Chapter 6 #2
Kieran snorted. “You have no idea.”
I still had so many questions, but I needed to make sure Kieran knew what they were dealing with. “It wasn’t just Alastir. I don’t know if he’s here, but Commander Jansen is. He’s in a silver Descenter mask.”
Kieran’s jaw hardened as he snapped the binding in two. The ends fell to the sides. “Anyone else you recognized?”
“No.” My heart thudded. “But…Beckett—it wasn’t him at the Temple. He’s—” My voice cracked. “It wasn’t him.”
Kieran gripped the second row of bindings. “Poppy—”
“Beckett’s dead,” I told him, and his gaze shot to mine as he froze. “They killed him, Kieran. I don’t think they planned to, but it happened. He’s dead.”
“Fuck,” he growled, moving once more.
“Jansen took Beckett’s form. He left Spessa’s End with us. Not Beckett. Jansen admitted to it all, and Alastir said he planned to give me to the Ascended.”
“Obviously,” Kieran replied wryly, breaking another set of bones and roots. “What a fucking idiot.”
I laughed, and it sounded hoarse and all wrong amidst the shouts of pain and snarls of anger.
It felt just as wrong yet strangely wonderful that I could laugh again.
It faded as I stared at the slash of Kieran’s brows.
What I said came out as a whisper. “Alastir said I’m descended from Nyktos.
That I’m related to King Malec, and that he was there the night my parents died.
It was—” Movement beyond Kieran’s shoulder snagged my attention. A masked man raced toward us—
Before I could shout a warning to Kieran, he was there, tall and as dark as the night creeping into the ruins, his blue-black hair windblown.
Every part of my being zeroed in on Casteel as his crimson sword plunged through the Protector’s stomach, embedding itself in the wall behind the masked figure.
Casteel turned, catching the arm of another.
A dark rumble escaped from his throat as he dragged the man toward him.
Teeth bared, he snapped his head down on the man’s throat, tearing through skin as he thrust his hand through the man’s chest. Lifting his head, he spat a mouthful of the man’s blood into the Protector’s face.
Casteel tossed the body to the ground and looked up at another man, blood streaming from his mouth. “What?”
The masked man spun and ran.
Casteel was faster, reaching him in the blink of an eye. He shoved his fist into the man’s back and jerked his arm back sharply, pulling out something white and smeared with blood and tissue. His spine. Dear gods, it was the man’s spine .
Kieran’s eyes met mine. “He’s a little angry.”
“A little?” I whispered.
“Okay. He’s really angry,” Kieran amended, reaching for the bindings just below my breasts. “He has been going crazy looking for you. I’ve never seen him this way.” His hands trembled slightly as they folded over the bone and root chains. “ Never , Poppy.”
“I…” I trailed off as Casteel spun around.
Our gazes locked, and Nyktos himself could have appeared before me, and I wouldn’t have been able to look away from Casteel.
There was so much rage in the sharp set of his features and his eyes.
Only a thin strip of amber was visible, but I also saw relief and something so potent, so powerful in his stare that I needed no gift to feel it.
The wind lifted the edges of his cloak as he started toward me. A guard flew out from the darkness—one who wore the black uniform of the Rise Guard and had come with the Ascended. Casteel pivoted, catching the guard by the throat as he shoved the blade into the man’s chest.
“I love him,” I whispered.
Kieran paused by my legs. “Are you just now figuring that out?”
“No.” My stare followed Casteel as he unsheathed a dagger from his side and threw it out into the night.
A sharp, too-quick scream told me that he’d hit his target.
Every part of me buzzed with the need to touch him, to feel his flesh under mine so I could erase the memory of what his skin had felt like the last time I’d touched him.
The breath I let out was shaky. “How did you all find me?”
“Casteel knew others in the Crown Guard had to be involved,” Kieran explained. “He made it very clear that if he didn’t find out who, he would start killing all of them.”
My stomach dipped as my gaze shot to Kieran’s. I didn’t have to ask.
“He used compulsion. Ferreted out four of them that way, but only one really knew anything,” he said. “He told us where you were being held and what was planned. We got to those crypts only a few hours after you left, but we didn’t come up empty-handed.”
I was too hopeful to even ask, but I did. “Alastir?”
A savage grin appeared. “Yes.”
Thank the gods. My eyes closed briefly. I hated the betrayal Casteel must feel, but at least Alastir wasn’t out there.
“Poppy?” Kieran’s hands were on the last of the bone bindings. “I’m going to assume that even if I ask you nicely to sit this fight out, you won’t listen to me, will you?”
I sat up tentatively, expecting pain. Instead, there was nothing but the previous aches. “How long have they had me?”
Kieran’s nostrils flared. “It’s been six days and eight hours.”
Six days .
My chest rose sharply. “They kept me chained to the wall of a crypt full of the remains of deities. They drugged me and planned to hand me over to the Ascended,” I told him. “I’m not sitting this out.”
“Of course, not.” He sighed.
The last bone broke, and then Kieran pulled it away.
The moment it was gone, a wave of tingles swept over the back of my head and down my spine, branching out and following the pathways of my nerves.
The center of my chest warmed, and I hadn’t realized until that moment that the coldness I’d felt wasn’t only due to the damp iciness of the crypt.
It had also been because of the bones. It was like my blood rushed back to parts of me that had gone numb.
But it wasn’t the blood, was it? It was the…
the eather. The tingling sensation wasn’t at all painful, though; more like a wave of release.
The center of my chest started to hum, the sound vibrating out through my lips.
My senses opened wide and stretched out, connecting with those around me.
I tasted bitter, sweat-drenched fear and the hot acidic burn of hatred.
I didn’t try to stop it. I let instinct—the Primal knowledge that had woken in the Chambers of Nyktos—take hold.
