Chapter 18
SAPHIRA
My white paws flew over the damp leaf litter, my breaths short bursts that misted in the night air, each inhalation carrying the scent of the ancient forest and the trees that called to me.
Reached out to me.
I felt their summons in the marrow of my bones.
In the depths of my soul.
They promised comfort and strength, and the welcome embrace of nature I longed to feel as my heart bayed and something hollowed me out inside, leaving me bereft and cold. Afraid.
I knew this dream. I’d had it before. The familiarity of it alone was a comfort to me, and the location was another, deeper kind of relief that seemed to wrap me in warm arms.
The glowing purple veins that snaked up the narrow trunks of the trees illuminated my path as I followed it deeper into the heart of the woods, until nature was all I knew and that pain that was my constant companion began to ease.
Between their broken canopies laced with gleaming violet flowers, the moon beckoned, casting her warm light upon my fur, bathing me in her love as she nestled among the brilliant aurora.
I paused and threw my head back to howl, pouring out my sorrow and need, my desperate and wild desire to see my male again. My Shadow King.
The trees swayed and bent, their branches seeming to reach for me, as if they knew my pain and wanted to embrace me, and that urge to run swept me up in it again.
I galloped through the trees, running deeper into the forest, that comforting brush of nature and the glimpses of towering black mountains through the violet-veined trees whispering to me of home.
This was home.
I was safe. I was protected. No one could hurt me here. And I would see my beloved king again soon.
A clearing opened ahead of me and I slowed to a trot as I neared it, my head canting and ears twitching as I listened to the night-drenched forest that felt too still on my senses.
The full moon glittered on the surface of a lake in the heart of the mountains, dancing and playing with the glow bugs that drifted and swirled across the still water.
Movement off to my left drew my focus there, my eyes sharpening with my senses as I lowered my head, hunkering down as I realised I wasn’t alone.
Calm washed my sudden spike in nerves away as I spotted the creature who had stirred my instincts.
A beautiful elkyn.
The majestic silver-white beast gently shook its pitch-dark antlers as it casually strolled along the lakeshore, not stopping until it was directly between me, the water and the moon.
The elkyn’s head swivelled towards me, the silver moonlight glinting off golden rings that adorned its antlers, and it regarded me with solemn faintly glowing amber eyes.
Peace flowed through me as I stared into those eyes.
Peace and a sense of comfort, of calm. Of rightness. Of hope.
Strength.
Courage.
A feral sort of feeling sweeping through me dragged me up from the dream, my wolf instincts snarling a warning at me before the last vestiges of sleep had left me. My eyes shot open, pulse quickening as my vision sharpened to counter the dimly lit room.
Lorien.
He loomed over me, that wretched grin on his face as he palmed his knife.
“Hold her down,” he spat.
I looked for the two goons that always followed him, able to scent them in the thick air I fought to pull into my lungs as they squeezed.
I found one of them stood in the middle of my room, his filthy hand covering Danica’s mouth, fingertips pressing hard into her cheeks as she fought him and he banded his free arm around her to cage her.
“Let her go,” I growled but before I could roll from beneath the covers to lunge at him, the second male seized my shoulder and shoved me down into the mattress.
I fought him with all the limited strength I had, that damned tea Sylvan had made me drink still messing with my body, leaving me infuriatingly weak.
Vulnerable.
That gleam in Lorien’s eyes said he knew I was an easy target. Son of a bitch.
I was an idiot for not seeing that Lorien would do this, using my weakness from the bond removal and the effects of the tea to eliminate me.
I had handed him an amazing opportunity to have his revenge for humiliating him and get rid of me, reclaiming his throne, and I had just let him take advantage of it.
I should have demanded guards at my door.
I should have asked Meiryn to stay with me.
“Too afraid to fight me on fair terms?” I snapped fangs at him. “Fucking pussy.”
I spat in his face when his raspy chuckle grated in my ears.
He didn’t even flinch.
