Chapter Twenty-Six #2
I go to shove him out of the way, but then I’m the one pushed aside until I’m rolling across the concrete. I scramble to my knees, blinking upon finding Zev shoved against a stone and Legend’s fist in his collar.
“I’m not gonna kiss you, even if you did just save my life, royal.” Zev’s lip twitches, but Legend just tosses him away, turning back to me.
“Don’t you fucking dare. If you even think of coming at her with fire, Haide, that water will fucking tear the flesh from your bones!”
“Then what?” I yell back, but it’s too slow because a tunnel of water is flying right at me.
“Legend!” I scream.
Sinner ducks behind Arabella, reaching through the water to the back of her throat, but she dissolves back into a puddle.
And reforms in front of me, tilting her head. “You truly are a pest.”
“Legend!” I cry through our bond, because if he doesn’t do something, I am—whether I turn to fucking ash or not.
”Fuck!” The scream tears through my brain, turning everything to white noise. “I fucking can’t! Every time I try to fucking kill her, I fucking can’t!” I don’t think he even realizes he’s switching back and forth from speaking aloud and mentally.
His panic makes my entire being ache.
Another blast tears through and I recoil to the left to dodge it. Rage simmers below the surface, and I breathe through every motion. You will not lose your shit. You need to stay alive for Legend.
Arabella stands in the center of the chaos, dark water swirling around her in a slow vortex, pale light pulsing from her skin.
“Finally.” She inhales, her head tilting back. My eyes fly around the room to where Sinner is pinned against a rooted tree; to Legend, body convulsing and stuck to the spot; to Zev, flicking his blades at her without penetrating, and to—where’s Creed?
My head snaps around but I can’t spot him.
Did she take him out? Is he underwater?
“Beast?! Where is he?”
He doesn’t have time to answer as Arabella extends her hand toward my mate.
Legend’s power surges and then chokes, rage flooding through him as he’s forced to respond to her against his will.
“Stop it.” My voice comes out broken. “Stop fucking doing that to him—”
“You can’t make me.” Arabella’s blue eyes fade to white. “Come take what’s yours, little witch. I dare you!”
The Nightkin throws itself against my ribs.
“She’s baiting you. She wants you to attack—”
“I don’t care.”
I push to my feet, blood dripping from my mouth, fire crackling at my fingertips.
“He’s MINE.”
I launch myself at her.
This time, she meets me halfway.
We explode in a ball of fire and water. Her magic presses against me, invasive and fucking raw. So close I can almost reach out and—
The Nightkin roars.
“I will kill you—”
Her eyes widen before she cackles. “You can’t do anything because you’re stuck inside her!”
How can she hear him?
The dark water behind her rises, higher and higher.
“Let’s see how well you fight when you’re drowning.”
Waves crash down over me in a blanket of darkness.
I throw my flames up to meet it, but there’s too much, too fast, and the water swallows my fire like it was never there. Cold slams into me, driving me to my knees, filling my lungs with acid.
“Haide—”
Legend’s voice is clear, but I can’t respond, and his panic fills my chest.
“HAIDE—”
I try to answer, but my throat is full of darkness, and somewhere far away I hear Creed whispering something I can’t make out. Where the fuck are you, Creed!
Then the water recedes, but it’s kept me and Zev and Sinner behind a wall of it, Legend and her on the other.
“Legend—” I start toward him, but the dark water thickens until it’s a rippling wall of impenetrable glass.
We can’t break it but we can see through it.
She reaches out and cups his face in her hands.
He doesn’t pull away.
“Legend, fight it—”
“I can’t.” The words come out of him broken, hollow. “Haide, I can’t—every time I try, it—”
“Shh.” Arabella strokes his cheek, and the gesture makes my stomach turn. “I know. I built it that way.” She leans in, pressing her forehead to his. “You were never going to be free of me, Legend. Not really. Not completely.”
She pulls back slightly, whispering, “You’re home.”
No.
“He’s mine,” Arabella says it out loud, as if she fucking needs to. “He always was. He always will be.” Her eyes find mine. “And there’s nothing you can do to change that.”
She presses a kiss to Legend’s forehead.
He shudders, but he doesn’t move away.
The pale thread pulses brighter.
And I watch, helpless, as the man I love kneels at the feet of the woman who owns a piece of him I can’t reach.
There’s nothing I can do now to bring him back to me, and I hate it. “We have to go,” I rasp, shoulders dropping.
“Go where?” Sinner frowns my way.
