73. KILL THEM ALL
This had to be some sort of trick of the mind. Magic. Compulsion. A false reality. From the corner of my eye, I saw Weston turn toward me. The shock that was written on his face told me this was real.
But Liam wasn’t supposed to be here. He was supposed to be safe at home, building furniture and carving the most beautiful details into every piece, waiting for me to return and explain everything and tell him all that I’d discovered.
He should have been there, not here, in the hands of our enemies.
The gag around his mouth was wet and dirty.
There were dribbles of blood on his tunic, probably from a bloody nose.
Blue and purple bruises marred his right temple.
The very thought of him being beaten made my heart clench.
My fingers itched to reach out for him—his name was on the tip of my tongue.
But I held my composure and watched as Killian removed the filthy fabric that had been tied around Liam’s mouth. Beneath it, was a split lip.
Light pulsed along my veins.
“This one means a lot to you.” Killian pinched my brother’s chin between his fingers, earning a pained grunt from him. “Your brother, am I right?”
A growl crawled up my throat. He had probably posed as the prince in order to apprehend Liam. Probably spun some lie, or took him by force. Either way, I would have his head for this.
“Yes, definitely your brother. I can tell by that rage you’re trying so hard to contain. Such a shame that he was all alone in the human realm.”
“Let him go,” I demanded, daring a step forward.
Killian’s expression shifted from pure malice to something contemplative, and I didn’t know which look I feared more.
Light flared to life in both of my palms. “Let. Him. Go.”
Killian lifted his blade, and my breathing stalled.
“All right,” he said, calmly—too calmly.
I watched him carefully, every heartbeat pounding against my chest and pulsing in my ears as he reached down and cut through the restraints that held Liam’s hands behind his back. When he shoved my brother forward, I forgot how to breathe.
There was no way he was doing this . . .
Liam stumbled, looking back at the woodland lord, completely confused, but Killian simply raised his brows as if to say, Go, before I change my mind.
Panic and desperation flooded my gut, but Liam was running toward me, and I lost all sense of discernment. I tripped over my own feet as I took a step, then another . . .
“Auren! NO!” I heard Weston cry out after me, but I couldn’t stop. My brother was right there—he was so close.
I wasn’t thinking straight.
I ran, closing the distance as quickly as I could, and slammed into him so hard that my teeth rattled. My arms flew around his neck, and I inhaled his familiar scent beneath the sweat and dirt that clung to him.
He squeezed me just as tightly. “I knew you would come,” he said.
I closed my eyes, feeling like I was finally whole again.
Then there was a thud. Liam’s body jolted against mine, then stiffened, and I felt something pierce the skin above my right breastbone.
My eyes snapped open and . . . there, across the clearing . . . Killian was lowering a bow.
The string was still quivering.
No . . .
Liam’s knees gave out, and his body weight took me down with him, breaking the tip of the arrow.
His grip on me loosened, and I pulled away just enough to look down at where a small puncture mark had been left in my leather vest. The skin beneath burned, and so did the tears that stung my eyes as I lifted them and beheld the arrow that stuck out of Liam’s filthy, ragged shirt.
I stared in disbelief, and a shuddering gasp overtook me as the grim reality of what had just occurred poured over me like icy water.
His eyes were wild, full of fear, and his breaths were sharp, shaky, a testament to the very thing that I wanted to deny.
He was dying.
He lifted his arms, loosely palming mine with what little strength he had.
“I got . . . your letter,” he rasped in between short gulps of air.
“They told me . . . what you are . . . I knew there was something . . . something special about you . . . And I—” Blood spluttered from his mouth as he coughed and collapsed further to the ground, his eyelids fluttering.
“No, no, no! Look at me, Liam. Look at me!”
I shook him until his eyes opened again. They found mine and held, but the light in them was fading.
His mouth tilted up with a smile. “I’m so proud of you.”
A frantic sob broke from my throat, and something splintered in my heart beneath the burning in my chest. “I love you—Liam—I love you.”
“I love you too,” he whispered.
He clutched onto me like I was the final tether to this world.
“There’s so much that I have to tell you, so much that I want to show you.”
“I know.” His breaths came in a quick succession. “You can show me later.”
