Chapter 37
Chapter Thirty-Seven
HORNHALL
D agan’s new room was better than hers. Hand-painted velvet wallpaper of ivory and gold. An armoire large enough to stack at least six bodies, gilded mirrors spanning the front. Standing candelabras dripped with crystals on either side of floor-to-ceiling windows, their gauzy curtains swaying gently in the faint breeze. A view of the best gardens, the tender scents of flora drifting up to perfume the room.
But the gigantic bed with an ornately carved headboard that nearly reached the ceiling was the real show stopper. Katarra traced her fingers over the detailed battle scene depicted in the aged wood. Two kings– always godsdamned kings, never a queen –faced off, armies with lances at the ready, banners flying proudly.
So unimaginative. If Katarra had commissioned this piece, she would have had the artist show the aftermath. Men standing over their dead brothers, flies already at their vacant eyes. Fathers trying to hold in the entrails of their gutted sons. Best friends impaled on enemy spears and crushed under decaying horse flesh. Wild dogs already at the bodies.
Such images were the real beauty of war. Without such horrific sacrifice, brought about by corruption and greed, hatred would not grow. Without hatred there could be no kings facing off on a pristine field not yet soaked in battle blood.
A familiar cadence down the hall came to an abrupt stop when he found her sitting amongst the pillows and throws of his bed. “You didn’t try and escape,” Dagan said.
Katarra continued tracing the king on the right, her fingers memorizing the grooves, envisioning the shape of the blade that had hewn out the wood. “Why would I do that? You’re the ticket to getting my kingdom back.”
She heard the inhale. Knew exactly what he was detecting now–the scent lingering on her. “You didn’t finish him off?”
“I do love a good rhetorical question.” She smiled and faced him. “You sound surprised.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t fuck him and eat him.”
“You know, as many times as someone accuses me of that–the percentage is still only half.”
Dagan smirked and closed the door behind him. “I have missed that mouth. The plans I have for it.” He unbuckled his belt and yanked the leather through the loops of his pants. The sound shot a thrill through her. “But first, where are the keys?”
“Did your lackey tell you I took them?” She inspected her nails. “Is he finally awake?”
“He did. And he is. For now .” Dagan cocked his head, the movement purely lupine. “Where are the keys, Katarra?”
She jerked her chin toward the nightstand. “Top drawer.”
Her betrothed headed for the side of the bed. “We need to have a discussion regarding what type of games are acceptable.” Dagan opened the drawer. Stilled. If he were surprised they were in there, it didn’t show on his face. “You will find me less tolerant as your mate than I was as your fuck toy.”
“They make pills for that, you know.”
He firmly shut the drawer. “I will not be made a fool of.” The threat gleamed sharp as a knife. “Not in front of my pack. ”
Katarra studied his profile, the hard set to his jaw. Every primordial instinct in her body, every muscle and tendon, and her core memory told her to play nice.
“Technically…” It simply wasn’t in her nature to do so. “They’ll be my pack. You will be my consort.” His knuckles turned white and his fangs pressed against his tightening lips. She added, “Still my toy.”
Pain slammed through her face, and light splintered her vision. “I am no one’s toy,” he snarled, hand going around her throat, his face speckled with the stars floating in her vision. Dagan pinned her to the bed. “Least of all, a whore like you!”
She choked out a laugh. “There’s the jealous prick I remember. Did your pack member tell you how I screamed his name? On the eve of our wedding?”
He hit her again, shattering her cheekbone. Blood filled her mouth. “I’ll give you something to scream.” He reached between her legs, fumbling with his pants.
“Aren’t you forgetting something?” she rasped. “ Your audience .” His eyes shot back up to hers. “Though I imagine your nephew would love seeing you take by force what was willingly given to him.”
As she held his volatile stare, a heartbeat passed. Then another. A muscle twitched in his jaw.
He shoved off her. The air rushed violently into her lungs. Katarra gulped it down and rolled to her side. She just had to keep him here. Keep him engaged. Long enough for…
A knock on the door snapped both their heads around.
“What?” Dagan demanded.
“It’s your brother,” a muffled male voice answered.
“What the fuck about him?” Dagan seethed, stalking to the door. The Wolf of Ventus yanked it open.
“He’s here.”
T he blended voices in the ballroom–near and remote, vibrant and subdued–drew to an abrupt stop when the doors were thrown open.
Sage wasn’t able to clearly make out the looks on their faces. Not with the hood on. But she heard their collective gasp when Gideon led her across the marble dancefloor.
He ordered his brother fetched and guided her to a large chair. Not merely a chair. A throne.
His next words confirmed it. Her cousin introduced himself to the Hornhall court as the King of Arrowren, and Emperor of Ventus. And he announced Sage, his empress consort.