“She’s trapped herself away from us. We need to use it to our advantage and do what we came to do.”
“You mean leave him? With her?” Sinner asks, fatigue and worry pulling over his face as he stares at his baby brother.
“It’s all we can do right—”
“Haide, follow my voice.”
My head snaps, pulling me away from the display through the dark water.
“Creed?”
His voice cuts through the chaos like teeth snapping through a tendon, sharp enough that my whole body jerks with it.
“How can I hear you?” I panic, throat clenching tight. “How are you in my head, Creed?!”
I clench my eyes closed, focusing on whatever this is between us. I feel him.
“Creed?”
“You know how, little brat.”
No. One second I’m standing there and the next I’m in the air.
“Haide!” Sinner shouts. “Come down. Where are you going?”
“Do not go off by yourself, Luda, I swear to the fucking gods!” Zev screams, but I hardly hear the end of his sentence.
I don’t give my mind or magic direction, but something carries me where I need to go, like some outside force is pushing me with an urgency that has my muscles tensing. I’m lifted high only to drop me down on the other side of the stone wall we found ourselves forced up against.
My boots crunch against the ground. It shifts under my feet, black stone rising in half-formed steps and the thorned vines drawing back from my path like they’ve been waiting for my arrival.
The cavern calls me with the same ancient certainty I felt when the soul stones first sang to my blood.
I crash through the ravine with my breath ripping out of me in wet, broken pulls, but that’s not what freezes me to the spot.
It’s the scent of royal blood, rich and…fresh, but also wrong. It’s tinged with something darker and familiar.
“No,” I whisper once, then louder when the cavern mouth finally opens before me in a bloom of black vines and red petals, the soul stones throbbing like a living heartbeat in their pits. “No. No, no, no.”
I dash forward, faster than the vines can move out of the way, though they try, hissing in horror when they catch my arms, legs, and face as I fly past, but I don’t even feel it.
This space is beautiful in the cruelest way possible: black thorns and luminous blooms and thick veins all around the cavern like some dark god reached down and arranged it with loving hands.
The flowers pulse faintly, each petal veined in gold-black light, their centers glowing soft and terrible.
When I break through the last cluster, my lungs seize as I come to a stop.
My heart lurches in my chest so hard my torso jerks, palm flying up to press at the spot, but it offers no relief.
Not four feet in front of me, at the center of the bloom, as if the island itself laid him there to be admired, is Creed.
The thorny vines curl around his body, wrapping him tightly but not piercing or cruel. Just holding, like it understands now that it’s too late. He isn’t a vicious threat they took out, but a fallen King who ventured where the gods deemed he wasn’t allowed.
I fall to my knees so hard the rock bruises through bone.
“Creed,” I croak, palms hovering above his pale body, my limbs shaking as I look him over.
There is no blood, no torn flesh, or even a hint of violence. That somehow makes it worse.
The Isles Kiss has wrapped him up in its black beauty and sucked the soul right out of him.
My hands shake when I reach for his face, because if he’s cold then this is real—and I am not ready for real. I touch his cheek anyway.
Cold.
Not winter-cold or even corpse-cold.
Empty.
Whatever made Creed Creed is gone, and all that’s left for my hands to find is the shape of him.
I can’t breathe.
The cavern bends around me, the flowers blurring, and my chest locks tight around the sound clawing up my throat.
I did not know this could hurt. I didn’t know there was something worse than watching Legend kneel to that bitch because he cannot stop himself. Something worse than Thyrix’s soul stone burning into my blood.
But this is so much fucking worse.
My thumb drags over the edge of his cheekbone. “You idiot,” I whisper, and tears spill before I can stop them, hot and humiliating as they streak down my face. “You absolute fucking idiot. You were supposed to live long enough for me to forgive you, or not forgive you, or punch you in the mouth.”
I was supposed to get to call him a stupid royal dickhead and watch him do that tired little huff-laugh he does when he knows I’m right. He was not supposed to be lying here under a bed of death-flowers like some noble fucking offering.
“What the hell is wrong with you, you foolish royal?” A sob breaks free. Drop after drop, my tears land on his face. The moment they hit his skin, the Isles Kiss shivers beneath him and the black thorns tighten across his torso.
My arms stretch out on their own, palms trembling as they press to his cold flesh.
There is no warning or gentle slide. One second, I’m crying over his body and the next my mind is ripped open from the inside, flooded with Creed so fast and hard I double over. Everything he was comes pouring through me in brutal, blinding flashes.