Chapter Six #2
Suffocating grief flayed Kadeesha at the carnage.
But now wasn’t the time to let it engulf her.
She’d face her crimes after she did what she could to help as many as possible survive the massacre she’d caused.
She fought the instinct to target her efforts at the soldiers and spare the Aetherfolk who remained alive from their punishing blades.
Even if she killed each Hyperion soldier, their liege was still atop the altar, and Rishaud could wipe out every soul in the room by himself if he desired.
He was an Ancient fae king, his power was vast, and the only other individual in the temple whose would have even come close was Sylas.
Her father might’ve been only a vassal king, but he was an Elder who possessed the strength to rule over a fae court of brutal immortals.
That did count for something. Maybe if they fought Rishaud together, if she lent what power she had to aid her father, they could take Rishaud out.
To that end, she attacked the Hyperion king instead of his soldiers.
She didn’t foolishly let a furious cry rip free and telegraph her intent.
She set her roiling emotions to better use and thrust all her anguish, all her rage, all her hatred into the column of aether flames she sent hurtling at Rishaud.
He was the sort of male who didn’t even register her as a threat, and she used it to her advantage, launching the assault swiftly.
He was still focused on burning Sylas slowly—toying with drawing the vassal king’s grisly death out—when her flames crashed into him.
He staggered sideways, but then blinding sunfire wove itself through the ribbons of her molten aether flames and Kadeesha’s flames vanished, obliterated by Rishaud’s greater magic.
“You will pay for that,” Rishaud spat, an endless agony promised in his decree.
Still, Kadeesha breathed a little lighter because she’d granted her father the lull he’d needed.
Desperate hope that the two of them, along with some of their people, would somehow make it out of the temple alive bloomed as Sylas got to his feet, his own aether magic having snuffed out the sunfire that had been riddling his body.
Kadeesha fervently thanked the Celestials that Sylas had several centuries in age under his belt, for his scorched skin was already beginning to heal.
Sylas’s growl shook the temple. When he sent aether flames barreling toward Rishaud, Kadeesha added her own to the counterassault. If they both pressed him from different sides, forced him to split his focus, perhaps it’d create an opening Sylas could take advantage of.
Rishaud the Conqueror, however, lived up to his reputation.
He kept to only deflecting Kadeesha’s flames—a task that maddeningly took him little effort to achieve—while he and Sylas traded attacks of sunfire and aether flames back and forth.
As the two kings fought, Rishaud fully shed any pretense of the refined deportment that power players among faekind liked to mask their true viciousness behind and shifted into a nightmare of pure savagery.
For his part, Sylas moved as fast as lightning as he rained aether flames on Rishaud.
Sylas sent purple streaks of fire arcing through the air and spewing down all around the Hyperion king.
Sunfire ignited around Rishaud, enveloping his body in a protective shield.
He chortled as a burst of sunfire, which left Kadeesha’s heart in her throat, barreled toward Sylas with unerring accuracy.
The solar fire that burned hot as the sun’s energy, which Rishaud’s brand of magic drew upon, encased Sylas’s entire frame faster than he could counter or dodge it.
Kadeesha stood frozen, paralyzed, as Rishaud forwent delighting in dragging Sylas’s imminent death out this time.
Her father screamed at a pitch that shattered the glass of the temple’s windows as his skin re-blackened, melted, and sloughed off him.
He collapsed to the ground and writhed, continuing to burn.
Soon after, he stopped convulsing. The Hyperion king’s sunfire that had ravished his body vanished, and not even her father’s ashes were left behind.
Kadeesha swallowed, fought back the world-tilting grief that was like a hatchet to the gut.
If Sylas had fallen, had been wiped off the face of Nimani, there was no hope left for any Aetherfolk who remained alive.
And beyond that … like with her mother, she and Sylas had a complex relationship, but he was her father, and she’d wish the gruesome death he’d suffered on nobody.
