Chapter 2
Chapter Two
WOLFE
Living darkness shrouded my body from head to toe, replacing what was once skin and bone.
In my prison of enchanted glass, I existed in a thick mass of obsidian, darker than night. Darker than the endless void surrounding the dead space of Morg?ven.
The fucking darkness was me.
Death had finally taken its permanent form in my body, devouring my Fae essence.
I was no longer the Fae prince. I could no longer feel myself. Everything had fused together.
But… At least my thoughts still clashed through what was left of my mind, struggling to hold fast.
Though small, part of me remained. I’d use that to focus and get me back to my wife.
My Ziyka.
Merciless gods. It seemed I’d always end up trying to find my way back to you.
This time, though, I was fucked. Yet I refused to believe after all we’d been through, this was how we’d end.
It could not be.
If I did nothing else, I needed to summon everything inside me to get out of here.
I didn’t even care those motherfuckers thought I’d killed Dreynthor. Nor that I was clearly set up to take the fall for his death.
It was a clever trap. Whoever laid it knew that only a human or those—like Deathwalkers—wouldn’t be affected by the Nightmother’s Kiss poison that drained the life from my uncle’s body.
They’d used some kind of binding to seize me. I’d walked into the accounting chamber, found Dreynthor dead, then some dark magic caused me to transform.
I must have blacked out because I couldn’t remember being moved here to the Citadel.
Whatever power had been used was still fucking with me now. I could feel it. Faintly. It was becoming less and less against the overwhelming Deathwalker powers that surged through my soul.
This godsdamn trap was set to get me out of the picture. The enemy couldn’t kill me before, so they used my curse against me.
The enemy knew I was going after my uncle. They must have found out in some twisted way that Kaem had seized the dead rebel general, and they knew what he intended to do with him. They knew I’d get the truth.
Then they did this so they could reach Elariya.
I couldn’t let that happen. I wouldn’t.
She was mine. I’d vowed to protect her always.
I couldn’t do that from here.
Rising into the air, I pressed against the glass cage. I willed my flesh and bone to return. Anything that belonged to the male I had been before the curse tore through me and left only this ruin behind.
Nothing happened.
The darkness inside me surged instead, fighting back.
I slammed into the wall, shaking the glass. The impact should have broken it, but no.
This was a prison designed to keep me locked away for eternity.
I knew that. Still, I tried again. And failed.
The cage that was built for monsters held fast and steady.
A nefarious snarl tore from me, dripping with frustration and something animalistic that sounded wrong even to my own ears.
Then a wretched laugh filled the cage, reverberating off the walls in sparks of that green essence I’d seen just before I turned into this form.
“Don’t bother,” a silky voice I recognized taunted.
The thing that wore my sister’s face stepped out of thin air, a bright smile spreading across her blood-red lips.
She waltzed right into my prison with ease.
It knew she wasn’t my Zyrra, but her face haunted me nonetheless.
I hissed at her, and her smile widened to a triumphant grin. Slithering snake, she was loving this.
She’d come to gloat just like she had back in Morg?ven.
Energy sapped from my body at the sight of her clad in my sister’s favorite gown. It was a cream and navy tailored gown I’d gotten for her last birthday. That was just before the Slivershade blight took her. And just before Mother died.
I pounced, but the restraint holding me back stopped me.
Fuck.
Apart from being fucking useless, I couldn’t attack. I learned that earlier when one of the officiants came by to read the allegations laid against me.
I braced against the glass, and the raw hum of magic keeping me inside sparked.
Zyrra came even closer and tsked, shaking her head. “Look at you again, brother. The great Wolfe Nightblade reduced to the shadows. You’ve become your curse, my dear brother.”
I wanted to shout at her and tell her I wasn’t her brother. Instead, another snarl tore from my throat.
“Wow, it’s really bad. You’ve been silenced for good.” She inspected me like I was some kind of experiment. “It was my idea to do this, you know. Never knew it would work so well, though. You and that miserable old warrior thought you had one over on me. No, no. I took back control.”
No surprise, I was right.
Monster.
But what was I thinking?
Monster? Her? No, the monster wasn’t her. Not this time.
And if I could talk, I was sure I’d look crazy. I assumed no one else could see her but me.
“How strange a fate.” She looked me up and down, still assessing, the blues of her eyes turning almost black.
“Do you feel as doomed as I, brother? You killed me and threw my body into the mouth of the fire. Not even a proper burial. You trapped me between states, not even giving me Titania’s tithe to pay my way through the Land of the Dead. ”
What little remained of me wept, and I felt worse when her face morphed into how she looked that terrible day when I had to end her.
“Why, Wolfe? Why didn’t you find another way? Was killing me really the answer?” Mocking tears ran down her cheeks and she looked more battered, her skin mottled and bruised. “You could have spared my life. I was your little sister.”
Stop it!
I couldn’t bear it. Her and her fucking deception.
It wasn’t her. She wasn’t Zyrra.
I knew it. But I felt the weight of grief nonetheless.
An anguished growl ripped out of me, shaking the entire room. I growled again, guilt devouring me whole.
Zyrra switched effortlessly from crying to manic laughter, the sound of a lunatic.
“Gods, I wish you could see your face. Then again, there isn’t much to see.
It’s just a void of darkness.” She howled with laughter even as I snarled again.
“Serve you right. You are powerless. You are trapped. And you are just as foolish as our uncle. That simpering fool was so easy to recruit. He never even caught on that he was a pawn all along. But he served me well. Right up until his final task. To die.”
Did she actually kill him?
It seemed I’d never know. There were so many working for her.
But where did she fall in the grand scheme of leadership?
She was definitely a leader. I’d always known she wasn’t part of those who saw without eyes and spoke without lips. Those were servants.
The zombie general Kaem controlled had said there were several leaders in charge but they all answered to one.
Was she the one?
“Think all you want. It’s all you can do, brother.” She gave me the biggest smile, and her eyes turned fully black. “I will take your little mage and find the ring. Then I’ll kill her.”
Holding that smile, she stepped back into the air and faded. The space swallowed her, and she was gone as if she’d never been there.
Defeat writhed through me, and every wall pressed against my mind with doom.
Gods. I was truly trapped.
I couldn’t get out. Couldn’t get out.
Elariya.
Gods. I can’t get out.
Ziyka.