Chapter Twenty-Five
Haide
Knight looks across his family, slowly settling his attention on me. “Let’s move.”
Legend doesn’t waste a second. His arm snakes around my waist and he pulls me with him like the decision was already made the moment I opened my mouth and asked for this, making that wild thing in my chest burrow deeper.
“Come on, little monster,” he mutters against my temple, voice a dark promise. “Show us what the Exile taught you.”
I grin, sharp and pleased. “Oh, I will.” I glance over my shoulder to see Creed still standing there with his arms crossed, eyes cutting straight through me. “Try to keep up, Royal.”
He bristles.
Good.
“Open the gates, Legend.” Creed orders.
But nothing happens.
Legend frowns at the space in front of him, his hand pushing out, but his limbs start to shake. Unease slips into my bones. He evades my attempts at catching his gaze as he runs his fingers through his dark hair. Slowly, his head swivels to Sinner.
A silent conversation takes place between them before Sinner tsks and waves his hand.
A tear in the air rips open as a portal appears, Rathe humming behind it. Lightning sparks not in warning, but in welcome. The realm instantly recognizes the blood of its Kings—and Queen. Singular.
Knight and London step through first, followed by the rest of us, and the portal closes the moment Creed’s feet hit the soil.
The scent shifts—metallic smoke, iron-rich air, magic old enough to bite in an intoxicating way. My skin prickles, every instinct purring like it finally has room to breathe again after being suffocated in the mortal world.
Weird, considering my entire life was spent on an island that is literally located on Earth. Here, in the real realm of Rathe, everything is wild.
The air itself thickens, heavies, leaving no question or uncertainty—but making it undeniably clear that these lands are wild and you are at their will.
It’s untamed.
Unmatched.
“What do you know of the weapon? How does it work?” Knight pushes without meeting my gaze, his eyes focused and scanning for a threat in the distance, just like his brothers.
“You were right before,” I tell him. “Isle’s Kiss doesn’t attack the senses. It eats the soul.”
Everyone jerks their heads my way.
“You’re sure?” Legend asks, a curiosity in his gaze rather than the acidic looks I’m getting from his brothers that say they think I’m full of shit.
“As sure as Creed is an asshole.” Creed scoffs, but I press on. “On the isle, some called it the island’s gift. The one and only mercy it gave the discarded.”
“Mercy?” London peers at me.
“Yep.” I nod, climbing the hillside and turning toward the sound of howling coming from the forest surrounding us.
“The island is intended to torture. It’s a free-for-all of chaos; and my people don’t hate that.
They crave it, but sometimes even the damned get tired and when they do…
Isle’s Kiss is the answer. It kills slowly.
Painfully. It’s the only way of death on the island that leaves you dead long enough for them to rest.”
“What do you mean?” London asks. “Is it a false death?”
I shake my head. “Everything is a false death on the island, remember? You die; you come back. And eventually, you die again. Wash, rinse, repeat. Day after day, year after year.”
Creed glares. “No one here will pity you, so stop trying.”
I roll my eyes. “Oh, fuck off.”
A low wind sweeps up the ridge, dragging a coil of gray fog with it, thick enough that it swallows my boots halfway to my knees.
Something pale juts through the mist a few strides ahead—long, curved, too smooth to be stone.
Bone. Lots of it. A whole stretch of the hillside littered with half-buried remains, some small, some the size of overturned canoes, but all pointed downhill like they crawled here to die.
“Where are we going?”
“Keep walking and keep talking,” Creed demands. “How does it work?”
I fight a smirk and nod. “It’s not poison, or maybe it is, essentially, but its very soil is cursed. The seed grows of that curse, and the flowers grow of those seeds. Basically it enters the system and eats the gifted from the inside out.”
“Eats?” Sinner grins, hands in his pockets.
“It doesn’t just kill,” I nod, stepping over a jagged chunk of bone half sunk in the hillside.
“It eats. Slow. Methodical. First it slips into the veins, threads itself through every pathway it finds, like it’s mapping you.
Then it starts digging deeper, past the blood, past the marrow.
It goes after whatever makes you…you.” I tap my sternum once. “Your spark. Your core. Aka…”
“Your soul,” Legend completes, reaching out and pushing my hair from my face as he continues to walk beside me.
“Exactly.”
“Soul-eating is a fairy tale, even for the gifted.” Knight frowns. “There is no such thing. If there were, if anyone knew about it, it would be us. Not some outsider.”
An outsider who saved your sorry ass once upon a time.
