michael, this is for your own good.” Tywin’s placating tone grated on my last nerve. “Trust me.”
“Not this time. You have no idea what you’re doing,” Mike insisted.
His protests had no effect. The guards continued dragging me out of the basement. My skin tightened with each step. The last time I’d been dragged off by the king’s guard, they tossed me in a dungeon and left me there to rot.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t even the first instance. Tywin loved nothing more than to throw me away.
Our trip through time hadn’t changed anything about his personality. He was still the same tyrant he’d always been, the same hateful brute who refused to open his heart to accept people.
For some reason, having this new version of Tywin tie in so closely with the old one stung.
“Stop it!” I kicked the air. “Let me go!”
A snap of Hezarwick’s fingers had extra guards materializing to hold my legs. No matter how I twisted, they refused to loosen their grip. And my body refused to do anything other than protest feebly, no better than a human.
Mike yelled at Tywin behind my back, their voices growing smaller. “You can’t do this. She’s innocent. Why won’t you fucking listen to me!”
“Watch your mouth,” Tywin chided, his bitterness seeping into every rock and crevice of the school’s foundation. “You are still my son. She’s got you believing lies—”
Sure, as if I had the Crown Prince of Faerie in my clutches, as if I or Mike had any control over this devastating love.
“Let her go!” At his tone, I glanced backm Mike glowing with the distinctive aura of his time manipulation.
I held my breath.
King Tywin laughed. “Try it, Michael Thornwood.”
A low growl from the left cut through the dizziness in my head before Noren attacked.
The sound was his only warning before he swiped a massive paw at the nearest guard holding me and made contact, easily tossing the man aside.
For half a second, I stared at Noren in something like awe. This wasn’t the wolf I was used to seeing, but the one I thought I’d left behind that night in the forest. He looked exactly like the Unseelie creature I’d met then, the one who’d been sent to kill me.
He towered over the guards, his chest heaving. The top of Noren’s head nearly brushed the ceiling and his eyes had gone the dark red of a blazing-hot forge. His claws were curved, his body the size of a horse, and his chest muscular and broad as a bull.
“Take down the direwolf!” Tywin roared.
Noren lunged at the other guard. My heart leaped into my throat and lodged as he clamped those vicious teeth through the man’s scapula.
The Fae’s screech punctured my eardrums.
Noren gave a vicious shake and wrenched the soldier off of me. I went down on my knees hard, tugged off balance, and my direwolf moved to the next body. Then the next.
Their spells rebounded off his form and petered out into nothing.
Tywin barked out demands from the safety of his position behind us. Other guards leaped to do his bidding, tearing open shortcuts in space to pour from the barracks. They attacked, the swipe of a sword married to the brush of a spell intended to kill.
My head swam and I stared up through the haze of spent magic. “Leave him alone. Don’t touch him!”
Noren turned on the rest of the guards with a growl and his hackles lifted.
They met his attack with a tandem maneuver, two Fae kicking him so hard in the head he went down. They followed with a barrage of magic that left a synthetic tang taste in its wake.
Noren didn’t get up.
Another half second and my brain connected the image with the sensation inside of me. Raw fury erupted.
The magic-damping cuffs shattered.
Anger like I’d never felt before twisted my limbs, coupled with arcane magic with a will of its own. I crouched and broke into a form I’d never experienced before, something capable of tearing a different kind of hole in the world.
Shoulders hunched, broke apart, reformed as dark fur sprouted along my spine, the bear forcing its way out of me. A deep, guttural roar burned my throat and spittle flew as I turned to the king.
He’d hurt my direwolf, who was more than a friend to me. He was family. He was my protector. I stood on two legs and roared.
Time to die.
Red rage filled the bear’s head, my head, my bulk lumbering but swift as I pounced on the nearest soldier before his magic tore free. Massive paws tamped out any budding flames before I sent him flying.
Tywin stood tall behind a barrier of bodies with weapons and spells at the ready. His eyes betrayed him. They skittered over this new form and darted away, a coward to the core. He’d send the others to do his dirty work without caring who died for him.
He’d closed the portal on injured shifters who needed aid.
He’d let the most dangerous shifter out there walk into his kingdom, multiple times, and I didn’t mean Kendrick Grimaldi.
