Chapter 99 Orion
Orion
“Your father would be terribly disappointed in you,” the Luna Court emissary hissed, their true nature showing through the careful mask they always liked to wear. “You have betrayed everything he trained you for.”
“My father trained me for nothing,” I replied easily, calmly. As we circled one another, I tried to keep Ivy in the corner of my vision, her fight with Dante too slow—too terrifying to draw my attention from. “I was never his soldier to begin with.”
The emissary sneered, lips pulling back to reveal sharpened canines. “You’ll regret turning against your court.”
“And I will ensure you regret turning against your Queen,” I said, slashing my sword through the back of a mage who stepped too close. “Soon, I will flush you and your fellow traitors out. The Luna Court will be rebuilt, but not by the likes of you.”
The urge to kill him and keep him from ever raising a hand against my mate rose again within me, but I held back.
The cuffs in my belt for those like him would mean he saw true justice, not just the gentle hands of death.
It would mean he and all those my father manipulated into joining him and Dante would see cells for the rest of their lives.
And I very much liked knowing that I would always know where they were. In death, they were free.
But in the darkest parts of our prisons, they were mine.
“You are too lucky,” I murmured, pointing the end of my blade at him as he wove his own shadowy weapon.
It was nowhere near as skilful as mine. Shadow weaving used to be an art mastered by only the most skilful of Luna Fae, and instead it was now wasted on weak creatures like the male standing across from me.
“Lucky?” he spat, eyes darkening. “Why would I be lucky, traitor prince of Luna?”
“You are lucky because my mate would rather seek punishment for your wrongs rather than death. You are lucky because I won’t kill you today.
” With those words hanging between us, I struck.
The weapon in his hands faltered, nothing but smoke compared to the living, almost real blade I held.
The sloppy shadow work melted apart as I cut down his chest, exposing his alabaster flesh to the raging storm around us.
The male cried out, falling to his knees. But those silver eyes so common to the Luna Court remained locked on mine as I pulled a set of cuffs from my belt.
“You should kill me,” he hissed. “I will not go willingly.”
“Let the people you harmed decide that,” I replied, allowing my sword to disappear as I rounded him, grabbing his arm and setting the first cuff around his wrist. “Should you die, that will be their choice to make—not yours, and not mine.”
As the other cuff went around his wrist and he slumped into the ground, my gaze went to Ivy. Slowly, the other mates in her circle moved to surround her, becoming a physical barrier between her and the rest of Dante’s army struggling to reach them.
I released the emissary and started for them, only stopping when someone familiar shouted. “Watch out!”
I turned in time to duck the giant wolf coming towards me.
As I did, a bullet hit the beast’s stomach, cutting through its matted fur and embedded itself in the creature’s flesh.
A whimpering, wet sound fell from the wolf’s lips as it crashed into a stone statue of Nyx, tumbling to the ground in a heap.
From the corner of my eye, I watched Adrian limp into view, lowering his gun. “You okay?” he asked, sweat beading across his brow, running down his face.
I noticed then the blood soaking through his pants, the pale colour of his skin. “You were shot?”
He wiped his arm over his face with a grimace. “Yeah, by your groupie.”
Layla. She should have stayed dead in the Old World. Or better yet, she never should have come back. Running would have been better for her, and yet as I searched the ground, I found her unconscious with a pair of cuffs keeping her down.
“The bullets are—”
“Poisoned,” he said, cutting me off with a cough. “Figured that out pretty quickly.”
“I’ll dig it out. I have something to combat it in my belt.” As I strode towards him, he rolled his eyes. “What?”
“Of course, you have something for it,” he muttered, leaning hard against a pillar. “I already got it out after Rowan dumped me here. Just pack it, wrap it, and help me get to Ivy.”
Despite the pain clear in his eyes, I didn’t fight him. I respected the demand, and it was the least I could do after everything he and the others had done for me. If it weren’t for him, I never would have returned from the Old World—might not have survived, either.
Ivy might have been my saviour, but they had become my equal protectors during the time I couldn’t protect myself. And I would be grateful for that for the rest of our time together.
Grabbing a vial of dried herbs from my belt, I tapped some into the palm of my hand. Pocketing the jar, I pulled out a binding potion to trigger the herbs’ healing abilities.
“What is that?” Adrian asked as I added a drop of the blue liquid to the herbs.
“It’ll combat the poison running through your veins long enough for Ivy to heal you,” I replied, putting the vial back into my belt and grabbing a small knife. “It will sting.”
“Where the fuck do you find this shit?” he whispered, though he braced himself against the wall as I used the tip of my knife to combine the mixture before slathering it directly into the wound.
Adrian hissed, cursing under his breath, but he breathed through the pain I knew he would be in.
“I learned quickly how to combat it when I was seventeen and my father tested the bullets on me for the first time,” I explained, wiping my hand and the tip of the knife onto my pants as I stepped away from him.
“The poison was one of his creations made from a berry that could only be found by the edges of Luna and Dream territory. The herbs are from the same bush.”
The mage shook his head, teeth gritted as he pushed off the pillar and limp towards me. “That is so fucked up,” he said, wincing. “But once this is over, he’s still rotting in a cell for you.”
For a moment, I expected to feel that familiar urge of vengeance. That desire to sink my own blade through his chest and watch as the light left his pathetic eyes.
But it didn’t come. Instead, I glanced over at Ivy and her surrounding mates, realising I was ready to say goodbye to him. To that life. To the pain only he could cause.
“No need,” I replied, stalking off towards my mate. “I have better things to do.”