Chapter 25
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The floor disappeared, and my stomach dropped. We all fell, and my uncle reached for me, but Kole was there before he connected.
Assisted by his elemental magic in our downward plunge, Kole impaled my uncle as air swirled around us.
A slippery sound of spurting blood and tearing flesh came as Kole ran his sword through Arnel’s chest. A second later, we all crashed onto the dining hall floor in a pile of fire and splintered wood.
Arnel let out a painful wail, and I shoved piles of debris off me.
Clouds of flames and smoke wafted up around us. Ash obscured my view, and sharp wooden splinters cut into my skin. I pulled a jagged floorboard out from my thigh and activated my vampiric and sight sensory magic to see better.
Another groan came from my left. My uncle was clutching his chest as blood seeped between his fingers.
Fire continued to rage around us, and the vamfeers all flailed.
Those that weren’t on fire went for Kole, but the warrior was already up.
Potent air magic lifted my mate. The dining room’s ceiling was so high that Kole soared above the remaining vamfeers, flying on his air element as his sword swung violently.
Heads rolled, and decapitated vamfeers fell into the quickly growing flames.
When the last was killed, I blurred toward Kole, my wounds already healed due to my vampire magic. He landed behind the smoke, his feet touching down, and out of the darkness, my mate emerged.
“Kole?” I choked.
Blood and dust coated his face and hair. Singed clothing and his burned skin were visible too. But instead of looking at me, his focus was entirely on my uncle.
My chest tightened as Kole whipped another blade from his waist.
My uncle coughed, his eyes widening in fear. Soot and ash covered his hair and face, and rubble still covered him. He tried skidding back along the floor, still clutching his stabbed chest, but his face had paled from blood loss, and the wreckage stopped his retreat.
Another cough came from Arnel. Rasping, he called, “Primelle, help—”
Kole’s flash of speed had a scream of pain emitting from my uncle, halting his desperate command.
Blood poured from between Arnel’s lips, and standing tall, Kole held up my uncle’s severed tongue from between his fingers.
“Try commanding her now, Arnel. Words are a bit hard to form without a tongue.”
Kole threw my uncle’s tongue into the fire. It landed on the burning rubble, and it sizzled and cooked, bringing with it a stench I didn’t want to remember.
Fear filled my uncle’s expression, and he tried to rise. To flee. To command. All while blood poured out of him. Strangely, however, his blood held no allure to me.
Arnel mumbled, trying to speak, and lifted a hand.
But Kole raised his sword and swung. No hesitation. No mercy. The Imperial Warrior’s blade sliced right through my uncle’s arm.
Arnel’s scream wrenched from his bloody mouth just as his hand fell limply to the floor.
My eyes widened, but the dark rage coasting from Kole into me along our bond told me my mate wasn’t done.
“This is for slapping her.” Kole picked up Arnel’s intact arm and swung his blade in a blur.
A new howl came from my uncle, his body pale and shaking, just as his other hand fell to land with a thump by the first severed limb.
“And this is for turning her into a vampire. For turning her against her will.” Kole’s sword fell and cut Arnel’s leg off at the thigh.
A pitiful cry rose from my uncle, and I knew he was close to losing consciousness. Blood was flowing from him in rivers.
“And this is for commanding her and terrifying her, for making her believe all hope was lost.” He sliced off Arnel’s other leg until his body was only a stump.
“And this is for thinking you owned my mate. Nobody owns her. She answers to no one but herself.” His sword swung through the air in a blur of metal and grace.
A sickening thunk was all that came when Arnel’s head rolled onto the debris behind him, falling down the wreckage to land near the wall.
His dead eyes gazed toward the ceiling, lifeless and dim.
But Kole didn’t stop there. He sliced into Arnel’s decapitated body again and again, massacring him, flaying him, destroying him completely until all that was left was bloody clumps of flesh.
I stared at my mate, unable to move. Bloodlust consumed Kole along our bond, yet the fire continued to rage around us.
“Kole,” I said softly. I pushed a surge of love toward him along our bond, and slowly, the haze from his bloodlust began to lift. “We need to stop this fire. Arnel’s dead. He’ll never hurt me again.”
But as Nicholas had promised, I could still feel my uncle’s commands anchored inside me. If anyone learned that I was a vampire, apart from my mate, I knew that his Maker magic would continue to rise.
