CHAPTER FORTY
Verena
MY FIRST STEP OUTSIDE THE TENT, AND I PRAYED IT was only another nightmare.
Pixies were scattered around the charge of soldiers, their magic burning as steel flashed.
Light caught on the black of their uniforms, their shields.
No emblem.
They weren’t just soldiers. The Brightwalkers had found us.
The pixies had no weapons fit for war, no training to hold a line. Their forest did not breed monsters that forced them to learn defense. What magic they carried sparked unrefined, no match for blades sharpened by brutality.
The Brights had been made for this. And it was slaughter.
A reek of burning flesh pulled my focus to where Callum stood amongst the carnage, fire spilling from his palms as a soldier turned to cinders at his feet. Beside him, a young girl sobbed, cradling the limp weight of a woman across her lap, a hole where her heart should lay.
They shared the same rich depth of complexion. The same mane of spirals framing their elevated cheeks. She was young. Too young to have awakened to her own magic. Too young to have to learn grief like this.
Callum didn’t stop. He burned, and then he moved on, his flame leaping toward the next target.
It left the girl exposed, unguarded, and Callum didn’t notice.
A Bright did.
The nausea coiling in my gut burned upward, rage scalding it clean. I reached inward, but it wasn’t needed. The world had already begun to blur around its edges.
It didn’t feel like losing control, it felt like snapping the chains.
I let it flow into me, through me, releasing as my steps turned to a stalk toward the soldier in my sight.
His eyes were on the child. Mine had already turned predacious.
Body heat seared in the air as water spiraled from his hand, rising into shape. A water wielder. Callum shouldn’t have left so soon. He twisted his wrists, liquid hardening into the sharp gleam of an ice dagger, as my body drove me forward.
Not quick enough. His arm snapped, hurdling the weapon straight for the girl.
“No!” The word ripped from the throat.
The girl looked up, clenching her eyes. One hand clutched her mother’s body, the other pressed trembling against her own heart.
The battlefield stilled. Screams cut short, metal fell mute. Only my heartbeat was heard. No longer just in my chest, but everywhere, pounding so loud it drowned the camp.
The soldier’s smirk rose slow, taunting, as his dagger closed the distance. By the time I blinked, the light between them bent, its reflection rippling as the blade crashed into something unseen.
Ice hissed to vapor, water burning into nothing—
His smile cracked, and then fell as the noise of battle slammed back in.
“Hey—” Ford’s voice rang out as he barreled in, sword raised high, eyes alight with reckless fury. “That wasn’t very nice.”
The swing of his blade split the air, the thin shimmer of his force shield humming around the girl.
The soldier roared, charging full tilt toward Ford.
Ford swallowed, but he didn’t falter. His hands flared, more movement spreading outward, subtle at first, then bending, as he held the barrier steady.
Blood thickened in the air, dizzying, the temptation almost dysphoric, and I moved. The Viper writhed, starving, and I did not deny it.
My chest slammed into the soldier’s back, driving him to the ground with a crack. His breath left him in a ragged sigh, hair tangling in my fist as I wrenched his head back, straddling him to the stoned floor.
Water turned to frost around his wrists, desperate to harden to form. Ford countered instantly, slamming down force-shields that clamped his hands like manacles, locking the ice away.
“Look at her.” I shoved his face toward the girl still curled behind Ford’s veil. “Look at what you’ve done.”
He thrashed, spittle dripping from his chin as he sneered. “I should have killed her first.”
My nostrils flared, jaw snapping tight and I tipped my head skyward, tongue dragging slow across the sharp edge of my fangs.
Let the gods close their eyes for this.
“Oh man.” Ford stepped in front of the girl so she wouldn’t see what had awakened. “You really fucked up.”
The soldier gulped below me, trying to wrench his head free, his shielded hands pounding uselessly against stone.
I leaned close, making sure he heard every word. “You’ll never have the honor of seeing my true face before death claims you. But you’ll know me, us,” fangs grazed his skin, “just from the pain alone.”
He whimpered, the sound almost sweet. My body moved before I told it to, fangs puncturing his neck. His body arched, seized, veins spidering outward from the bite instantly like black lightning.
“Kyartas,” I called to it. Burn.
His screams tore through the battlefield, shrill, desperate, as Ford dropped the shield around his hands. I let go of his head and he collapsed, clawing at his own skin as it bubbled and split, as if fire licked him from the inside out.
It was agony. It was poetry.
