Chapter 20 #3
Chandeliers made of bone hung above dark tables laden with food—a severed bear head on a platter, bowls of blood broth, and even more dishes of unsavory things with too many legs. A meal fit for a monster.
Gareth’s bald head gleamed in the dim light, and a victorious sneer was upon his lips. “Ah, our little sprite is finally here.”
He rose from his throne-like chair. No weapons were in sight, and he wore a crisp navy tunic with golden accents.
Zera glared at his costume and the food reminiscent of the old age, the age of the thousand-year war she’d learned about in school.
It had been a chaotic time when wars raged between the faen species for land, glory, riches, and slaves.
It was the modern age now, and Gareth was nothing more than a lunatic in a costume.
“You like it?” Gareth asked when he noticed her staring at his tunic.
She forced her lips into a smirk. “It looks like you’re ready for Phantom’s Feast. Where’d you get it?”
Gareth preened beside the meat-laden table. His eyes gleamed, his iridescent pupils making her skin crawl. “Bring in the animals.”
Her heart clenched as chains slapped the ground behind her.
She craned her neck, and her heart stopped when her eyes met Jade’s.
Her half sister’s eyes bulged, but her split lip didn’t move an inch as she marched behind the fae with elven ears who held the red key ring and yanked the shackles connected to the rings around her ankles.
Both Jade and Sloane were gagged, and identical red bracelets decorated their wrists, siphoning their powers. Where they had gone, Zera didn’t know. Perhaps back into the universe from wherever they came.
Sloane limped behind Jade, one of her eyes swollen with dark purple-and-black bruises.
Zera’s tears sprang forward at the sight, and her heart clenched.
Then she spotted the head of brown curls in the bundle in Sloane’s arms that she struggled to hold.
Cole’s eyes were closed, and his face was pale.
A fear like Zera had never known gripped her, tightening her chest. The air rushed from her. Was he…
She couldn’t even bring herself to form the word in her mind.
“No,” Zera gasped, making a move to her son.
Fear struck Sloane’s face, and she shook her head to stop Zera from running over.
“My son… What did you do?” Rage roiled within Zera’s gut, and she exerted her will against the siphons that held her power, but there was only a small give.
It was enough give, though, that she knew that if she kept at it, she would shatter the siphons. Free. She had to free herself. She had to get her son out of here. She didn’t even want to think about what his ashen cheeks meant. He had to be alive. She had to get out.
“Oh, my bounty’s alive,” Gareth said, a hint of joy in his voice that made Zera’s lip curl. “The others won’t be for long once my investor sees what a prize catch I’ve found.”
“Let me go, and I’ll show you exactly what you’ve found,” she hissed, her gaze promising death, but she was met only with laughter from the three other fae seated at the table with Gareth.
Including Quill, who sat smugly next to the monster himself. The traitor sat casually back in his seat, smirking, his stupid curls pulled into a bun.
“I hope it was worth it,” she spat at him.
He merely shrugged. The casual air in which he admitted to deceiving an old friend sent a pit forming in her stomach.
“Enough,” Gareth said with a scowl. “The investor approaches.”
She didn’t even bother to turn around. She already knew who it would be.
Her eyes locked on her son, the only thing that mattered.
Her chest constricted at the sight of him.
She only wanted to hold him. He deserved better than this.
Cole had his whole life to live, and now it was at risk of ending before he’d even had a chance because of the monster staring her down.
Gareth didn’t deserve the air he breathed.
She flung everything she had at the shackles, but they held true.
She let out a scream, falling to her knees.
Laughter surrounded her, harsh and ugly. She couldn’t tell and didn’t care who it came from. She slammed her fists on the stone floor so hard her skin broke.
“Is this the pixie?”
Zera froze at the familiar voice, soft as velvet yet firm. She breathed in gulps of air as heat washed over her and warmed her frozen bones.
“Yes, and her offspring,” Gareth said with pride. “Though he’s in a state that I can’t evaluate his pixie dust, thanks to a no-good witch.”
Gareth spat toward Sloane, whose chin remained high.
Zera whispered a prayer of thanks before her eyes jerked up to meet the gray fox’s piercing blue ones, which were vacant of all emotion.
The curiosity and amusement in them she’d seen before were gone.
Despite this, a sense of hope filled her.
She’d struck a deal with him. Surely, he wouldn’t leave her here to die without even having a chance to make good on it, right?
Kraven turned away from her and toward her son. Zera lunged at him.
“Don’t touch him!” Her body was flung back by an invisible force thrown out at her by Gareth before she could even reach the incubus.
Her back slammed against the rock-hard floor, and searing-hot pain ripped up her spine.
She blinked through the tears in time to witness Kraven taking Cole in his arms. Her whole body shook with anger.
Any hope she’d had before was gone, vanishing the moment the incubus crime lord had crossed that boundary.
All the lies he’d told her at the ball came flooding back to her, including how he’d said he pitied her for what Gareth had put her through when Kraven was the reason the elven piece of shit was doing all of this to begin with.
Kraven’s greed was as bad, if not worse, than Gareth’s, and she’d been a fool to strike a deal with him. He was venomous, and she was now feeling his sting.
“I said don’t touch him,” she said with more calm than she felt, throwing herself against the siphons one last time.
