Chapter 10 | Kincade
I remained where I was. Listening to her receding footsteps. A door slammed inside the manor with a finality. She was angry.
Anger meant she was alive. Breathing. I’d rather have her angry with me than dead.
Everyone who loved you.
I hadn’t meant to say those words. Not like that. Not all at once. But once spoken, they lodged deep, barbed and unrelenting. I pressed my palm harder against the tree, feeling the rough bark bite into my skin, grounding me in the present.
She believed she’d chosen death. She spoke of choice like it ended with her. It didn’t.
What she never saw—what I had never told her—was what that choice had done to the rest of us. It left wreckage in its wake. And I was still standing in the debris of hers.
I stayed where I was because following her would have forced the truth into the open. She would hear the truth in my silence and she wasn’t ready for it.
The Fae ward along the tree line pulsed once. A faint ripple that would have been missed if I hadn’t been looking. As if someone was testing.
I didn’t move. The sun fell behind a gathering of clouds. Shadows shifted over the lawn still glimmering with the residue of morning.
Another ripple.
Fae wards didn’t flare unless something touched them without permission. They whispered.
I shifted my stance without moving my feet, fingers brushing the hilt of my knife. The forest ahead of me looked unchanged—sunlight through leaves, birdsong drifting lazily—but the air had tightened. Like a breath held too long.
They were closer than Anna believed.
And that, more than anything, confirmed what I already knew.
I hadn’t sent Silas first because I didn’t trust her strength. I sent him because this was only the beginning.
There, at the far end of the property, movement. Stealth and shadow creeping along the edge of the trees. The second scout. A Watcher sent ahead to see what would respond. To see what defenses awoke.
I waited to see how far he’d go. How close he’d get to the manor. He moved with fluid grace. Sharp. Trained. Effective.
He skirted the boundary instead of crossing it outright. He wanted reaction, not confrontation.
I let him come closer.
Let him believe the manor’s guardian was distracted. Emotional. Sloppy.
When he stepped past the last line Edward had etched into the land, when his attention turned toward the house—
I moved.
The distance between us vanished.
His gaze snapped to mine. And for a brief moment, recognition slammed hard. We knew each other. Had fought together once. When the world was at war.
A grin split his face as he approached, reaching for the weapon at his waist. Then he charged, whipping out the knife.
Steel flashed.
We collided hard, momentum carrying us into the underbrush. Leaves tore free beneath us as I deflected his blade and drove my elbow into his ribs. He rolled with it, faster than I expected, boots digging into the soil as he came up already striking again.
“You’re slow. She make you soft?” he sneered.
I slashed for his throat, but he ducked. He laughed.
“I saw her walking the grounds. She doesn’t see us. Not yet.”
Wild, hot rage flared.
I went at him then—hard, relentless. Blade met blade, sparks flashing as we traded strikes too fast for a human eye to track. He caught my wrist, twisted, pain lancing up my arm, but I used it, drove my knee into his gut and sent him staggering back.
“I will end you,” I said.
He flashed a grin again. “Sebastian wanted to know if you stayed. She can’t be all that. She’s a skinny girl with a death wish.”
I swung. My fist connected with his face. There was a sickening crack as his head snapped back. Blood spurted from his nose. He was disoriented long enough for me shove him through the Fae wards and against a tree. Arm at his throat.
His smile widened. Blood dripped from his nose.
“You like fucking her?”
I shoved the knife into his gut, then slashed upward from navel to neck. Then stepped back and let him fall to the ground. Blood smeared the edge of the blade and along my hand.
But he was dead.
This wasn’t a warning.
This was a confirmation.
I heard the creak of the bow before I saw the Fae archers. They had an uncanny ability to blend in with the trees and shadows. I’d breached their wards, and they knew it. Likely they were there before I finished killing him.
I dropped the knife and held my hands up in surrender. Waiting.
Killian stepped through his guards holding the Sword of Light by his side. We stared at each other a long moment. His gaze flicked from me to the dead man at my feet then back to my face.
“He came for her.” Not a question.
I nodded.
His jaw hardened. I saw her enter the forest earlier that day to speak to him. Likely to ask for an alliance.
To his men he said, “Stand down.” They lowered their bows. Then to me, he said, “You bring war to my forest.”
I didn’t point out that this forest belonged to her estate. “I ended a threat.”
His expression was flat, unreadable. “You killed him here so she wouldn’t see.”
“She doesn’t need to see.”
“And if another comes?” he asked.
“I’ll end him, too,” I said. “As many as it takes.”
He regarded me coolly. A slight lift of his chin. “She told me she was preparing for survival. Is that what you do, too? Prepare for survival?”
“I’m prepared to do whatever is necessary to keep them away from her.”
It didn’t matter how many of Sebastian’s men I’d kill, I’d do it again.
“If she asks for asylum, I will give it to her.” His gaze flicked again to the dead man. “But I don’t think she’ll ask.” Then back to me. “And I will not send my people to fight your war.”
“I’m not asking you to.”
“But she did,” he said. Cold. Unflappable. Then, “Do you think you’re sparing her? Protecting her from making a decision that will put her in danger?” He shook his head then. “You’ve decided what she’s allowed to face.”
“I’m deciding who’s allowed to touch her.”
The Fae king’s face hardened then. “We’ll discard the body, so she doesn’t have to know.”
But something the way he said it told me this was the one and only time he’d grant me that favor.
He motioned to his men. Two of them picked up the dead Watcher, then moved deeper into the forest. The other guards followed leaving me alone with the Fae king.
“When she burned herself out with the Ark—”
“I was there,” I snapped. And shoved that ugly memory once again to the back of my mind.
He pressed his lips together in a thin line. “She chose once. You survived it. We all did. If you keep making these decisions for her, you will not survive the next one.”
Killian left me alone at the edge of the forest, retreating back into his woodland sanctuary. I bent to pick up the knife, wiping the steel on the blades of grass, then sheathing it.
He was wrong about one thing. I would survive anything if it meant she was alive and breathing. Even if she was angry. Even if she hated me.
Let her hate me. As long as she lived, I could endure that.