I swung my legs off the raised surface as Casteel took down what appeared to be an Ascended, his father fighting alongside him.
I stood, feeling a rush of power just from being able to stand after being held down by the bones and roots for so long.
Kieran picked up a fallen sword, his brow furrowing as he stared at the blade. “Here,” he offered the weapon to me.
I shook my head as I took a step, my legs trembling slightly from not holding my weight for so long.
The hum in my chest grew, the eather in my blood intensifying as I kept my senses open wide.
These people wanted to hurt me. They had .
And they had harmed Casteel, Kieran, and everyone else.
They’d killed Beckett. None of them deserved to live.
The corners of my vision turned white, and in my mind, the thin, silvery-white cords slipped out from me, crackling off the floor and reconnecting with the others.
My anger joined the pounding emotions now flooding my senses.
I drew in a deep breath, taking in everybody’s feelings, letting their hatred, fear, and twisted sense of righteousness seep into my skin and become a part of me.
Those emotions twined with the cords in my mind.
I took it all in, feeling the toxic storm thrumming inside me.
There wouldn’t be time for them to regret what they took part in.
I would destroy them. I would obliterate them—
Alastir’s words came back to me at that moment. “ You are dangerous now, but you will become something else entirely later.”
Unease exploded in my gut, dispersing the silver cords in my mind.
These people deserved whatever I dealt to them.
What Alastir had said didn’t matter. If I killed them, it wouldn’t be because I was unable to control myself.
And it wasn’t because I was unpredictable or chaotically violent like the deities were supposed to be.
I just wanted them to taste their emotions, for that ugliness to be the last thing they felt. I wanted that more than—
I wanted that too much, when I shouldn’t want it at all.
I didn’t enjoy killing, not even the Craven. Killing was merely a harsh reality, one that shouldn’t be desired or enjoyed.
Unsettled, I sucked in dry air and did what I had to when I was in a crowd or around someone who projected their emotions into the space around them.
I shut my senses down, forcing the silvery webbing of light from my mind.
The hum in my chest calmed, but my mind didn’t.
I’d stopped myself. That’s all I needed to know to prove that what Alastir had said wasn’t true.
I wasn’t a chaotic, violent entity incapable of controlling myself.
Kieran came to my side, angling his body so he could see me and everything happening around us. He unhooked his cloak. “Are you okay?”
“I’m not a monster,” I whispered.
He stiffened. “What?”
Swallowing hard, I shook my head. “N-nothing. I…” I watched King Valyn strike down another masked man. He and his son fought with the same kind of gracefully brutal force. “I’m fine.”
Kieran draped the soft material over my shoulders, startling me. “You sure about that?”
“Yes.” My gaze flicked to his as he secured the button just below my neck. It was then that I remembered I wore nothing but the thin, bloody slip. He pulled the halves together. “Thank you. I’m…I’m going to sit this one out.”
“I want to thank the gods,” Kieran muttered. “But now you really have me worried.”
“I’m okay.” My gaze followed Casteel as he spun, knocking a sword from a Protector’s hand. The blade clattered on the stone floor as Casteel drew his sword back, prepared to deliver a fatal blow. Moonlight glinted off the man’s facial covering—a silver mask.
Jansen .
“Casteel, stop!” I shouted. He halted, his chest rising and falling with his heavy breaths as he leveled his sword at Jansen. Later, I would marvel over the fact that he had stopped without hesitation. Without question. I walked forward. “I made him a promise.”
“Thought you were sitting this one out,” Kieran stated as he kept pace with me.
“I am,” I told him. “But he’s different.”
Casteel stiffened at my words and shot forward so quickly that I thought he might deliver the fatal blow anyway. But he didn’t. He gripped the front of the silver mask and ripped it aside.
“Son of a bitch.” He tossed the mask to the floor.
Jansen’s eyes darted between Casteel and his father. “She will—”
“You need to shut the fuck up,” Casteel snarled as he stepped to the side.
I stalked forward, the stone cool under my bare feet as Kieran followed. As I passed Casteel, he pressed the hilt of his sword into my palm, and his bloodied lips touched my cheek.
“Poppy,” he said, and the sound of his voice punched a small hole in the wall I had built around my gifts.
Everything he felt in the moment reached me.
The hot acidity of rage, the refreshing, woodsy feeling of his relief, and the warmth of everything he felt for me.
And given what he’d experienced before, the bitterness of fear and panic.
I shuddered as I stared at Jansen. “I’m okay.”
Casteel squeezed my hand that now held his sword. “None of this is okay.”
He was right.
It really wasn’t.
But I knew what would make it a little okay, right or wrong.
I pulled free from Casteel. “What did I promise you?” I asked Jansen.
The Royal Guard commander reached for his fallen sword, but I was faster, thrusting the sword out.
Grunting, he staggered back, dropping to his knees.
Glaring up at me, he folded his hands over the blade as if he could actually stop what was about to happen.
“I told you that I’d be the one to kill you.
” I slowly pushed the blade into his chest, smiling as I felt his bones break under the pressure of the sword as it met softer tissue.
Blood bubbled out of the corner of his mouth. “I keep my promises.”
“As do I,” he rasped, the life fading from his eyes as his hands slipped from the blade, the skin of his palms and fingers torn open by the sharp edges.
As do I ?
Without warning, something jerked me back with such force that fiery pain erupted in my chest. I lost my grip on the sword.
The movement was so sudden, so intense, that I felt nothing for a moment as if I’d become detached from my body somehow.
Time stopped for me, but people were still moving, and I saw a flash of Jasper as he leapt onto a Protector’s back, his teeth clamping down on the masked man’s throat.
Something fell from the man’s hand. A bow… a crossbow.
Slowly, I looked down. Red. So much red everywhere. A bolt protruded from my chest.