40. Chapter Forty #2
Fuck. Lara looked up at Ty as if she’d simply been asked to pass the salt, and squared herself before him. He looked up at her—trying to mirror her emotionless existence—as she reared her fist back and punched him in the gut.
He doubled over—the strike just barely missing where Ena lay hidden inside his coat.
Lara had always been a vicious fighter in the fighting ring, but it had been several years since he’d taken a direct blow from her.
The power behind her fist had knocked the wind right out of him, and he struggled to breathe.
“Again. In the face this time,” Cole ordered from his throne.
Ty felt it coming before he saw it—Lara’s fist soaring through the air as it cracked into the side of his face, bursting his cheek open instantly. He felt the skin split, and blood well up in the cut, but he couldn’t react. He couldn’t do a damn thing.
“More,” Cole said. “Keep going until I tell you to stop.”
Lara struck him again, on the other side of his face this time, and when he bent over, she kneed him in the groin.
She hit him again, and again, and again, his face swelling as the bruises began, and her own knuckles beginning to bleed from the blows.
Ty started to get dizzy, his body aching as he tried desperately to protect Ena’s hidden body under his coat.
He had no idea how long this went on for, the chamber dead silent except for the sound of Lara’s flesh beating his, but eventually, Cole spoke.
“That’s enough,” Cole said, sounding almost bored. “For now.”
Ty’s vision was blurry, the room spinning as Cole turned to the rest of the chamber, addressing his rapt audience.
“Let this be a lesson to you all should you attempt to go against Iblis’s will.
There will be no mercy for you, for anyone, for embracing the false Goddess Gaia.
” Turning back to look at Ty, he added, “I think we will start with letting my nephew rot for a few weeks. Starve him a bit. Weaken him. Then go from there, huh?” A pleased smile spread across his face as he turned to two of the other imperi against the wall. “Take him to the undercaves.”
Fuck, they were taking him away? How would they get to Cole now? Without Steig by his side, he didn’t stand a chance at fulfilling the plan.
He felt Steig stutter beside him as the man turned to look at Ty, his face strung the fuck out from watching Lara beat him, and their eyes locked in fear. “Wait—” Steig said, desperation in his voice.
“Wait for what?” Cole asked cruelly. “Are you questioning my command, boy?”
Steig shut his mouth. There was nothing to say, there was nothing to be done. Disagreeing would only land Steig in a collar too.
Ty started to panic inside as the two imperi came on either side to grab him, but then—
“One more thing, actually, before you take him,” Cole said. Standing from his throne, he moved around in front of the table, approaching Ty. Hope fluttered in Ty’s chest as the man stood before him and extended his hand.
His Power. Cole’s morbus spread through touch—he wanted to infect him with whatever deadly disease his body currently housed. Did he dare risk it?
It wasn’t even a question as he reached out his hand in supplication—this was his chance.
Cole grasped it in his own, his palm clammy and cold, as he pulled Ty closer to whisper in his ear, “You will regret ever crossing me, Haden.”
Ty didn’t have time to dwell on the weirdness of that statement as he felt Ena, who had removed herself from his pocket and coiled around his bicep during his beating, slither down his arm and onto his wrist.
Launching herself across where their hands were joined, she struck at the inside of Cole’s wrist, plunging her venomous fangs deep into his veins.
“What the—” Cole exclaimed, reacting in pain and fear as he flung the viper off of him and onto the floor of the chamber. “What the fuck is this?” he asked in disgust as he clasped his bleeding wrist.
On the floor, the sleek black viper coiled and began to Change.
“Retribution,” Ty said, a smile breaking out on his bruised and battered face.
Quick as lightning, Ena’s body elongated and paled, hair sprouting from her head, and limbs appearing where there had been none. She grunted in pain as the room watched on, frozen in horror, until, within seconds, Ena’s crouching form had replaced that of the snake’s.
Cole and the rest of the daemons in the chamber stared in utter shock as a beautiful, powerful witch stood before them—naked as the day she was born.
“Witch,” Cole spat with venom, his face twisted with rage as he moved to grab her throat.
But then she spoke.
{Don’t move.}
Ena was breathless, the effort of the Change evident in the eerie voice of her visanis, but her predatory focus—full of rage and hatred and power—was on Cole, who froze in place in the wake of her words.
“What the—” Ty heard Zak exclaim from the other side of the room, but he didn’t have a chance to finish before Ty whipped his hand to his belt, removing his hidden dagger and striking out at Cole’s gut, sliding the knife into him like he was butter.
“That’s for what you did to Ena,” Ty gritted out, pulling the knife out swiftly and stabbing it in again. “That’s for what you did to the Underworld.” He stabbed once more, in the heart this time. “And that’s for what you did to my mother.”
Realization dawned on Cole’s face and his eyes widened, his pupils dilating with fear, as his blood filtered down onto Ty’s hands, coating them in sticky red.
“Seize them!” Zak shouted. “They’re trying to murder the king!”
Ena whipped her head towards Zak next, focusing her visanis on him.
{Stay where you are.}
Zak stopped moving forward, his body stuck in a walking motion as his eyes filled with rage. But it wasn’t enough—he was just one man. The daemons around the table and the imperi launched towards them, pulling weapons from their sheaths.
“Now!” Ty shouted to Steig.
The man removed a small amethyst crystal from his pocket and threw it on the ground.
Next, he took out a potion vial filled with a dark-black substance and dumped it on top.
The crystal began to glow as if filled with the light of the sun and Ty knew its companion, the one Ena had enchanted to mimic this one, was glowing too.
The signal to Turner and the others.
Ty’s heart pounded in his chest as Cole’s blood continued to pulse down his shirt. He slid his bloodied dagger out of the man, letting him fall to the ground as several daemons came for him at once.
He raised his weapon and prepared to fight.