Chapter 25
Chapter
Twenty-Five
“This isn’t how we do things, Loren.”
“And hanging bodies from parade floats is?” Loren didn’t even look at his sister, his eyes locked on the male who had attacked his mate in the street.
The male whimpered, clutching the hem of his tunic with shaking hands as he tried and failed to hide the spreading stain from where he’d pissed himself.
All around him, Loren’s shadows crawled across the floor like living ink, draining the warmth from the air and smothering the aetherlamps with their thick, pulsing tendrils.
The Small Council sat around the table, most of them looking like they’d rather be anywhere else—too terrified to speak or even breathe too loudly lest Loren might turn his rage on them next. Only Eloria dared challenge him, her hands braced on the scarred table as she pleaded with him.
“Of course not,” she said. “But you need to stop and think. She needs you more than she needs you to do this.”
“Thorne is with her,” Loren snapped.
He could still feel the lingering heat of her magic licking across his skin as he fell to his knees beside her in the center of the devastation she’d wrought.
She hadn’t moved. Not when the shadows rushed over her to cool her.
Not when he called her name. Not when he scooped her limp body into his arms and carried her from the scorched square beneath the shocked, terrified eyes of his people.
He’d stormed into the Central Hall and gone straight to Thorne, leaving his best friend with a single command—watch over her.
Now, someone needed to pay for the hurt they’d caused her.
And Loren would start with the fool who’d dared accost her on the street in front of everyone.
No one dared stopped him as he stepped forward, the shadows seething eagerly around him. United in purpose and desire at last, both of them wanting nothing more than to make this male feel every bit of the terror and despair he’d forced on Araya.
“Tell me who gave you the order,” Loren said.
“Please—” the male whimpered, his shoulders curling inward like he could shield himself from Loren’s wrath. “I still have family in Aetheris. They’re suffering—”
“I didn’t ask why,” Loren growled. “I want to know who.”
The shadows lashed across the room, striking stone so hard that several of the councilors gasped aloud. The male kneeling in front of him sobbed, tears cutting tracks through the dirt that smeared his cheeks as he cast a single, desperate glance to the side—
Loren’s eyes followed the line of his gaze, landing on Cormac. The commander’s fingers tightened around the arms of his chair, his knuckles turning white. His jaw worked, the tendons in his neck straining as he fought to maintain his composure.
“You traitor,” Cormac hissed. “You’re nothing but a coward—”
“You’re the coward,” Loren snarled, his shadows flaring around him, deepening the darkness in the room until the aetherlamps flickered and the walls seemed to shrink in on themselves. “You—and the ones who hide behind you, letting you stain your hands while they whisper in the dark.”
His gaze sliced to where Eryn sat frozen in his chair, his unlined face an unreadable mask as he watched the shadows turn their attention to Cormac, abandoning the sobbing male on the floor to swirl around the older fae in a slow, drifting maelstrom.
“You want to lay the blame for what the Arcanum did at the feet of another victim?” The shadows lashed out again, sending chips of stone flying. “I should let them tear you apart.”
“She’s no victim.” Cormac’s face paled, but his back remained straight, his head unbowed as he stared Loren down. “She agreed to everything they did to her. She might be your mate, but she chose her oppressor over you. You need to think about your people, not some halfblood whore—”
Someone screamed as the black tendrils surged over the table.
Cormac’s chair crashed to the ground, his knees striking stone with a sickening crack.
The aetherlamps guttered out entirely, plunging the room into an eerie, living darkness that clawed up the walls and across the ceiling, forming twisting, writhing shapes that morphed from claws to teeth and back again.
Cormac’s own cry came out as a croak, strangled in his throat as the shadows tightened around his neck and chest.
Loren was dimly aware of people shouting, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. Power roared through his veins, the shadows clamoring for retribution. They tightened, and Cormac choked, his boots scraping uselessly against the floor as he clawed at his throat.
“You have no idea what he did to her,” Loren snarled. “You never could have survived what she did. You don’t deserve to breathe the same air as her—”
“Eloria—stop!”
“Just let me through!” Eloria’s voice cut through the chaos surrounding him a heartbeat before her hand closed on his arm, shadowmarks already blooming on her skin where the shadows had struck her in their fury.
“Loren,” she hissed, dragging him back. “You have to stop. Cormac is a fool—but he’s not your enemy. Killing him here isn’t going to accomplish anything. She’s the one who needs you right now.”
“She doesn’t want me,” Loren snarled.
She’d rejected him—and he couldn’t blame her. He’d hidden this from her. It was his fault that Cormac had been able to ambush her with this at all. The shadows should string him up right next to Eloria’s commander at arms.
“That doesn’t mean she doesn’t need you,” Eloria argued.
“Trust me. She’s going to wake up terrified, not knowing what happened or what she did.
Do you think Thorne is the person she wants there when that happens?
You are the one who should be there when she wakes up.
You’ll never forgive yourself if you aren’t. ”
Loren clenched his teeth, squeezing his eyes closed as he tried to clear the rage from his mind long enough to string a coherent thought together.
He could feel her—drifting between consciousness and oblivion at the other end of the bond, all of it tinged with the bitter aftertaste of guilt.
She was going to have questions—questions that deserved answers.
From him. Not Thorne or Ilyana or Veria or anyone else.
“We have to go,” he said, so quietly that only the shadows that around him heard.
He hurt what is ours to protect, they hissed, drowning out Cormac’s strangled wheeze as they dragged him even higher into the air.. He deserves no mercy.
“I know.” Loren’s voice cracked as her pain swelled in his chest. “But she needs me—needs us—more than he needs to die.”
Their outrage poured over him, the whispers rising to a frenzied cacophony. For a heartbeat, Loren thought they would tear free of his tenuous control entirely and devour Cormac right there in front of the entire Small Council. Part of him almost wanted them to.
But Araya needed them. Not to fight her battles and punish her enemies—but to be there when she fell apart. They couldn’t do that if they killed Cormac here.
The shadows knew that too. They grumbled, but dropped Eloria’s commander at arms to the stones like a broken puppet.
The rest of the Small Council cowered in their seats, too terrified to move as the shadows slowly gathered again at Loren’s feet.
Only Eloria dared look him in the eyes, her own face pale as Cormac coughed and wheezed where the shadows had dropped him.
“Go to her,” she said. “I’ll handle things here.”