Well, one person did deserve it. No, actually a few dozen assholes deserved it—along with Rishaud and all his soldiers, each and every one of the Hyperion fae inside the temple who perched primly in their pews while her people were slaughtered.
Wildly, Kadeesha scanned the room for Leisha and Samira.
Relief washed over her when she spotted her sisters alive and fighting.
The women fought back-to-back, each cutting down Hyperion soldiers with swords they’d snatched from the enemy to arm themselves.
Temples were supposed to be sacred spaces.
Bloodshed and weapons inside them were supposed to be sacrilege.
Celestials forgive them, then.
Kadeesha whipped around to the liege lord who was responsible for her father’s murder and the deaths of so many others today.
A ball of aether fire formed in her hand.
She sent the purple sphere hurtling toward Rishaud.
He might be leagues older and stronger and more powerful and more experienced in battle, but she couldn’t stop fighting.
She wouldn’t simply step aside and resign the remaining survivors, her sisters included, to their fates.
Golden flames surrounded her aether bomb, though, then disintegrated it.
She emitted a ragged cry and flung another aether bomb at him.
A third, and a fourth, and a fifth. But he was a fae monarch, a king who’d grown in his power over the centuries.
She’d only been alive for a mere flicker of time; her magic was no match for his.
Her attacks did nothing. A weapon; she needed a weapon.
It was one last, mad, likely impossible hope, but if she managed to get her hands on a blade, she might be able to drive it through Rishaud’s vile heart.
It was obvious that he hadn’t leveled any lethal blow at her, no matter the attacks she initiated, and the reason was clear—he couldn’t use her or any prophecy if she were dead.
Perhaps she could wield that to her advantage and get within sufficient range for a fatal blow.
But she didn’t glimpse any weapons on Rishaud himself and his armed soldiers were far enough away that he’d certainly intercept her before she took one of them out and seized their sword. Still, she had to try.
She ran for the nearest male in a gold-and-white uniform.
Her foot touched down only on the first step before Rishaud’s bruising grip squeezed the back of her neck and yanked her back onto the altar.
“Stop this!” she snarled, twisting out of his grasp.
She cast a frenzied glance at the Aetherfolk bodies that kept collapsing to the floor.
His soldiers were sparing no soul, not even the striplings among attendees.
The little girls who’d carried her train …
Her stomach roiled violently when she looked upon two of them that had already been slain.
Their small, lifeless bodies had blood staining their purple gowns at spots that covered their hearts.
The remaining two girls, who couldn’t have been any older than six, clung to each other against a wall not far from where their peers had been killed. The sight broke her.
“Please! Stop! Call your men off! You’ve already made the point you wanted to!
” she begged the Hyperion king for, if nothing else, the little girls’ lives and for Samira’s and Leisha’s lives.
Even though her sisters were fighting ferociously, there were only two of them and dozens of Hyperion soldiers.
They were locked in a fight they wouldn’t win in the end.
They could flee, yes—they clashed with soldiers so near the door at this very moment that they could easily dash toward it and attempt to escape.
But she knew, great Celestials, she knew, her sisters would never run and leave her behind.
“Please, Your Excellency. Stop! You can’t be this much of a monster. ”
The cruel smile he returned in answer assured Kadeesha otherwise.
“I’m the monster? I’m not the one who betrayed a promise.
I’m not the one who would go against the Celestials’ will.
This is your fault. Their deaths stain your hands, Archprincess.
” He spoke it all so casually, as if they were somewhere lounging on a terrace and discussing the weather over tea, not standing in the middle of a massacre.
Both little girls screamed. The blood drained to Kadeesha’s feet when she saw the hems of their gowns lit with gold flames.
A violent storm erupted inside Kadeesha.
She lashed out with her magic again, sent another aether bomb flying at the king’s head.
He laughed, dodging it easily, and her magic exploded against the back wall, taking a chunk out of the temple.
The little girls continued screaming, wailing.
Samira and Leisha, thank the heavens, were trying to battle their way through the mass of soldiers between them and the girls.
But what would happen when they reached the pair? Would her sisters burn too?