46. Sadie
THE THIRD TRIAL
“Fuck you.”
I spat at Dick.
My saliva dripped down his leg and filled me with satisfaction.
Dick’s complexion was ruddy with anger. “I see you’re as incompetent as ever. Really, you got your fucking finger cut off by an idiotic alpha?”
“I see you’re as homicidal as ever. Where’s the belt? I know you’re just dying to beat me,” I mocked.
“Also, didn’t that dude”—I pointed at the cloaked man who still stood beside him with his hood up—“take me from the sacred lake while you chased after him like a crazy man? Now you’re working together? Must be awkward.”
Dick’s face reddened another shade.
He was so easy to wind up.
Dick’s lips puckered like he tasted something sour. “We had a minor disagreement on the best way to raise you. I wanted to give you more time to come into your powers. He wanted to throw you into training. I was trying to protect you.”
I burned with anger.
“You did a great job of protecting me.” I gestured at the scars littering my body. “Parent of the fucking year.”
Dick’s spittle rained down, like it always did when he lost control of his rage.
“Do you not have fucking blood powers ? Did I not beat you with a belt till you bled ? Can you still not see that everything I did was for your benefit? Or are you still the same ignorant little girl?”
I blinked.
Then I blinked again.
Grabbing my head in my bloody hand, I scrambled to my feet until I was face-to-face with Dick.
“You’re telling me you TORTURED ME EVERY DAY OF MY FUCKING LIFE BECAUSE YOU WERE TRYING TO HELP ME UNCOVER MY BLOOD POWERS?”
My voice was rough and ragged, a result of his handiwork.
“YES!” he screamed back.
We stood chest to chest, snarling in each other’s faces.
Under the glass ceiling of an opulent ballroom, in a cruel realm filled with guns and monsters, the evils of my past slanted and twisted into something different.
Still nightmares, but maybe less evil?
I’d always thought it was weird how Dick had beaten me like it was a routine.
A chore he had to do.
He’d always get so mad at me, like he wanted me to do something but I wasn’t doing it.
I’d always thought it was strange how he didn’t have a motive.
He’d just given me a motive.
I covered my mouth in horror, and I took a step away from him.
“Why?” I rasped out, my blood splattering both of us as I gestured at him with my bleeding wound. “Wings?” I added weakly, not even sure what I was asking.
He understood.
Dick spoke quietly so only I could hear. “War has come to the realms as it does every eon.”
He paused.
The soft splat of my blood dripping onto the ground echoed between us.
A familiar sound.
Dick sighed heavily, and for the first time, he looked down at me like he didn’t hate me.
Something close to pity flashed across his face.
When Dick spoke, each word smashed across my consciousness, breaking down my psyche into smithereens.
“A champion is needed to lead the shifters and fae into battle. They are some of the strongest warriors in the realm, but they struggle to obey the gods. This champion is created using rare technology from the god realm. They are made for the singular purpose of defense, and they have to embrace their birthright and learn to lead. But first, they have to learn to survive.”
I took a step away from him.
His voice rose. “She births her champions, and every eon, they have no choice but to rise.”
I took another step.
“It was my job to hurt you.” Dick’s eyes softened, like he had feelings and wasn’t a soulless monster. “It was my job to break you and build you into something stronger.”
I backed away.
“I’m what you would know as an angel. We are her soldiers. I had no choice but to serve her and to help you. She gives a piece of herself to form her champion. To save the realms.”
My knees shook.
Dick stepped forward, walking toward me, not letting me get away, demanding I hear the truth.
“When you were young, you didn’t hear her. You weren’t showing any signs of your birthright.”
“No,” I whispered as my back bumped into the dais.
There was nowhere left to run.
Dick came closer. “I was desperate—I sacrificed so much for you, more than you can know. Only when I beat you, did your eyes glow red. Only then did you finally hear her.”
A silent scream burned my throat.
“They always make more female half-breeds,” Dick whispered. “A backup plan if the expected champion does not come into their power. They’ve failed before.”
I froze.
My lungs stopped dead as I realized what he was saying.
Suddenly, Dick looked tired and older than I remembered. “If you didn’t hear her—if you didn’t come into your blood powers—I was told to exterminate you and try the next one. If that one failed, there were three others.”
We both turned our heads at the same time.
We stared across the ballroom at the four girls: Lucinda, Jala, Jinx, and Jess, who I’d always thought of as so sheltered.
Dick’s words were so quiet I almost didn’t hear them. “I know how much Lucinda meant to you. It was you or her. Even though you didn’t know why, I knew what you would have chosen. You would have demanded I do it to you.”
