Chapter 50
Why is it possible a fucking tree can keep me subdued?! I’d feel embarrassed if it weren’t for the fact my father’s voice feels like a fog horn in my ears.
“Release me!” I grit through my teeth.
This creature, Thornwyn, merely tightens its hold on me, the vines around my throat and wrists binding me to the soil below. I try to wiggle free but it’s no use, and when I settle, my gaze lands on Amarah.
Pain like I’ve only felt once, for leaving Kayn, tears at my chest at seeing her lifeless eyes stare at me.
Had I just listened to her and sent her back before talking to my father, she’d not be in this position.
I don’t know how strong she is here, but at least she would’ve had some sort of chance to defend herself.
I did this to her, and as blood pools under her head into the ground, it’s like my life is pouring from me.
“I’m sorry…” The link between us is cold and desolate, and I fear that even if Vendra can save her life, the damage to her brain may be too severe.
Squeezing my eyes shut, I clench my teeth as I grab hold of the dark thread of shadows and cast them upward. Wrapping them around the creature holding me down, I attempt to crush inward and break apart each branch of this hunk of wood.
“It appears you have two things that belong to me,” my father seethes. “Release my son, and give me the girl. She’s as good as dead and I’ve already claimed her soul—”
“You can fuck right off, Belial,” Kayn spits. “Neither of them belong to you.”
I lower my voice, and although I have no idea if she’ll even hear me, I plead to a God that I know hates me. “Please, Vendra, let me go. I need to protect them, please.”
“You are nothing but a selfish coward, son of Belial. You follow your father’s word without thought to the consequences.”
“I… I am… I was protecting him. Protecting Kayn…”
“From what you did yourself.” The binds around me tighten and I gasp as my oxygen is cut off completely. “I should remove your head, then take Amarah away from you both, and let you see what happens when you cross me.”
My neck begins to snap.
“Vendra, I have no quarrels with you!” Belial bellows. “But I will come for you after Vaeloris if you make me.”
“But I know her, and doing that would hurt her beyond the physical pain your father has subjected her to…” The God ignores my father’s words.
The tightness around my throat and body begin to relent, and I quickly suck in a breath.
My body begins to snap itself back into place, and the popping of bones and ligaments has a tremor running across my skin.
“I am going to release you, and you will fight beside my warrior and Kayn. If you choose your father again, Lucifer, you will never be allowed back into the mortal world and you will truly know suffering.”
“They’re all that matter to me, Vendra. I swear to you.”
The moment my father put his hands on Amarah, he severed whatever remained between us. The only way I’m ever going back is in chains or in damnation.
The instant the vines release me fully, I push to my feet. Thornwyn looms to my right, taller than Kayn, and rivaling Azer. I hadn’t had a chance to really see it before, but he towers like a living tree made of wrath.
To my left, Kayn closes in, grabbing my arm and pulling me back from the massive creature’s reach.
But neither of us move away from Amarah. Zuhara paws at her desperately, and the same vines that had manhandled me now curl around our girl with surprising gentleness, shredding her dress as they drag her down into the soil.
“This is all so tiresome.” My father’s voice drags my attention back to him. He’s stepped into the mortal world in his true form—no wonder the ground still trembles like a constant quake.
“Lucifer,” he says, bored as ever. “Grab the girl and we will be done with this.”
“You’ll address me.” Kayn’s tone is everything that makes me hot and bothered for him. It matters not that this is my father, the bloody ruler of the Beyond, that he’s talking to in such a way.
I’ll be on my knees begging for forgiveness for ever not trusting we could’ve made it work.
“You, a mere mortal, will not speak to me this way.”
“I’ll do whatever the fuck I want. Now, you’ll go back through the gates you crawled out of.”
“Vendra does not welcome you into this world, Belial.”
He tuts and takes a lazy step toward us. “I will burn this world to the ground, and you will catch fire with it all the same.”
He’s a fallen God—he knows exactly how much power he holds, and how grotesquely unfair it is for anyone to have that much.
I roll my head, loosening my shoulders, and step around Kayn. When he reaches to catch my forearm, I yank out of his grip.
“Father,” I say, voice low and sharp. “You swore the mortal world would not be involved in this squabble with your brother.”
“Ignorant boy.” I’m incapable of not rolling my eyes at the tree.
There’s zero point in attempting to tell this overgrown plant what is what.
It makes no sense for my father to start a war with the mortal world.
Why would he want it destroyed? It’s the Gods that cast him out, specifically his brother, Vaeloris.
To take down the Vayl makes more sense than to destroy the world between.
“Vendra is already pissed at what you’ve done,” I continue. “She was gracious to allow me into the Vayl. Do not piss on her kindness by taking the Witch.”
I can sense Kayn behind me itching to fight. Words aren’t his means of solving a problem. His fists do all of that for him, but we cannot fight my father. He has no exhaustion point, no level of stamina that will end. I’ve never known him to bleed.
When Belial’s shoulders rise, his muscles ripple, which accompanies the snarl across his face.
