Chapter 25
Kiara
My consciousness flickered in and out after I was dragged away from the crash. Bumping along in the back of the truck, I slumped forward and let exhaustion and pain whisk me into a fluttering half-sleep—but it didn’t feel much like sleep as it was merely shock that blinded and numbed me to all else. I assumed we were plunging back into the mountains, toward the silver mine. But when the truck rolled to a stop and I looked up, I was surprised to find trees closing in around me and, in front of me, the monstrous facade of Hexen Manor.
“Why are we here?” I groaned.
The dragon guard grabbed my arm and hoisted me out of the truck bed. My legs nearly gave out as I hit the ground. “Does it matter?” he grunted.
Somebody handed a nylon rope to the dragon. “Wrap her up real good, Kipling.”
Nodding, Kipling took the rope and wound it tightly around my wrists behind my back, all the way up my arms to my elbows. He circled the rope so firmly around my throat that it was hard for me to swallow, then looped it around the bindings on my arms, tipping my head back uncomfortably. Once he was finished, the dragon shoved me forward. “Into the house.”
I staggered up the stairs, onto the porch, and inside. The smell of the Manor choked me because not only was it the stench of David and the dragons that filled the house, but the smell of Colt, too, afflicting me with mixed anger and pain and the desperate desire to be with him again. How similar Colt’s and his father’s scents were didn’t sit well with me. I allowed Kipling to guide me through the parlor and down a hallway until we arrived at an office with the door open. Sitting at the desk was David, looking cleaner than the last time I had seen him. In front of him was a glistening, opalescent horn, its base bloodied—vile evidence of my mother’s slaughter. Grief burst inside me as I fought back tears, staring rigidly at the horn.
David smirked. “Sit her down.”
The dragon pulled out the chair across the desk from David and forced me to sit. Then, he closed the office door and stood in front of it, arms folded, silently guarding me as he had before.
The truth of what the horn represented stalled my tongue.
“I haven’t decided yet if we’ll kill you or not,” said David. He steepled his fingers on the desk, meeting my eyes while the horn sat tauntingly between us. “You’re equally valuable to us alive as you are dead. Perhaps more so alive since we already got what we needed from your mother.”
“You fucking monster,” I said under my breath.
“All shifters are monsters,” David said nonchalantly. “Our existence inherently oppresses someone or something else. The animals we kill for food. The humans we silence to protect our identities. Even amongst ourselves, we slaughter indiscriminately so that our strongest can survive. Don’t tell me unicorns have never caused deaths in order to continue hiding. You may not have slit a throat, but reserving your magic for yourselves has inadvertently taken lives, too.”
“It’s a bit of a reach to call us murderers for trying to protect ourselves from being exploited,” I growled, testing the strength of the ropes around my wrists with subtle squirms. They were too tight for me to break out of them, the way I was sitting right then.
“Nonetheless,” continued David, “your selfishness has ripped people away from their loved ones. Your mother is at fault for the death of Sibyelle, and you…well, that baby girl might still be alive had you not tried to steal her away.” He frowned. “As I said, we’re all monsters in some way.”
I shook my head, forcing back the unpleasant sense of responsibility I had for Lothair’s daughter’s death. “So, in your eyes, it’s fair to poach my mother for her horn and use me for my magic?”
“I’m very much justified in doing this,” he agreed. “Mythguard will claim my actions warrant extermination, but I intend to show them the hypocrisy of their ways. They, too, are monsters for suppressing and persecuting us. We are within our rights to rise up and fight back. We deserve every bit the same degree of freedom as humans—if not more, considering every new regulation and law Mythguard imposes in order to oppress us.”
My mouth hung open with the beginnings of an argument, but truly, I didn’t know if I entirely disagreed with David. I was forced to live my life in secrecy because, if they knew the capabilities of a unicorn shifter, the humans would exploit me, like other shifters already did. Yes, I wanted to live as freely as humans did and embrace my hybrid beast without fear, but…this wasn’t the way to do it. A growl brewed in my throat. “Killing people isn’t going to get you what you want, David. It’s only going to cause a more violent backlash. You’re going to make it worse for shifters, not better.”
“This is going to get me exactly what I want. The world is too soft for a gentle, mindful approach, Kiara. It’s time we assert ourselves, whether or not the world is ready for us.”