The gathered partygoers had the good sense not to gasp this time. Heedless of the stunned silence, Gideon declared Calian, his queen, and their son deceased. Killed in the unfortunate explosion at Windsong.
Due to an arranged marriage to the princess, Xavier would be taking over the title King of Windsong once they were wed.
Sage heard the intake of Mekale’s shuddering breath beside her. She wished she could reach her, touch her, provide any comfort at all, but the chains under her cloak prevented the use of her hands. Thankfully the princess had been spared the beating Sage received at the cabin, but her mental fortitude had to be nearing its breaking point.
She could only hope that was the extent of it. She couldn’t be sure what occurred between the Arrows and Hornhall. After Gideon finished kicking the shit out of her, he placed the magic retardant over Sage’s head, tossed her across the back of his pegasus and took flight. Xavier had transported Mekale using the same flashing ability as Bastian.
Gideon used their time in the air to explain every aspect of his diabolical plans. He had opened a rift to the fifth realm and brokered a deal with those souls who wanted out. He convinced Windsong and Hornhall the rebels were responsible for the darkness. All the while, he allied with Spade and her blood-hungry group, promising to make her his queen when this was over.
Spade’s group had kidnapped the child king and his mother. They used the Windsong soldiers in Stansoll Wharf as a distraction, knowing Hornhall would send its own troops to investigate. Which left the forest and city entrances into the catacombs unguarded.
They were also responsible for the symbols left around the Arrows. A simple strategy to deflect attention away from the one truly responsible for the darkness. Sage did wonder at that. How desperate Spade must have grown to risk so many lives.
Gideon’s other accomplice was Venderson. The bastard was actually a dark wizard. He was responsible for Calian’s slow possession.
A feat her cousin was quite proud of, as it had been a long and trying process, requiring multiple injections. Done carefully, to keep anyone from suspecting the change occurring in the king. But Mekale did notice. They hadn’t counted on that.
Her realization led to them speeding up their timeline. When the princess joined the tourney, the part of Calian that was still a father, had almost snapped the possession’s hold over him. But Venderson regained control of the king by dosing his and the queen’s wine. Enough to begin the challenge without any disputes caused by Mekale’s joining.
When they retired to their chambers to lie down, Venderson injected them both with the final installment of their undoing. The queen never woke.
A shiver crawled over Sage’s memory at the strange feeling she got when they returned to the castle after the tourney. It had been the darkness. Her magic responding to the infestation.
Venderson had hustled the king off that night to meet Gideon and Xavier. So her cousin could see for himself that Calian was complicit. He then met with, and turned on, Spade, making her his hostage instead of his queen.
Though Gideon didn’t say it, that had been his gravest mistake. Sage’s old friend apparently suspected he might betray her and took the precaution of rigging Windsong with explosives.
None of Gideon’s confessed depravities could have prepared Sage for the last one he dumped on her. Right as they landed in Hornhall. The one that made bile rise in her throat.
She was to be his mate.
It had always been his goal. Since he’d taken her in at ten years of age. Their union was what he needed to create a supreme High-fae bloodline again. A new breed of Pure Magic practitioners, so mighty, their army would be unstoppable on the multi-realm stage.
Marrying Xavier to Mekale was only one cog in the wheel. Once his nephew became King of Windsong, they would set their sights on getting back the throne of Gerra. Sage’s other cousin, Dagan, had come here to marry the widowed queen of Hornhall–having already gotten rid of his niece’s husband when the late king and Calian started sharing notes on the missing fae.
Unfortunately, Gideon’s staged kidnapping took a dire turn when the darkness he’d unleashed overtook the hiding place where the rebels were keeping them and killed the bride-to-be. If the boy-king lived, Gideon hadn’t told her. Sage had been too weak to ask. Her powers were completely depleted by the beating and the torturous hood that delayed her healing and voided out her magic.
Apparently she would meet one more relative here: the widowed queen’s brother, the Commander of the King’s Knights. The male was a legend. Sage had spent her life trying to evade the silver-haired and eyed warrior. Archer Voltaire–judge, jury, and executioner–was the last fae a rebel wanted to end up before.
The idea that the commander, older than her by years, had been one of the most dangerous forces working against her life’s cause… It was proof that Gideon’s reach knew no bounds. The cousin who took her in as a girl was, indeed, the monster she always feared he might be. The bastard who, if he had his way, would become her mate.
All moves and counter moves. A game Gideon had been orchestrating since the fall of Arrowren. Perhaps even before the fall. Though her cousin had stopped short of confessing as much.
The distinctive sound of leather slapping marble interrupted the stark silence of the ballroom. With it, tucked under the absorbent weight of the heavier footfall, came the clicking of high heels.
“ Y ou should have killed her,” Sterling said, “before you fell in love with her.”
