Chapter Fifty-Two
Kyan
‘RITH,’ KYAN ORDERED THE DRUID BEHIND HIM.
Run.
‘Níl mé ag imeacht,’ she said – I’m not leaving – and palmed her staff.
‘He’s here for you,’ Kyan hissed.
‘I can deal with him,’ she snarled back.
‘He’s mine. Go.’
She met his glare and swore under her breath, before ordering the dog to stay put, then disappearing into the woods.
‘I don’t believe this,’ Logan said, striding closer.
Nicole had gone rigid behind him, and Kyan knew she was scanning the forest for a way around this. But when Logan’s eyes raked down Nicole, a killing calm more intense than Kyan had ever experienced came over him, and an unusual knock, like a second heart, tapped at the power in his solar plexus.
He’d been unable to save the people he loved in this forest, once.
It wouldn’t happen again.
‘You don’t plan to bring her in at all, do you?’ Logan asked. ‘Or do you just want to keep her as a secret little fu—’
‘Finish that sentence and I’ll rip your fucking head off,’ Kyan snarled.
Logan shook his head, eyes alight. ‘I’ll admit, some part of me is loving this.
The Wake’s loyal little dog being proven a traitor.
I should really thank you. All these years I was wondering how to knock you down a peg.
You were always so invulnerable. Always so closed off to taunts and competition.
And now you’re like a powder keg. Brawling, snarling.
Rebelling.’ He laughed. ‘It’s so satisfying knowing that you’ll be your own downfall and I can take your place. ’
‘You can have my “place”. I don’t care.’
Now, he had something else to live for.
And it was as terrifying as it was heartening.
‘But you have no idea what’s really going on here,’ Kyan continued, stepping down from the dais, feeling the power in the forest ripple out beneath his boots. ‘The Wake aren’t what you think they are. They’re stealing creatures; mutating them. They want to bring the Hunt—’
‘You think I don’t know?’ Logan cut in. ‘Who do you think brings them in? Who holds them down? Summoning the Wild Hunt will finally secure the Wake’s hold.
They’ve already told me I could get into the inner circle.
I’ll be as strong as the Huntbringer, but I’ll keep my mind, my life.
I just have to bring them the Druid and the girl, if you won’t. ’
‘They’ve lied to you, Logan. No one joins the inner circle and that mutation could take away any autonomy you have,’ Kyan said, recalling what Dylan had said about the assassin who attacked Remi: that his eyes had been near soulless.
But … was it possible the Wake would make more mindless Empyreals? If so, why wouldn’t they have done it already?
‘You can’t hide them.’ Logan’s smile was a sharp little smirk. ‘I tell you what, you hand over your pretty little Empyreal and I’ll let the Druid live. I won’t even tell the Wake about her.’
Nicole hissed in a breath, like she’d launch herself at him.
‘We’re going to have to come to some sort of arrangement, or you’re fucked, and so are they,’ Logan said.
He was right.
If they didn’t move fast, if they didn’t stay a step ahead of the Wake, they would be caught.
But that was where Logan’s assessment faltered. He didn’t understand the depths of Kyan’s devotion.
Logan had no idea what loyalty was. And he’d just proven that there was nothing salvageable about him.
No way to talk him round, just pure unfettered greed and a lust for power that showed how corrupting it could be to be at the top of the supernatural food chain.
Logan felt all the power, did all the kills, but for all the wrong reasons.
A bite of satisfaction shivered up Kyan’s spine and he realised there was only one thing for it.
Kyan would have to kill him.
The other Empyreal must have realised it. Kyan didn’t know if it was the slow tilt of his head that gave it away, or just the shift in his eyes. Because there was no world in which he was going to let this piece of shit leave this forest still breathing after he threatened Nicole.
His réalta treorach.
The other soul, the other star, that had been guiding him through time. That had been a promise of goodness and home after two millennia.
Just the thought of it had a snarl pulling on his mouth.
‘I killed Alexander for disobeying the Wake and because he was a violent asshole who endangered innocents. What, then, do you think I’ll do with you?’ Kyan rolled his shoulders. ‘Here’s your arrangement. Single combat.’
‘Kyan,’ Nicole warned.
Logan had the nerve to scoff. ‘Single combat? Jesus Christ.’
‘In my time we had a sense of honour. When we fought, it was a spectacle. If you don’t want to reason, then this is our option. Don’t you want to put on a show? Prove yourself against me? Isn’t that why you’re such a perverse, obsessed little shit?’