Arguing with David was futile. I knew nothing I could say would change his mind, but it was at least validating to tell him to his face how wrong he was. I bared my teeth, and he grinned, standing up from behind his desk. “I’ve made up my mind,” said David, taking hold of the unicorn horn. “I actually have no need for you after tomorrow, but it will please me so greatly to bleed you out and know that my traitorous son will suffer as he feels you die.”
Cold dread made me feel heavy and hopeless. “Bastard!” I snapped back at him, struggling in the chair as if that might help me at all. It didn’t. All I could do was watch David walk around me with the iridescent horn and admire it as he reached the door.
“Bring her downstairs. I want her to ponder her mother’s sacrifice in the few hours she has left, while we prepare the atrium for the ritual. Come, I’ll show you where to keep her,” said David.
Kipling wrenched me out of the chair and dragged me through the Manor to the basement where I’d been locked up before. Only this time, I wasn’t taken into the cold room where carcasses were butchered. David led us further into the basement to a refrigerated room, kept below freezing, where all of Dalesbloom’s and the Inkscales’ food was stored. I hadn’t realized they’d stockpiled so much meat. They must have been hunting to excess in the past few weeks in order to keep their numbers fed. That would explain why Grandbay and Eastpeak hadn’t been having much luck hunting. They were going hungry because Dalesbloom and the dragons were killing everything in sight and hoarding it where nobody else could find it.
Cold air raked my skin, making my hair stand on end. My bare feet stung, and I shivered as I walked across the icy, concrete floor, immediately feeling my energy drained not only from the freezing temperature but the enveloping presence of meat. Fresh blood was most intensely poisonous to me, but meat could be just as bad, exposed tracts of muscle and bone that should have been alive. Now it was dead, with the process of decay—the antithesis of a unicorn’s source of magic, which was life and healing—suspended in the cold. Kipling skulked toward me. Condensed air fled from my lips as I snarled at him, kicking in resistance when he grabbed me and lifted me up off the ground. “Let me go! Screw you! You asshole, I hope someone from Mythguard puts a bullet in your head!”
He ignored me.
Behind me, David grabbed two heavy chains that were wrapped around a thick metal bar extending between the walls. With the hooks on the ends of each chain, he secured the nylon ropes that were around my wrists, then snapped a padlock around the links of both chains. Kipling let go of me, and gravity abruptly yanked me down until I was left hanging helplessly by the chains, my feet dangling and my neck aching.
“Let’s allow her to cool off a little bit, hm?” David snickered, then turned to the nearby carcass of a whole pig that had been left to hang upside down. It was still fresh—probably killed only the day before. “Now, I don’t want to keep this horn on me in case somebody gets ideas. I’m going to leave it down here as a reminder to Kiara of her failures. Perhaps, if she proves strong enough, she’ll embody the hypocrisy she loves so much and rip this horn out of flesh, just as we did.”
Nausea flooded me as I watched David stab the abdomen of the hanging pig with the horn, shearing flesh and impaling organs, plunging his hand into the gore until he had lodged the horn deep within its body. A cruel hiding place in plain sight, as he knew I would have to poison myself to recover the horn if I managed to free myself from the chains.
David smacked the pig and threw a wicked grin at me before gesturing for Kipling to follow him, his hand slick with crimson. “Meditate on your fate, Kiara. You’ll have a few hours yet before I’m ready for you.”
They walked out of the room to the sound of me spewing obscenities at them. The door slammed shut, sealing me inside the refrigerated room with my shouts stifled by icy walls. I struggled, kicking at the air and thrashing my body as the clinking of rattling chains filled my ears. Rage and anguish welled up so powerfully inside me that I screamed; my voice echoed off the carcasses and back at me. David had left me to freeze in this room, surrounded by my greatest weakness. My hybrid beast howled with hunger and pain. I wanted to eat so badly, but the stench of the meat stung my throat. This was the worst possible place for me to be.
I shrieked and roared and struggled in the chains for twenty minutes before exhaustion finally took over. Frost gathered on my bare skin as the heat of my anger gradually surrendered to the cold. Still, I wouldn’t allow tears to fall. Desperate and tattered breaths wracked my body as I went limp, redirecting my energy to mental endeavors instead.
I had to find a way out of here. The longer I stayed, the weaker I became, but I wasn’t about to let David have the satisfaction of killing me. Not if I could help it.
My gaze fixed on the pig where David had crammed my mother’s horn. He would pay dearly for this sick, twisted offense. I wasn’t a sadistic person, but I wanted to make him suffer for this.