Chapter 31 #2
“Are you still certain you want to do it?” Rian asked. “My offer to do this for you stands if you would rather not sully your conscience.”
“It must be me,” I insisted, my loose hair drifting over my shoulder in a cool mountain breeze that smelled of the pines and frozen earth.
“You are cold,” Rian complained, eying the nightgown that was more suited to the humid nights in Feura.
“Not for much longer,” I assured him, setting my gaze on the immense wooden gates that were closed. I breathed in the scent of the forest one last time, knowing that I was about to pollute the mountain with the scents of charred wood and burning flesh.
I walked forward with Rian trailing me. The grass was stiff and cold beneath my bare feet as the soft hem of my dress whispered around my ankles.
As soon as we stepped into the light of the torches on the stone wall, I knew that they had been expecting me. And they clearly had not forgotten the last time I’d nearly burned down the coven; the number of men that rushed out of the towers onto the battlements was flattering.
A ward had been erected, strong enough to make me hesitate when I met with it unexpectedly. But their power was nothing to what I had access to through Rian.
I raised my hand, allowing his shadows to flow out of my palm to consume the magic.
They chewed through the ward with the ease that I bit into the exotic fruit that Rian had brought me after Ornella healed my mouth.
It really was a wonder that my mate was never tempted to conquer the Four Courts with such magnificent power.
But I did not have his temperance.
I heard the men shouting in horror when the defenses they had undoubtedly been putting much of their faith in came down.
The moment I stepped into range, a volley of flaming arrows was unleashed at us.
I did not slow as fire magic singed my veins, incinerating the arrows directly in front of us to ash, which fell harmlessly to the ground.
“Cover us?” I asked Rian over my shoulder.
“So you are willing to let me help,” he said snarkily, making me roll my eyes as we reached the gate.
I summoned a blast of flame that was hot enough to melt the stone on either side of the immense door so it fell free from its hinges.
It slammed heavily onto the earth, revealing dozens of men ready to face me.
The sight of their familiar red-and-gold robes and bearded faces full of malice only reignited my utter contempt for this place.
They charged while I formed beasts of shadow and fire similar to the wild fire hounds Rian loved. Only bigger. And I grinned when I sicced the creatures on the warriors who immediately started balking. Many even halted their charge before my hounds began tearing into their ranks.
I turned to face the battlements from the inside where archers fired arrows at us. Rian consumed each missile in puffs of smoke without even raising his hands. He was only covering us, just as I asked, without engaging any of the witches because he knew their deaths were mine.
I took even more of my own pain and rage and began to forge it into another beast to be set free upon the world.
More and more shadows bled out, this time manifesting from my chest as well as my palms. The monster that took shape was truly massive with a serpentine head and wings that carried it up the stairs to the battlements.
The men saw it coming, too stunned with horror to do more than watch as their companions were swallowed in the gaping maw.
Sense finally seemed to return all at once as they began abandoning their posts.
Some even tried to leap off the wall to flee, but I directed my hounds out the gate to run them down outside the coven.
Not one Kelley witch would live to see the dawn.
I turned away from the battlements that were saturated in darkness and strode across the courtyard to the smaller gate that would open into the mountain.
I had seen all the survivors scurrying through it like rats to try and escape from my hounds.
But the beasts merely slipped through the cracks around the door like the shadows they were to continue pursuing their prey into the mountain.
I began stepping over the body parts the beasts had left strewn across the courtyard. The metallic scent of blood and raw meat was pungent as entrails squelched under my bare feet. Within moments, the delicate lace on the hem of my dress was soaked with gore.
My hands twisted at my sides as I walked and directed my flames to purge every drop of blood. It was so hot that the stone foundations began to melt, and the air grew thin and difficult to breathe.
Rian was immune to the extreme temperature, but he knew I was not.
He used Darragh’s air magic to create a temperate bubble around me, and then pushed the heavy smoke up into the sky.
Ash rained down like black snow, staining my dress and smudging on my skin as it mixed with the gore and formed a gritty paste under my feet.
I reached the door into the coven, and several witches startled me when they suddenly cast fire down at me from a smaller gatehouse above the door. Luckily, Rian had the instincts of a thousand-year-old warrior and immediately snapped a shield into place to deflect the attack.
It was a good reminder that while my power may be strong, I had no finesse, no true knowledge or training. That was a weakness that I would need to correct.