Fury flickered in Logan’s eyes. ‘Fine.’ He laughed.
Laughed.
Kyan felt himself teeter on the point of no return.
He glanced over to Nicole who watched Logan with such hatred a smile near flickered on Kyan’s mouth. Instead, he ducked enough to kiss her. Once, slightly hard, but with the last tenderness in his eyes and brush of his thumb he could drag out of himself.
‘Stay with her,’ he ordered the dog in Irish.
It hadn’t left with the Druid, and now sat at Nicole’s side. Frustration burned in Nicole’s gaze.
He had only allowed his hunting side to emerge when his Empyreal took over. But his body wouldn’t take over here. There would be no transformation to aid the kill. Empyreals didn’t give off a kill scent. There was only him and the being threatening the person he loved. So, it was simple.
Even if the fight wasn’t.
He expected Logan’s first hit. Knew kissing Nicole would make Logan think Kyan’s guard was down.
The first whoosh of Logan’s fist was followed by a spike in adrenaline Kyan could taste. He tried to keep calm, but an old fury was rising. Distantly, there was an increasing beat of: If he escapes, she gets taken from you.
If he escapes, what do you think they’ll do?
They’ll know exactly how to punish you. How to hurt her.
They wouldn’t choose death. No, not at first.
They’d choose to make an example of him.
The other Empyreal was strong and he fought dirty.
But Kyan had watched with cool detachment when Logan and his friends sparred.
He had studied them, learned how Logan got blindly invigorated, how he went for the kill.
So Kyan was able to block the punches, even if the impact bruised, splintering a bone in his forearm, cracking across his jaw.
Kyan let him get in the hits. He wanted him exhausted. He wanted Logan to feel like he was winning, and to stoke the archaic wildness Kyan had tamed. The one that the myths got right.
It hadn’t been easy for him as a boy with this much power inside.
When he’d transformed so young, his Empyrean power had almost shielded it.
Calmed it. But the reliance on only letting himself feel anything deeply when he transformed had corked it all, turned that long-ignored power and emotion into a self-destructive numbness, now a thing capable of decimating.
As Logan struck, and struck, Kyan felt something shift inside, some strange precipice in his chest warming, tightening, like there was a place there for him to tip into. Not quite his Empyreal, but familiar enough, distracting enough, it gave him pause.
It gave Logan a moment to drive the knife he’d removed from an ankle strap deep into Kyan’s abdomen.
‘No!’ Nicole’s outrage was a near scream, echoed by the dog’s thunderous bark.
‘Stay there!’ Kyan ordered, fighting against the hot rush of blood and adrenaline. He grunted as the knife was ripped out and red spattered across the grass.
Blood? On this sacred grass?
That thing in his chest started carving him out, searing hot and feral as a star—
‘Damn it, Kyan!’ Nicole cried.
He knew she wanted to intervene, but not this time.
When he glanced back, the dog had her leg in a gentle bite to stop her. As if it knew the importance of this moment.
She’d saved him once.
He needed to prove to her – to himself – he could do the same.
Logan took another shot, a cracking punch across Kyan’s jaw that yanked a tendon in his neck like a live wire.
‘Pathetic,’ Kyan snarled as the Empyreal managed another quick stab to Kyan’s abdomen. That rage kept building and building. But he didn’t try to disarm Logan as he slashed for Kyan’s neck, jerking away only enough to stop it slicing the artery. ‘Using a knife instead of your own hands.’
Before Logan could get another slash, Kyan grabbed his wrist and broke it.
He kicked hard between the man’s legs, throwing the blade aside, and Logan dropped onto his knees, face contorted in pain. Kyan slapped him across the face, a purposeful action, hard enough Logan spat his own blood on the grass.
Then the Empyreal threw himself into Kyan, but not to take him down, to clip him out of the way as he ran for Nicole.
Nicole
SHE DIDN’T HAVE A MOMENT TO RUN, AND SHE DIDN’T NEED IT.
Before Logan could take two steps, Kyan had pinned him to the ground like an animal, knee in the Empyreal’s back.
Kyan’s – her mate’s – eyes were dark with fury. They burned with the wrath of a long-smothered epic warrior, born in magic and love and forgotten nobility and stripped of it all, only to have it collide again with him now, in a feral sort of vengeance.
‘Did you think I didn’t let you track me here?’ Kyan asked. His voice had sunk to a timbre that shivered over her skin.
Surprise cut through Nicole’s worry.
Logan’s eyes narrowed as he thrashed, his powerful body straining.