My chest tightened, and any hope I’d harbored that his death would stop his control of me faded, but I didn’t regret his murder. It was a fitting end for my uncle. Violent and filled with rage. Exactly as he deserved for everything he’d done to me and countless others.
I lifted my chin and reminded myself it could have been so much worse. I was free of him now. No further commands. No more late-night visits to his estate to be forced to enact another vile demand.
Relief poured through me, but so did the reality of what we were facing. My uncle’s estate would go up entirely in flames, taking with it any evidence of what he’d done to me and his God of Night followers if we didn’t stop it soon.
“Kole?” I reached for him, and my eyes alighted on the blood coating his armor. “Oh Gods, you’re bleeding!”
My vampire speed and strength kicked in. With a blurred move, I picked Kole up and carried him into the hall. When I set him down, away from the burning room in a quiet corridor, Kole’s eyebrows rose, and a dark smile spread across his lips. “So strong you’ve become, my love.”
“Kole, I’m serious.” I frantically tore at his armor, lifting it to search for his wounds, and when a patch of burned skin appeared beneath it, the armor’s metal sizzling into his flesh, I froze. “Kole, you’re burned quite badly.”
He winced slightly, the only indication that he was in any pain. “I might be, but it’ll heal.”
“Will it?” Images of my sister’s ruined arm flooded my mind.
“Yes.” He caressed his finger along my jaw, tilting my head up. “Have you already forgotten of my Solis affinities, my love?”
No sooner had he uttered the words than his skin began to knit itself together and regenerate. The bloody, charred flesh that had filled my view turned into healthy, new tissue.
My jaw dropped as something I’d never realized before hit me. “That’s why you don’t have any scars. Your affinity heals you before scars can form.”
“Indeed.” Kole inspected his flesh, but it was entirely smooth. “See, my love? Nothing to worry about.”
“But what about the vamfeers? Did any of them hurt you? Scratch you? Bite you?”
“No, that’s what my armor’s for, but we should cleanse, just to be safe.” His magic rose before I could respond and whisked everything from the battle away.
Following that, he quickly sheathed his gleaming blades, his daggers concealed once more as his huge sword’s pommel rose from his back. Behind us, the growing fire crackled and warmed my back. Already, it was creeping into the hall I’d blurred us into.
He smirked. “It was a smart move to start the fire.”
“Perhaps, but we need to put it out, which means we need water. Lots of water.”
“Then we better move. Where’s the well?”
Together, we raced throughout the first floor until we found the kitchen and water pump. Using my telekinetic magic, we filled every jug, vase, pot, pail, and bucket we could find in the pantry and surrounding rooms.
Magic cascaded out of me as I commanded everything we could find to carry water to the fire, again and again, as Kole worked his element and sucked all of the air from the room to smother the flames.
Together, using our combined powers, we put the fire out before it could destroy anything further.
And it was only once the fire stopped, and the charred, smoky remains lay before us, that I actually allowed myself to contemplate what we’d done.
A giggle burst out of me. “Stars and galaxy, you truly killed him. And quite gruesomely, I might add. He’s gone from my life forever.”
Kole gazed at my uncle’s dead remains and the burned vamfeers. A malevolent smile twisted his lips, but he sighed dramatically. “Alas, his death wasn’t nearly as drawn out as I wanted it to be, although cutting out his tongue and hacking off his body parts was immensely satisfying.”
Another laugh spilled from my lips, but I sobered.
“We’ll go to prison for this if we can’t prove he turned me into a vampire and was behind my assassination attempts.
We also need to prove he created the vamfeers and ordered them to attack the palace.
And we need to discover if any more vampires are hidden, under his control, around the realm. We need to find proof.”
With a start, I remembered what I’d packed. I slipped my hand into my pocket and pulled the looking glass out. It was unharmed, the glass still whole. Lifting it, I activated its magic.
The looking glass began to record, and I swung it around, documenting the destruction, the vamfeers, and my dead uncle’s charred remains, as gruesome as the scene was. “We need to record everything. From here on, we need to document everything we’re seeing and what we find.”
Kole put his hands on his hips, his eyes still glowing from the battle. “Where should we start?”
“The library. And then, we need to find if there are any more vamfeers on his estate, and we’ll need to burn those too.”
Kole and I spent hours working through the night. In the library, we found a plethora of information, and I realized that my uncle did have one downfall. His arrogance.