Chapter 14 #2
We go into the castle together, following the loud noises and smell of death to my other mates.
Explosions and quakes shake the city on the other side—where my aunt’s army is attacking.
The castle doors have been blown open, blood smothers the floor, and there are more dead bodies than I want to count.
My mates have been here. I swallow a smile.
“And you call us the unhinged ones,” Severi mutters.
I whack his arm gently. “Show us the way to the throne room. That’s where he would have gone.”
Severi nods, and he takes the lead. We find Onyx in a corridor, covered in blood, a pile of bodies around him just as he transforms back.
He walks right up to me, touching my cheek with bloodied fingers.
“This level is clear now. Alek has gone ahead to the throne room. Hollis and Rhodes should already be inside. Everything went okay out there?”
I link my hand with his as Alek runs around a corner, and he sees us. He doesn’t look much better, and some of his hair is burnt at the sides. “She killed at least ninety thousand Vian in seconds,” Severi explains. “It was hot. I’ll show you later.”
Alek whistles. “That’s going to go down in the history books, Trouble.”
“As if there’s ever been anybody who’s killed as much as I have—unwillingly, of course. Willingly today,” I mutter. “Is it bad that I feel no guilt for today?”
“No.” Onyx squeezes my hand. “They would have gone on to kill, hurt and entrap the city. They were not good people, and the world is better without them.”
He is right; I know it. My Nexus looked into each of their souls, and whatever she saw, she killed them for.
They aren’t like my men; they aren’t like the people of Starlight who grew up with the chance to be good and make good decisions.
The king of the Vian set no laws for his city, let them do whatever they wanted as long as they followed him into war and didn’t ask too many questions.
He wanted loyalty, even if it cost everything.
Severi stops and waves at the entrance to what must be the throne room. “He is in there.”
The throne room is beautiful, as I would expect it to be.
Towering doors made of gold, beautiful hinges, with flowers and stars drawn over them—smashed to pieces and thrown to the side as we walk in.
The room matches the theme of red and gold, everything as fancy as can be.
I imagine even the gold floor is made with real gold too.
Hollis and Rhodes are here, and Rhodes holds his hand in the air.
We stop and I wonder why when I look forward and see the king—and who he has.
“That’s your sister, right?” I quietly ask Severi.
I barely remember her from the mansion where she let us go, when she looked the other way.
Maia. Her blonde hair and yellow cat-like eyes make me remember her.
Severi cares about her, and the king must know it.
Severi once said she was bastard-born, still his half-sister, but the king never cared to focus on her as a princess. Not like Severi.
Because the king is standing in front of his throne, his hand around Maia’s neck, a knife held to it, and her blood dripping down.
“Welcome to my throne room and my home. Unless you want to kill your mate’s sister and start things off badly, perhaps we can negotiate, Gwenieve. I can leave and she can live.”
“There’s no negotiation. You’re going to die for touching my mate, for hunting and hurting her!” Finn snarls at the king. He ignores my mate, his focus on me.
“How are you going to do that? You won’t get to me in time.
None of you will. Not before I plunge this into her neck, and then if you kill me, I’ll have taken someone with me at least. One last death for the Goddess.
” He tilts his head and stares into my eyes.
“I wanted to see you one more time, Morrigan. All the death I’ve given you, all the cities, and you still do not wish to join me?
I can fix your human shell, make her different and like us.
We can rule this world and the next. Every world. ”
I let my Nexus speak to him. “I never loved you then, and never now. I am one with my human, and she is me.” The king tightens his grip on Maia as I take over. “You knew I was coming for you. This isn’t a surprise.”
“The minute Georgina did not come back—that stupid girl.” He squeezes Maia’s throat and she cries out.
Severi steps forward, and the king looks at his son.
“Ah ah, no. You think I didn’t know that you cared about Maia?
Stupid fool. I knew the minute some of the guards told me that you were protecting her when she was a babe, I knew she would be useful to control you one day.
She is a stupid girl who is always trying to save the weak.
She’s always been too good. That’s why I never bothered with her.
There was nothing dark in her soul. Not like my prince.
” He looks at Severi like he is a key to a puzzle he always wanted to solve.
“But it turns out he went to play in the darkness rather than creating his own.”
“It’s more fun there,” Severi answers, his voice lacking his usual cockiness. “No one else is dying today. At least no one we care about.” He looks at his father.
“Take the necklace off,” the king demands. “Do as I say, and I will let her live. I will give her back to you. You will let us both go, and I’ll open a portal, step out, and I’ll throw her through it, unharmed. We can fight another day, and you can have the city—”
Severi looks at me, and he nods once. He is trusting me to save Maia.
“He says no. What does it feel like for everyone to betray you? Even my sister, she chose to give Severi the necklace. Even her, as brainwashed as she was by you, chose to save your enemies.” He shakes his head in denial.
Black shadows crawl up the walls, glowing, glittering like stars as my magic spreads up and up.
“Shield yourselves and get to Maia,” I say quietly to my mates.
“What are you?” I hear the king breathe out in shock as I pull the stars down to earth and he senses them.
He looks up at the ceiling, like he might be able to stop the stars from falling, but he won’t.
As they fall for me and they are mine to see.
I was born from the stars, we Nexus are, and we belong to them as much as they belong to us.
Stars smash through the ceiling, one after the other—flying rocks of fire—and they bring down the Vian castle as its king screams.