Later. As if this was all just a fever dream, and any minute now, we would wake to find ourselves back in our family home.
There was no “later.” There was no version of this that ended in me finally bringing him to the fae realm, or him meeting my husband, my mate. The only “later” we would have would be in the afterlife, and even that was something I would have to deny him.
The thought rattled me to my core.
“Please don’t leave me,” I whispered.
He blinked, his expression tightening as he worked up the strength to speak once more.
“Kill them,” he said, his voice little more than a flooded whisper. “Kill them all.”
The words were an iron sword that cut me to pieces, and yet, they forged a new path of resolve within me at the same time.
A slurry of blood slid from the corner of his mouth, and I quickly wiped it away, as if it would undo all that had just been done and somehow give him his life back.
He wasn’t the carpenter that I had said goodbye to that day when I left to go fight in the king’s tournament.
Nor was he the steady figure that guided me through our younger years of training, always telling me how much I reminded him of our mother.
No, in that moment, I saw him not as the adult that he was, but as my baby brother, always laughing and wearing a playful grin.
Always crafting something out of mud with his hands.
Always looking at me like I had hung the moon.
The eyes that stared back at me had gone distant, lifeless, glazed over with the remains of what was left unsaid between us.
His arms loosened, and the last bit of air that teetered on the edge of his lips fell with a sigh.
He didn’t draw another breath.
A curtain of red fell over my eyes as I trembled with rage. I wanted to beat myself bloody for not anticipating this. For not doing enough. But his death was not mine to carry. This was Killian. This was Lyceius. It was all the evil in the world that preyed on innocent lives.
And I would make them pay for it.
Strong hands bracketed my waist, offering to lift me up. I allowed them to. They steadied me, reminding me that there were still others here who were relying on me to keep it together and remain strong.
I looked over my shoulder and was met with Weston’s face. Pain and anger was set into the lines between his brow, and his longing for vengeance on my behalf was visible in the ticking pulses of his clenched jaw.
My power rumbled within me, but my light didn’t rise to the surface like I expected.
A warning rang in the back of my mind, reminding me that the last time I’d been this emotionally stressed, my power had surfaced for the very first time—with ease, and without my consent.
But I was too lost in the haze of anger and sorrow to sift through the mechanics of it now.
I finally turned and lifted my eyes to my brother’s killer.
Killian had lowered the bow he’d conjured, and was watching with earnestness, seeming to feed off my misery. The fury and the heartache that was written on my face only added to his depraved amusement.
“Sorry. I couldn’t resist,” he said through his smile. “What’s the saying? An eye for an eye?”
This fucking bastard. I had sliced his leg open for the entire royal court to see, and in return, he had taken all that I had left in Belthria. He would bleed a thousand times over for this.
“You just lost any chance you had at an agreement,” I snarled.
Killian rolled his eyes, but Skadi was not so quick to dismiss my threat.
The goddess’s smug countenance turned sour with fret. She swung her head to Killian. “You will mind your hand and your actions, or you will find yourself on your knees in the same predicament as them.” She jerked her chin at the lifeless bodies.
Killian held her stare with a challenge of his own as he concealed the bow within the magical space he’d drawn it from. “She had it coming.”
There was a burning in my chest. My heart was broken. And Killian’s words drove me deeper into the pit of my anger.
“Go back to the queen,” I murmured to Weston.
“No—Auren—”
I whirled on him, my eyes flaring with a brief white light that made him shield his own. “Go. Now,” I growled. My voice didn’t sound like my own.
Weston staggered back a step, but hesitated.
I did not watch to see if he did as I said. Killian was my sole focus now. My hand moved on its own accord, reaching behind me and withdrawing the iron dagger from my belt.
“You will die for this,” I promised the woodland lord as I stalked toward him.
Skadi moved to intercept me, her hand outstretched to conjure something, but Killian stopped her.
“No. Let us fight. Let me bring her to her knees where she belongs. Then you can take her back to the Wastelands and break her.”
Skadi scoffed, but amusement flickered in her eyes. She waved her hand and stepped aside, watching my approach like she was watching an animal walk into a trap. Little did she know, she had it all backwards.
I had once played the part of a demure doe in a room full of wolves. But I was no longer a doe. The time had come for me to shed my skin and bare my own fangs.