“Why, because you’re big bad royals?” I look across them.
“I’d bet there is a lot more out there than your little golden crested realm shows you.
You’re gifted. Royals, at that. You have powers, and a being that lives inside you.
The possibilities are likely endless. For you more than any…
But you’re closed off because you sit on your pretty velvet chairs and boss people around.
So how could you possibly learn more, become more, if you just keep doing the same shit the Kings before you did? ”
“Our father was a great king,” Sinner snaps.
“I’m sure he was, but I wouldn’t know, now, would I?”
Creed glares, but his head jerks toward Legend when he starts to stagger.
My arms shoot out to steady him, but Sinner gets there first.
Legend’s eyes close and he accepts his brother’s offered shoulder, pulling in a long breath.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Sinner beats me to the question.
Legend just shakes his head, a low, brittle laugh leaving him as he pushes off and shuffles to his own two feet again. “Nothing. I’m fine.” His ocean blue eyes find mine and he offers a small smile. “Keep going, monster.”
My eyes narrow but he tips his chin at me. “Isle’s Kiss,” he presses.
Right.
“Once the ‘poison’ finds what it’s looking for, it starts pulling.
” I drag my fingers through the air, mimicking the motion.
“One vein at a time, like it’s unraveling you from the inside out.
You don’t notice at first—just a heaviness in your limbs, a little heat under the skin.
But then it’s like a pack of wolves are born inside you and they’re gnawing and clawing their way out.
Your veins are ripped open on the inside and the blood starts leaking.
First from the nose, then the eyes, then the mouth.
Eventually, it pushes out everything it can reach.
Even between the legs.” I smirk. “Not pretty. But satisfying to watch.”
All but Legend stare at me like I’ve sprouted a second head.
“What?” I shrug. “People killed me every day for sport. You get bored. You pick favorites. And when Isle’s Kiss took root in someone, it dragged on for hours. Plenty of time to watch them scream.”
Creed’s jaw locks. “How do you fight against it?”
“You run as fast as you fucking can and hope it didn’t already wrap its thorns around your heart. Because if it did…it’s lights out.”
He keeps running his mouth. “If it can be created, it can be destroyed.”
“Of course it can. The island’s enemy is its counterpart.” When they don’t guess, I give them the answer. “Fire.” I push forward, and their footsteps follow.
I almost trip on a root reaching out of the ground but catch myself before anyone sees.
“Why wouldn’t you just open one of your fancy portals here again?” I complain, stepping away from the living tree, shaking what looks like soot from my fingers. “You dragged me halfway across your little kingdom this morning. Seems like a waste of legs.”
Legend’s laugh is low and amused, and before I can dodge, he nips the top of my shoulder, his teeth greedy. Heat flares across my skin and I’ve got the sudden urge to tell him to bite.
I want to feel his teeth sink into my flesh, I want him to claim me and—
Shit. This thing between us. It has a fucking heartbeat.
“We walk because…” he murmurs against my ear as his hands slide to my hips, lifting me over the shimmering sludge like I weigh nothing.
“Portals disturb here. Their young are among these lands, and their mothers are very, very protective. A portal has a certain scent marker, and it smells like a threat to them. If you walk their lands, letting them scent you, they trust in your intent. If you pop in, what is to stop you from taking their little ones and popping out?” Another nip.
“Assuming you can escape before they get to you. And if they see you as a threat anyway, well…it’s bone to ash, baby. ”
“That’s comforting,” I mutter as my feet touch solid ground again.
He smirks down at me, hugging me to him before stepping away.
“Fool,” Creed grumbles behind us.
“Jealous?” Legend fires back.
“Disgusted.”
“Same thing, brother.”
Knight glares. “Focus.”
Right. Flowers. Murder. Death.
I turn toward the scorched rock face ahead. The wind shifts, carrying a faint metallic sweetness I remember too vividly—the scent that drifted through the caverns on Exile, clinging to my hair, my clothes, my nightmares.
“Dragons?” I guess, voice low as a rush of something I can’t name washes over me.
“Dragons.” Legend confirms. “Welcome to the Darkadia, home of the dragons.”
“Maybe we can say hi to Benny boy while we’re here.” Sinner jokes, and London slams him with a wave of magic, knocking him to his feet with a laugh.
“Leave my best friend alone,” she pouts. “He’s adapting.”
My feet carry me up the final hillside even faster, excitement coursing through my veins.
A few more miles and then I see it. My lungs open up as a sense of calm washes over me.