“Scoar-” My breath caught before I could finish.
Salt. I smelled salt—the brine of the sea. It filled my nose, my pores, hurdling for the well I kept locked tight.
It was too familiar, his scent. Or was it only the ghosts of my own tears, still soaked into his skin, staining a memory that clung to me like chains?
The stars behind my eyes flared white, rearing for attack, my body tensing in answer.
He was here.
The air prickled, bodies thrashing, screams folding into static. Shades of life and death smeared together until I saw nothing but shadow. The body beneath me at last stilled, and I used it to push myself higher.
Let me see. My voice demanded inside my head.
The Viper resisted, then slunk back, ceding me my own eyes. My dagger slid free of its sheath, weight comforting against my palm.
“Hello, beastie.” His voice was a sour chill as my spine locked. “That was quite the show.”
Reve stepped from the blur. One step toward me—and I fucking flinched. The spark in his eyes brightened at the movement.
“You’re even more spectacular than I ever anticipated.”
My fangs hung, blood and venom sliding from their tips in slow drips that spattered between us.
Ford shifted at my side, his shield trembling like glass about to splinter. The girl whimpered behind it, but he held strong, burning every shred of his strength to keep her protected.
There were too many Fae, too much strain on the core. It couldn’t feed us all, could barely replenish what we had lost.
Reve’s stare turned toward them, and my heart plunged when a sinister smile drew across his face.
“How’s the hand?” I bit out.
His head snapped back, the smirk widening. The memory of that severed finger still lived in my mouth, metallic and rancid. He lifted both hands, wiggling ten fingers at me. Though one more pallid than the rest.
Damn him.
“You have something the king wants returned.” He never blinked. Even when his head tilted and his eyes dragged down the length of me. He just...stared.
“Sorry.” My blade rose. “Finders keepers.”
His eyes narrowed then, void of warmth, void of mercy, as he ran a thumb along his lower lip. “Verena—” The rings resting on his fingers glinted as he extended one hand.
I remembered everything that hand did to me.
“Come with me,” he said. “Now.”
The command cracked like a whip. And then my back turned to fire, the scars igniting, aching, as though the demand lashed them anew. A scream tried to tear from my throat, metal filling my tongue when my fangs punctured clean through my lip, silencing it.
And it was suddenly all too fucking familiar.
My body locked, every muscle trembling beneath the surface. Still, I made no sound. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.
“This pain can end if you just come with me.” Another step, another lash of misery across my back. “Things will be different this time, I swear it.”
The agony strove to force me to my knees. Blood slicked my lips, the world funneling to the single sound of my pulse roaring in my ears.
My lips parted only to draw a breath, slow, controlled. The pain licked at my veins, feeding off the same darkness that lived inside me.
Still, I did not bow.
Through blurred sight, I caught Ford, the girl in his arms, fleeing where her mother’s body lay abandoned. Good. Let them be gone, let them be safe.
Breathe, a voice told me. Fight it. You are stronger than this suffering. Show him who you are.
It was a calming presence. But it was not familiar.
My lashes lowered, legs shaking, every nerve aflame, every scar screaming. I shoved it deeper, into the locked chamber of my mind where pain could not live.
You’ve survived worse, it spoke again. This is not real. It wavered, tone deepening. You are venom. You are destruction.
It formed into one I knew all too well, sliding through my skull and closing around my spine.
You are death.
The litany twisted around me like a crown. My pulse lurched, lips peeling back, laughter breaking free. It was ragged, hysterical. The sound alone made Reve’s face blanch.
When my eyes snapped open, a deep shimmer had risen around him, threading in the air, weaving itself around his tall frame. It wrapped close when, for the first time, he stepped back, hands rising to shield himself.
His features twisted, disgust bold against the shock. “Your face—” The light around him faltered, fading from deep to pale plum, siphoning back into his body as his head shook. “What are you?”
I smiled, black heat rising up my arms as I stalked closer.
The shadows above changed as thunder cracked, swallowing his question and my answer whole.
It grew across the camp, eclipsing the pain, the world around us.
The realm split at our feet, hurling skywards as the force landed, sending Reve staggering back.
Ronan emerged from it, rising from the impact, eyes molten, closing the distance in a single stride. Smoke leaked off him in suffocating waves, wings unfurled across his back.
Towering over Reve, one massive hand fisted in his armor, dragging him from the ground until their faces met and Ronan growled, “Mine.”