I turned back to Dick.
Up close, he smelled like the ice of the shifter realm.
Coldness wafted off him in a burning wave.
And as I stared up into the eyes of my antagonist, saw the truth shining in them, my bottom lip trembled.
It wasn’t fair.
Dick was supposed to be the bad guy.
I wasn’t supposed to understand what he was saying. I wasn’t supposed to feel a swell of relief that he’d beaten me bloody to spare my sister.
I wasn’t supposed to feel gratitude.
It took a couple of tries—my mouth was paper dry—but I finally croaked out six words.
“Who is this she that you serve?”
The second the question left my lips, I wished I’d swallowed it down. Wanted so desperately to take it back.
Dick tilted his head up, and I followed his gaze.
The glass ceiling of the ballroom, which had earlier showcased dreary gray clouds, was now a midnight-black sky.
It was clear why the ball was on the equinox.
For the first time since I’d been in this realm, clouds didn’t cover the night sky.
Six full moons were massive, gleaming and pale in a straight line.
So large in the sky it seemed as if you could reach up and touch them. Like they were going to crash through the clear ceiling of the glass ballroom.
“The moon goddess,” Dick said.
His voice was a quiet rasp, but he might as well have shouted. Screamed the words at me. Bellowed in my face.
The voice.
The woman who ordered me when I fought.
The feeling of endless strength, emotionless precision.
The thing that made me a killing machine.
The numb.
It was the moon goddess, the woman I’d always felt an overwhelming compulsion to worship.
Endless seconds trickled by as I stared up at the luminous moons and realized it had all gone wrong at birth.
I’d never had a choice in any of it.
“What about the poems reading themselves to us?” I asked.
Dick narrowed his eyes, “What poems?”
My intuition screamed with warning, and I gnawed on my lower lip, not wanting to think too deeply about the masculine voice that bellowed riddles at us.
What could be a secret from the High Court.
Not good.
I deflected and asked, “Why did you put my description on the flyer? What does the High Court want with me?”
Dick breathed deeply. “War is coming sooner than we ever expected, and we needed a way to contact you. To help train you.”
Dick reached into his pocket and pulled out a circle.
It appeared to be some type of thin golden wire, about the size of a hand. “It’s a halo, a way of communicating. Just tap the air in the middle, and it will connect you to me.”
The monster from my childhood held it out to me.
My fingers trembled, but I reached forward and grabbed it from him. The metal was cold against my fingers.
We stared at each other.
Not knowing how to go forward, while knowing we’d never go back.
“Stay in touch, Sadie.” Dick’s ruddy complexion didn’t seem so menacing as he backed away.
He stopped beside the cloaked man, who hadn’t spoken a word, just stood still, eyes roaming across the ballroom.
There was a loud bang, smoke, and both of them disappeared.
I stared down at the halo in my hands and slipped the gold circle over my wrist.
I’d have loved to say I’d always known, that I’d felt the truth in my bones and had a sense of the bigger picture.
But that would be a lie.
Then the reality that my finger was still lying on the floor, the High Court was gone, and Z and Molly had betrayed me crashed over me.
Across the ballroom, a circle of guns surrounded the people I cared about.
Blood loss hit me hard, and I grabbed onto the dais to stop myself from face-planting onto the floor.
As the absence of the High Court sank in, the room buzzed with tension and energy.
Molly had the grace to look at me with regret, while Z narrowed his eyes like he couldn’t fathom where his plan had gone wrong.
“Ahem,” the don cleared his throat.
The buzz stopped, and the room fell dead silent.
“I don’t believe I gave orders to draw guns?” the don said slowly, and instantly weapons were put away.
Cobra hissed loudly.
Three alphas and one cinnamon-spiced omega flew across the floor, falling around me.
Jax roared when he saw my finger on the ground, and Cobra’s skin turned black with snakes.
Xerxes omega-whined, and Ascher fell to his knees, swearing.
I couldn’t do anything other than grab the dais as I tried not to pass out.
Slowly, the men turned away from me with glowing eyes and stared down Z. Their intent was clear.
“Nobody moves,” the don ordered, and the command in his voice was as potent as an alpha bark but much more terrifying.
The whole ballroom froze—every shifter paralyzed by the command.
Everyone except one person.
“HOW DARE YOU!” Aran screamed, careening around the corner as she headed directly at Molly and Z.
Paralyzed from the don’s words, I could do nothing but watch as my friend lifted her arms in front of her.