The air rippled with energy as she fueled her rage, the pixie dust within her stirring and throwing everything against the rings that bound her magic within.
She balled her hands into fists and squeezed out every bit of power.
It churned and surged until the rings at her wrists and ankles melted from the heat of pixie dust that flooded her veins.
She was power itself, and nothing could stop her.
Kraven stared at her blankly, his grip still on her son, and she screamed, her outstretched hands reaching for her child.
Cole vanished in a puff of purple smoke and reappeared in her arms. She felt his heartbeat the minute she held him.
Her heart thumped in time with his. Cole was home, next to her where he belonged, but not yet safe.
“Grab them!” Gareth bellowed.
The trolls and elves who’d stood in shock, watching the spectacle of pixie-dust-fueled fury that now swarmed the room, raced for her. But Zera was too quick and dodged all of them.
They stumbled into the tables that lined the dining hall, their curses like music to her ears.
She glanced at her son—his eyes were still closed, and a small smile was on his lips—and could smell the sleeping potion on him, and her fear lessened.
He was alive and sleeping. When all this was done, she swore she would hug Sloane so hard.
The witch had kept her son alive and at peace, even though it had probably given her that black eye.
“There’s nowhere for you to run,” Gareth hissed, flinging his power at her. She caught sight of it at the last second and shielded herself with a wall of pixie dust before flinging the energy back at him.
Gareth’s own power knocked him back, and he tumbled over his chair. Kraven didn’t move to help and remained in the center of the room. His hands were in his pockets, as if this was exactly how he’d expected this meeting to turn out.
With her son safe on her back, Zera grabbed her Whisper’s staff.
The minute her fingers touched the staff, the wood extended, releasing the knives on either end.
She took a deep breath, focusing on the rage that fueled her every movement.
The staff pulsed with energy, the blades flickering with an eerie glow.
Zera knew she was a formidable force, a pixie armed with her weapon and the unleashed power of her people.
A fae with a scarred face and elven ears shrieked, opening her mouth. Before the flurry of thorns could escape the fae’s lipless mouth, Zera flung the staff’s blade at the fae’s scalp.
It sliced through with a satisfying thud. Fae came at Zera from every angle, creating a wall between her and Gareth. She would kill them all. She would have her revenge, and her son would survive, even if it took everything she had to get out of there.
She propelled her body into a run and pulled the staff from the fae’s head.
It fell back at an odd angle. She didn’t give herself a second to think about what she’d done.
The whispers of her ancestors echoed in the air, guiding each step.
Each kill. This was as much for them—every pixie these people had taken to feed their greed, every innocent life they’d ended to further their own lifestyle—as it was for her son and family. It ended tonight.
With blow after blow, she took them down one by one. An elf with a large bear snout and claws slashed at her, and she jumped out of its path but not before it struck her exposed skin at her shoulder. She glanced at the flesh wound as it oozed with blood and snarled.
“You’ll pay for that.” She threw herself into the air, her pixie dust carrying her up, and she plunged her blade between the elf’s shoulder blades.
A growl shuddered through him as he tumbled onto a table. It collapsed under his weight, sending a flurry of her pixie dust into the air, as the fae crashed. Dead.
The room reverberated with her magic, leaving a trail of shimmering dust in its wake.
A shuffling noise from behind her reached her ears, and she whipped her head around.
Quill’s lips bled, and his ponytail was drenched in sweat.
He shoved at a giant limb of one of the dead fae that blocked the exit.
“Going somewhere?” she asked, cocking her head to the side.
The smug look had been wiped off his face, replaced with pure, unadulterated fear. It made her smile.
Take us to him, the Whisper’s staff breathed into her ear.
Quill opened his mouth to speak, but Zera didn’t give him a chance to answer before she threw the staff with all she had. The hilt of the top blade struck deep into his temple, sending him sprawling across the wood floor. It made a satisfying crack, and his body went limp.
A smile curled her lips. The traitor was dead, and now, she had to take care of the rest of the mess.
Zera marched over to her staff, not even giving the dead a second thought as she yanked the staff free.
She turned and sneered at Gareth, who cowered behind an overturned table.
Her eyes flashed with a sadistic glint, daring him to make a move.
Only one thought was on her mind—she wanted him to see the monster he’d created before she took her final blow.
The way he cowered behind the table, shaking with fear, fueled her resolve.
She panted, trying to catch her breath, and swiped at the sweat that beaded her brow.
For a moment, the air was still, save for the soft whisper of pixie dust as it swirled around the room.
She twirled the bladed staff in her hands, the feel of it like her own skin. Like it had become one with her body.
Gareth looked around the room at all of his dead soldiers then at Kraven, who hadn’t moved from his spot in front of Jade and Sloane, who were crouched in the corner for protection. Zera had almost forgotten about him.
“What are you doing?” the elven drug dealer asked. “Stop her before she kills us!”
Kraven’s blue eyes stilled on Zera’s, and the feeling she’d had at the ball swept through her again.
A calm that somehow conveyed he wouldn’t touch her.
But why? He could’ve used his powers of persuasion to keep her from doing all of this.
Yet he just stood there entirely unfazed, as if this fighting was beneath him.
He was the crime lord, the one everyone orbited, who controlled every pixie drug deal in the city.
If he wished for it, they’d all be dead.