Beyond Two Realms: Two Realms Series Book 2

1. KAINE

Love was a powerful thing. It was a feeling, an entity, a thing Kaine could never grasp yet longed for all the same. It was a thing, a name in which kings and queens started bloody wars. Soldiers died killing man, shouting its name upon their cracked lips. It was a fire that burned, strong and deadly, and by the full might of Faery did Kaine want, no, need to burn in its flames.

Kaine had felt it once. Love. Grazed along its edges, just by the tips of his fingers. Fleeting, yet he’d never tasted anything sweeter, anything so full of life. He’d had it. With Sophie. His purple-haired, bright-eyed human. His soulmate. Now? Her flames had dimmed. Stolen from his arms, and he would kill to feel its warm caress again.

“I’ve no one else to turn to.” Kaine hung his head low, defeated. A dull ache pooled at his knee, sending twitches up his thigh. He’d been kneeling on Castle Terrin’s cool throne room floor for far too long. But he needed this. He needed Queen Calliea. He needed the queen of Faery and her dark, ever-growing power. And once he took a hold of her power, mother of Faery, his potential would be limitless. His opportunities endless. But none of that mattered if he didn’t have his Sophie.

With this newfound power, he would destroy the Tienthan. The guardian angels of the Godlands. Angels. The flying vermin that dared infiltrate the lands of Faery and steal his soulmate. Kaine’s mouth soured at the words. He knew well that he couldn’t defeat the Tienthan on his own. There was no doubt his mana was strong, but combined with the power of Queen Calliea? He would be unstoppable. A host unto himself. By the time their power melded and thrummed through his fingertips, nothing would stop him from stealing back his Sophie.

It had been weeks since Sophie was taken from his grasp by the Tienthan. Weeks since he vowed to start a war in her name. A love so brief, yet his soul ached for it like a phantom limb. Her. No one ever loved him like her. Who knew what the angels were doing with her? Soiling her, surely.

“Then take my blood-oath,” Queen Calliea breathed from her throne. Her pointed chin moved higher in the air, as she looked down upon him, a smug smile on her alabaster face curtained by blood-red waves of hair.

Kaine would do anything for his Sophie. Even if it meant siding with the enemy and relinquishing his rightful claim to the Faery throne. For if he took this blood-oath, the most coveted bond second to the soulmate bond, he would be doing just that. He would be sworn to protect Queen Calliea for all his life. A price Kaine was more than willing to pay to get his Sophie back.

Blood-oath.

Blood.

The word shot through his mind, triggering a dark thirst within him that only craved the sweetness of revenge. A dark blindness that addled him since the days of his torture in this very castle. Violent images of his mother dying in his arms, of Sophie writhing underneath Cam, of Sophie being stolen from him, flashed through his mind. Kaine tried to shake the cold, spindly grip of them. The memories. The hallucinations? No matter what they were, they came often.

Kaine looked up to Queen Calliea, his face cool and calm despite the spike in anger the flashes had caused.

He nodded. Determined. Sure.

A deft swipe of a taloned nail against her porcelain skin had crimson blood sliding down her forearm shaping into the roots of an age-old tree. The queen extended her wrist in silent command.

A beat passed.

“Drink.” Her cold voice echoed through the empty room.

Kaine stood quickly; the ache in his knee instantly ebbed. He took the steps of the dais in two strides and fell back down to his knees again.

There was no turning back now.

Her blood was sour at first. Bitter second. But by the time his lips warmed her skin, her blood tasted sweet. Kaine drank in full dregs of Queen Calliea’s blood, intertwining her magic with his. From this moment on, she was his queen. In all meanings of the word. He would obey every command and will, his blood was hers to control. But despite this obedience, there was something he was hiding from Queen Calliea. The lie sat just behind his teeth, the teeth that grazed her skin in a life-bonding promise. There was something else, beyond her power and alliance, that Kaine had sought to gain. Something of higher value than any being in this realm possessed. Something he wouldn’t reveal until the time was right. Not until it was just within arm’s reach. Queen Calliea couldn’t know. Not yet.

And so Kaine drank. He drank her blood until his head spun, and his veins thickened with the weight of the blood-oath.

Everything in his life had been ripped away from him, and the raw pain it brought on was more than he could bear. At first, it was his mother, mauled to death by hellhounds, the Tienthan nowhere to be seen when he cried for their help. And now, his Sophie. Everything in his life had been ripped away, sure, but the true tragedy was not of his own. It would be the tragedy his enemies faced when they sundered under the full brunt of his wrath.

After all, the sands of time were irrelevant to an immortal Fae . . . so what else was there to fight for, except love?