The King’s Knights found other things suddenly of interest in their appointed cells. Archer sighed. While he appreciated his comrade’s effort to appear uninterested, the kid was right. He could admit that now. After spending the better part of the night suffering in abject horror at the events playing out on that hologram.
Did she know the spelled device had been following her around? Did she know Archer watched her every move from a cell in the dungeon? Did she even care?
He had his doubts when she took that male into the closet. He’d clenched his jaw so hard he heard bone crack when the bastard put his meaty paws on her. Then she took his keys. And hope replaced disgust.
That hope dissipated as she leisurely strolled, not for the dungeon, but to her room. Where she casually took off her jewelry, combed her hair, fed her wyvern–not that the little beasty needed anymore food–and tucked him into the blankets of her bed. She then locked the door behind her and headed toward the royal wing of the castle. To the king’s suite…
Any lingering hope exploded like dust from a slammed book when she stepped inside. No longer was it the room of Archer’s young nephew. In fact, every shred of evidence it had ever belonged to a child was gone.
It now belonged to the owner of the sword resting on the antique dresser. Atop its hilt, a silver wolf head with gums curled over fangs, emeralds gleaming from its baleful eyes.
Dagan’s blade.
The King’s Knights had all cursed at the sight of it. But Archer didn’t have a breath left to take. All the air was pulled from his lungs when realization set in.
She was making her choice…
The champion of the solstice tourney would have chosen Archer. The Queen of Gerra would choose her realm.
He hadn’t gotten the chance to wallow in his understanding. Not with what happened next. Archer’s magic roared in his veins when Dagan struck her. His desperate shouts filled the dungeon corridor, and his hands pried at the steel bars when he realized what they were about to witness next. Not as he finally recognized what she wasn’t doing.
Katarra wasn’t fighting back. She was… She was stalling him.
Buying time for what, Archer didn’t know. The knock on the door had nearly brought him to his knees. Now they watched her walk the halls of Hornhall at Dagan’s side.
Any other female might have been shaking. Might be walking a step behind her abuser. Might not be stopping to reapply her red lipstick in one of the floor-to-ceiling mirrors, making the asshole who had struck her wait.
Felix snickered. “She’s got balls.”
Dagan, exasperated, took hold of her arm. He seemed to have the good sense to not yank it. Proof even he knew what lines should not be crossed.
“You didn’t know you had another uncle?” Sterling asked, gaze focused on the hologram as Katarra and Dagan finally strode into the ballroom.
“There’s a lot I didn’t know before yesterday,” Archer replied. “Like who your real father is.”
The younger male tensed at that. He hadn’t asked anymore about his bloodline. Archer was pretty sure it wasn’t just the continuous rolling hologram that had kept the fae elite’s questions at bay.
Archer might have respected his choice to not know. If he didn’t need him as an ally.
He watched the white-haired uncle he didn’t know lounging in the king’s throne, drumming his fingers on the arm, as Katarra and Dagan crossed the ballroom. A hooded and cloaked figure sat beside him on the queen’s throne. Beside her, looking thoroughly wretched, sat the Princess of Windsong. Standing to her right was an unknown male–tall, with a regal bearing and an astute gaze that appeared to note every individual in the room, like a solider assessing a battlefield.
Archer’s magic would need to be in the same room with the two strangers to get any idea who they were. But he didn’t need his magic for this reading.
Not when the male stepped forward and spoke to Katarra. “Hello, Mother.” He nodded to Dagan. “Father.”
“The fuck…” Drake swore.
Archer glanced sidelong at Sterling. The immortal’s shock was evident. “Xavier Diaboli is your cousin?” LaGoryen asked, dumbfounded.
“It would appear so.” Archer looked back at the hologram, giving the kid space to process his emotions. “He’s also your older brother.”
Whatever reaction LaGoryen might have been about to express was trumped by the sound of shuffling feet and irritated murmuring down the walkway. Drake and the others stepped up to the cell bars, listening, waiting.
Chastisement became discernible. “Remind me where in the paperwork you filled out to be considered for the position of dungeon guard did it state that you had a right to question anything but how to hold your own dick when you take a piss?”
Ulrich... Archer mentally prepared himself for what the ex-advisor’s appearance down here meant as he heard him issue his dismissal. “Now go on, empty a pot of feces, or something. ”
Lord Ulrich stepped from the dark walkway and into the torchlight, hard eyes going straight to Archer, mouth tightening. A look Archer was used to receiving from the other male.
“You have no idea how many times I have longed to see you here,” Ulrich said, more loudly than was needed. “Every time you refused to heel.” He approached the cell. “Every time you skirted your duty to the crown.”
“I imagine the outcome was worth all your hardships.” Archer narrowed his eyes. Just a little closer and he could get his hands around the weasel’s neck. “Have you come here just to gloat?”
The ex-advisor stopped short of being within arm’s reach. The old bastard had never been an idiot. Unfortunately for Archer’s twitching hand, he still wasn’t.