“I’ve given you chance after chance to save his worthless life.
” Anger grips my heart. “Now I won’t be as merciful.
He will die and as I threatened before, his soul will wither in a part of the Beyond you cannot even reach.
Then you will stay by my side as you were born to do. ”
The sky above us burns into the Crimson Dawn as the bones in my back shift and crack, making room for what’s trying to break free. My wings tear through my skin, ripping it open as they finally unfurl. My Vigoro crawls to the surface, and in seconds I’m consumed by it fully once more.
“Your choice is temporary, son.” With his words, he’s opening up the Beyond wider, and out rushes Pyrehounds.
“Zuhara, stay with Amarah.”
My command of my Familiar is accompanied by their attack.
Kayn is already past me, rushing right through the hounds to my father. Damnit, he can’t be reckless, but I understand his need to hurt him. I want him dead for so, so, many reasons, but the one that trumps it all is exactly his reasoning.
He touched our girl, and I cannot have anyone living that knows what even her skin feels like.
The Pyrehounds rush right toward Zuhara and myself, but I’ve got my shadows forming spikes slicing up through them before they get within a yard of us.
They hang, howling and crying out, before falling to death and disappearing into ash.
Another set comes, but the ground quite literally cracks open, some stumbling in while others make the jump across.
Thornwyn stomps his way in front of me and, as if pulling roots from a tree, lifts the ground and sandwiches the creatures down into the soil. Most were caught by their bodies, their black forms writhing about trying to get free, while some were snagged around the neck.
The creature simply waves its hand, and crack, the sound of bones snapping echoes across the desolate space.
I quickly shift my gaze to Kayn who’s engaged in hand-to-hand combat with my father.
“Go. I will keep the Pyrehounds at bay.”
“I will aid too.” Zuhara steps up beside the creature, hissing and summoning my shadows around her.
With no further hesitation, I rush toward Kayn. He’s bulked up—not by shifting, but from the Crimson Dawn saturating the air. He’s soaking in the blood and the power that comes with it.
That, and he fed on me last night—wait, and on Amarah. I’m not sure if her blood carries the same potency mine does, but if I had to guess, it should.
Oh, no, it definitely does.
Because when Kayn’s fist cracks into Belial’s nose, my father actually stumbles from the blow.
I take the distraction and pull my shadows from the ground, snapping them around his wrists and restraining him. He pulls hard, but he barely has a second to react before Kayn punches him again. The impact is so powerful it sends a shockwave rippling through the space.
“You took him from me!” Kayn roars, slamming his fist across Belial’s jaw. My father yanks viciously at the shadows binding him, and it feels impossible to keep them locked, but I hold.
“I’m just taking him back.”
The next attack sends Belial to a knee, and for a moment, I think maybe we’ll be alright.
That it was possible we could’ve fought back.
But just like everything that seems too good in my life, that hope is torn away from me.
A red pulse, like a wave of electricity, shoots out of my father. Oh shit. “Kayn, RUN!”
I’m grateful for his speed, because not even a second passes before that attack blasts across the surrounding space around us.
He’s above Amarah, and I blanket us in a shield of my shadows.
Thornwyn was capable of getting behind me, because as I look around to confirm I’d kept the area around us protected, he’s also got a barrier for our girl made of the same foliage as his body.
Only after I don’t feel a heated pressure against the darkness I summoned, I drop it.
Belial stands as tall as he had been before, unphased and undeterred. Kayn’s presence comes to my side, and I peer up at him. The red in his eyes has spread into the white spaces and he, too, looks ready to continue this fight.
“This is useless,” my father shouts. “I do not tire. I will not die. I’ll simply continue until that one is dead”—he points to the man beside me before slowly dragging his finger toward Amarah—“and the Witch is mine.”
I begin wrapping tendrils of shadows across Kayn’s arms and upper body.
Belial narrows his eyes on me. “Why.” It’s delivered without much of a question, even if it is one. He’s pissed, and although I’ve not felt such an incline to care, quite literally nothing matters but the man beside me, and the woman behind me.
“I may be your son, but I’m not your fucking slave. This is my life, and as long as I’m breathing, I’ll make my own choices in it.”
His eye twitches.
“My choice is him.” I gesture to Kayn. “And the woman you nearly killed. Salvage what you can still get out of me by walking away. But if you attack us again, I’ll never come back, and I will fight against everything you’re trying to do.”
The tick in his square jaw comes with a long, drawn out suck of air between his teeth. Around him, his Pyrehounds snarl and snap their jaws. I doubt they’d listen to me above my father, but I’ll try if he so chooses wrong.
“I swore I raised you better, yet here we are. I’d rather have a bastard of a son at my side, than a pureblood brat as feeble-minded as you.”
It isn’t Belial who attacks, but Kayn. He’s back in his face, hand clenched into a fist, landing a blow right between my father’s eyes. Although my shadows aided in delivering that powerful blow that sends him flying back, it really wasn’t needed.
Kayn is powerful, and I should’ve never doubted he’d have chosen to fight for me.