“When you are dead,” he cooed as he twisted the knife in my face, mocking me with my own scared reflection, “your little friend will belong to me… but do not worry… I will make sure she is treated exactly how she should be treated.”
Danica tried to say something, her words muffled by the brute holding her captive.
I rolled the second I sensed the shift in the air, away from Lorien as he brought the knife down where my chest should have been, damned if I was going to let him get his hands on Danica. I wasn’t going to let him hurt either of us.
But Lorien was faster than me.
He snagged my braid and managed to slice it in half just as I let the shift come over me, transforming into my wolf form to escape his hold.
I twisted on the bed, growling low, flashing fangs. The only warning he got before I leaped at him.
Lorien grabbed his friend and shoved him into my path, using him as a shield.
Oily darkness swept through me, coating my thoughts, stealing control of me as my paws met his chest and my fangs found his throat.
He screamed as I savaged him, ripping at his throat, choking on his hot blood as it gushed into my mouth.
The darkness bayed at me for more. It commanded me to crunch bone and tear flesh, to feast on my prey and ensure all that saw him knew to never come at me again.
For I was powerful, I was vicious, and I was carved from wrath and vengeance.
Someone swore. Male. His panic scented the air, driving me on. I bit down on the male beneath me, shattering bone as his terrified cries rang in my ears, ripping his shoulder open. I sensed people moving, some hurriedly backing away from me and another coming at me.
I lifted my head, settling my focus on my next prey.
The blond male ran for the double doors, knocking a platinum-haired female into one of them as he barged into her, and another followed him.
The female stilled on the threshold of the room, her blue eyes enormous as she stared at me. Not at me. At the lifeless male beneath me. Those eyes slowly lifted to me as I snarled and prowled towards her, stepping off the ravaged body, tracking his blood across the floor as I headed for the door.
The blond male glanced back at me and then he was gone.
Running.
Fleeing.
Instinct and the darkness demanded I gave chase.
But the logical side of my mind—the human side—warned that I was still recovering and I wasn’t strong enough to take down two fae alone. I had been lucky I had managed to get the jump on Lorien and take down this one.
“Saphi.” Danica stepped into my path, fear colouring her stormy grey eyes, fear that silently asked me not to go after him.
Not to leave her.
I looked down at my bloodstained paws, the crimson stark against my white fur, and I shifted back as what I had done rolled up on me. The guilt hitting me in a fierce wave as I stood over the dead male, completely naked, his blood all over me.
“Don’t feel sorry for him.” Meiryn stepped into the room. “He got what he deserved. I just wish you had killed Lorien back in the courtyard. Things would have been a lot simpler if you hadn’t shown him mercy.”
But I had, and Danica had almost paid for it. I had almost paid for it.
Reckless idiot.
Meiryn closed the doors, pressing her back to them. “You should have killed him when you had the chance. He won’t make a good king. He would be as cruel as our father.”
I tore my gaze from the male. “You knew our father?”
She walked to the sideboard and dunked a cloth into my pitcher of water, and came to me, using it to gently wipe the blood from my face, her expression more pensive than I had ever seen it, as if she couldn’t decide what to tell me.
“Not personally. But my mother… she knew about him and she told me of him, before she died. Then I came here and read the records of his rule, and they painted him in a godly light, but I could see the cruelty my mother had spoken about in the things he had done.”
I held my hand out to Danica, needing her close to me, as I walked away from the body, not wanting to think about the blood that was soaking into the floorboards and the rug.
“Our father was not a good man.” Meiryn looked at the cloth she held, a distant edge to her eyes, and then she went to the pitcher and cleaned it, and came back to me.
I was grateful for her help as she wiped the blood from my hands.
She shook her head, grave as she lifted her eyes to meet mine.
“Mother said there was a darkness within him, and I cannot help but believe he too got what he deserved.”
There was a darkness within me too.
One that had been present from the moment I had set foot in Lucia.
As if this land had awoken it from its slumber.
And I was going to introduce Lorien to it the next time I saw him.