“Now, now.” Ulrich tutted. “Why would I find your current situation entertaining? It does no good to have the Commander of the King’s Knights in a jail cell.” Again, his voice stayed elevated, as if he wanted others to overhear this conversation. “You have done this to yourself and your men with your insubordination.”
Ulrich reached into his cloak, then darted his gaze down the long walkway he had come from. “Your willful pride,” he continued, eyes landing back on Archer as he extended an arm. His fist closed tightly around something. “Your inability to ever consider anything but yourself .”
Archer opened his palm. “A flaw you have finally been able to capitalize on.” Something light and wrapped in fabric landed in it. He quickly pulled his hand back and tucked it in his pocket. “I’m sure my mother is equally overjoyed with my current predicament.”
Ulrich stepped back. “She is resigned to it.” There was no coldness in his response. Only something like sadness flickered in his steely eyes. “She wants you to finally accept your role in this.”
“My role?” Archer scoffed. “Don’t tell me she still expects me to marry.” It was easy to keep up the appearance of caustic deprecation. It was all he’d ever had for the ex-advisor. “It would be difficult to perform my husbandly duties from this cell. ”
The older fae said, “She longs for you to be the male your father was.” He retreated toward the pitch-black walkway. “Not the male Warelow became.” Another step away and the shadows pulled him back into their embrace. “But a male the wolves call to.” His voice was barely audible now. “The one they will bow to.”
He was gone, stealthier than Archer had known possible. As if he hadn’t been there at all. Archer turned back to the hologram. It no longer displayed on his cell wall.
Despite the sinking feeling in his gut, he opened up his hand. In the center of his palm was a scrap of worn green material. Wrapped up in it, a key to their cuffs.
Archer almost didn’t look any closer at the torn piece of aged fabric. Almost missed the stigmata embroidered in it. The same symbol Katarra had cut from Warelow. Only this one had writing encircling it. He had to squint to make out the curving words:
~For the crown, the wings, and the blood~
The ancient motto of those sworn to Arrowren. It represented the crown they served, the wings of the steeds that carried them, and the Pure Magic in their blood.
Not like his uncles. Or who Warelow had become.
Like his father .
Loyal to the crown of his birth. Loyal to its rightful succession. Not to the pretender king draped across the throne upstairs. Nor would he bow before the male who had executed the wizards.
Archer’s father would have bent the knee for only one…
A queen.
“ I always knew you weren’t dead.” Xavier walked closer, his inquisitive gaze taking in her borrowed body. From her blonde hair to the puffy lip–courtesy of his father.
Katarra did the same in return. Xavier had always been cunning. His strength light-years beyond his peers in Gerra. Now, with age, and decades spent under Dagan’s masterful training… The immeasurable power that radiated off her son was a thing of true beauty.
“You’re the first to actually say that.” She smiled. “Which is why you’ve always been my favorite child.”
His eyes drifted to her abdomen. “Am I?”
Katarra reined in her surprise. Dagan unwittingly saved the conversations direction by interrupting the exchange. “You know better than to take her at her word.” He moved past Xavier, every step brimming with unwavering arrogance as he strolled for his brother. “She’s only honest when she’s insulting someone.”
Katarra smiled. “Which is why he hears the truth a lot.”
The crowd snickered tentatively, testing to see if it was acceptable. Even the eyes of the wolf pack around the perimeter gleamed with amusement. Dagan tossed a casual grin over his shoulder at her, but there was an edge to it–a warning.
She tossed it right back. So much possibility in this room. She didn’t know who to annoy next. She focused on the platinum blond on the throne. Might as well start at the perceived top.
She looped her arm around her son’s and said, “Care to introduce me to the rest of the family?”
“How far along are you?” Xavier said into her mind.
Katarra jerked at the intrusion, but kept the smile on her face. “Did your father teach you how to do this?”
“He doesn’t know I have the gift. How far along?”
“Secrets… Nice. I’m glad some of my influence remains.” She sent Lady Erinned a special smile as they passed. She would need to make good on their deal later. Provided the message got into the right hands. “As for your question,” she replied, “only a couple of days.”
“Does Dagan know?”
“No.”
“Who’s the father?”
Katarra hesitated . “If we live through this introduction, I’ll tell you. ”
The muscles of Xavier’s forearm tensed where her arm rested. He said, mind to mind, “Follow my lead.”
“Are we a team?” She surveyed the two seated females. The one cloaked didn’t budge, not a trace of emotion emanated from her. The pretty blonde beside her was terrified. Clearly unequipped and traumatized.
“Only if you want to live,” he replied – uncaring and cold enough to make any mother proud–and stopped in front of the obscenely attractive male on the throne. “Uncle, this is the Queen of Gerra. My mother.”