I dropped to all fours and prowled toward the king. There was no doubting my intention.
“Don’t!” Tywin snarled.
What can he possibly do to stop me?
I continued toward him, my head low, growling menacingly. Melia was right behind me, lifting a hand to send out one of her spells.
Tywin scoffed, but he reeked like panic. I relished his fear, the spike of it in his bloodstream. I devoured his frustration at being bested.
“Anyone who moves again will join her in the dungeon and face treason themselves!”
The bear’s eyesight was sharper than a human’s, in a different way. I marked every crease on Tywin’s face and the disgusting belch of his disdain like liquid smoke emitting from his pores.
“A shifter. How did I not know?”
I couldn’t make the bear’s vocal cords work to give him an answer, not when I wasn’t used to this form, but the look in my eyes would surely give him the right idea.
This fucking bigot.
“Father—” Mike began, panicked.
“One more word out of you, Michael, and I will throw you down there with her and sew your mouth shut. I will slice your tongue and keep it as a talisman around my neck. You are seconds away from losing your free will,” Tywin snapped. “I will strip it from you.”
His attention returned to me. “Or maybe I should address you. You clearly have more power than I thought. More than my son.”
I prowled closer, deliberate, intimidating, until I stood head to head with the king.
He refused to back down. I’d give him credit for bravery if I wasn’t so determined to tear him to shreds.
“Do you understand what I’ll do to my son for this if you refuse to stop?” He scanned me, his upper lip curled. “Your kind is the filth in my kingdom, infiltrating places where you do not belong. You are the reason Faerie is divided.”
Mike groaned a word that never formed, but his father and I were locked in this standoff.
“Shifters are a plague,” Tywin went on. “A disease. And I swear on everything I hold sacred that by the time I leave this place, I will have taken every last one of you down.”
His white hair didn’t fool me. Tywin had lived a long time by human standards but it was nothing compared to Fae. He had more than enough time left in his life to do exactly what he swore. But we both knew he couldn’t take me down. Not anymore.
So he pivoted in the one direction I couldn’t ignore.
He stepped close enough to reach out and slap my muzzle—if he cared to lose his hand. “I will send you straight to hell where you belong. And I will send Michael with you. The pain I’ll inflict on him…”
Whatever he saw in my eyes, it pushed his shoulders back and his chest arched out. Another breath, then two, and finally Tywin spoke again. “Take her away. Use whatever brute force is necessary.”
Try it.
I was ready and willing to slice his father in two, but Mike’s expression pulled me up short. Would I be fast enough to save him? Was I prepared for the fallout if I failed? Was he?
With Laina still out of commission, the only person left to handle things in the king’s absence was Cosmo Foxfall, the premier. And I’d already been face to face with that parasite. He’d send us right into a war with Dorian Jade as if we weren’t already shooting straight for one.
The widespread disgust for shifters, for halflings, went deep into the bones of this world. And it wouldn’t help our cause if I tore King Tywin to shreds.
Slowly, I withdrew, sending magic spiraling out through me until my claws shrank back into skin.
The weight of responsibility pushed me into my human form until I stood glaring at the king with my hands clenched at my sides, shaking. “Touch one hair on his head, on any of their heads, and I’ll make you regret everything.”
Tywin didn’t care to disguise his blatant triumph. “Take her away.” He pointed to Noren. “And shove that beast into a cage.”
I lunged for the king as the guards stepped up to follow his orders. They brought out a second set of magic-damping cuffs and this time when the manacles closed, I let them.
Guards hauled me away from the king. Hezarwick, disheveled but stable, opened a doorway straight into the dungeons.
Air rippled around us, torn threads of energy, before the door slammed shut again.
“Should throw you in the cage with the direwolf,” one of them grunted close to my ear. “Where you belong.”
I seethed. “Hurt him again and I swear I’ll show you pain like you’ve never known.”
The soldier must have believed it because he marched me forward without another word.
I could have called out the steps one by one.
I knew exactly which cell they’d toss me in and how many paces it took to get there.
I knew the creak of the rusted hinges swinging open and the way my magic felt when the lock slammed shut.
I knew the curves of the four walls and the steady dripping of water somewhere deep in this cavernous place.
In the end, time travel or not, I ended up in the same place.