Feeling more furious than ever, I blasted the gate apart and entered the coven, trusting Rian’s shield to deflect the magic and arrows that were fired at us.
I could tell from the screams echoing in the stone hallway that the hounds had reached the women and children deeper in the earth.
These men were the coven’s final defense, and once I had crushed them, the rest of the coven was mine to take.
Room by room, level by level, I made my way down, cleansing the coven with fire. My senses were open as the High Priestess so I could locate each and every body that had been torn apart, and I burned them. Purifying them.
The shadow hounds roved wherever I did not wish to venture from the watchtowers on the mountain above the coven to the dungeons where I’d never step foot again.
They rooted children out from beneath their beds and slid through floorboards into cellars where people trembled in the darkness.
Not even a pinprick of Phoenix blood was not consumed in my fire.
I could feel Rian’s curiosity like a prickling at the back of my neck, but he did not interfere with my preparation, merely continued to watch my back.
The last of the men had gathered in the ritual chamber of the temple for a tragic final stand in defiance of their god and their High Priestess. All but one of them were torn apart in moments by the shadow hounds.
I faced the lone survivor whom I had not seen since the night he ordered my mother burned, and then sent me down to the dungeon.
He was much older now with a grey beard and hair streaked in silver.
His face sagged in wrinkles, but I would recognize those eyes even if his furred mantle did not give him away as the High Priest.
I could not help a cruel smile as he looked from the snarling hounds around him to Rian behind me and lastly to the mark I felt blazing on my forehead. His attention lingered there, and after a moment, he threw his blade to the ground in a demonstration of surrender.
“Father,” I greeted him scornfully.
“What have you done now, little dóite?” he rasped.
Look your fill at the sky, little dóite. You will never see the light of day again… His final words to me that night made my hands clench as my wrath reignited.
“I have done as promised,” I said, the coven silent as a tomb around us as I pointed to the ground in front of him. “Now kneel before your rightful High Priestess.”
His rage was tangible, and he looked like he wanted to respond to the demand with his typical vitriol, but he refrained.
He hesitated a long time, and I could have just forced him down, but I was glad that I had stayed patient.
There was nothing more satisfying than the sight of him sinking to his knees of his own volition rather than being made to do it.
I stepped near enough to grab him by the hair with the strength of my fey mate. He tried to stab me with a knife that he was hiding behind him, but I caught that arm and broke his wrist to quickly disarm him.
“Did you know what he was doing to me?” I snarled once he had bitten off his scream of agony.
“I didn’t tell him to do anything—” he tried to defend himself, but I yanked on his hair to silence him.
“But did you know?” I shrieked furiously.
My father tried desperately to maintain his defiance, but he could not make direct eye contact with me, and it was enough of an answer for me.
“That is what I assumed. Everyone in this coven knew the sick things they were doing to me down there.”
“I should have killed you that night,” he lamented.
“No. I think this was how it was always meant to be. The Dagda chose me to bring about the reckoning of the Phoenix Coven and purge your infection,” I goaded.
“You are mad,” he hissed.
“Perhaps. But whose fault was that?” I whispered back before setting my hands ablaze with fey fire that burned right through his wrist and seared one side of his head.
My father screamed, and I let him flail backward so he landed on the stone floor before me. He clenched the stub of his arm to his chest as he tried to scoot back from me, his left eye partly covered by his sizzled flesh.
“Luke’s body was used to restore mine after he ruined it so thoroughly. I thought that was poetic. So I intend to use you in a similar way. I will consume the power of the entire coven,” I explained as I stalked after him.
I stepped on his ankle to halt his retreat and held him still as Rian’s shadows unfurled from my hands to begin climbing his body. He screamed as they ate him alive.
Within moments, my father was dead. The last of the phoenix-blooded was sacrificed, the magic in their tainted blood now dust in the hallways of their collective tomb.
The flames burning throughout the coven taunted me when I turned to walk into the middle of the rune circle. Monster, monster, monster, they chanted at me as I tilted my head up toward the blood-red morning sky.
I retrieved the dagger from the sheath on my thigh and drew it across my palm.
Enough blood had been spilled that I knew all the gods must be watching, but I wanted to make sure I still had their attention.
Not only the dark one who demanded this sacrifice in exchange for a new life, but my beloved Dagda who had chosen me first.
I dared to call on my god the way I used to do.
It was something I’d been avoiding since Rian retrieved me after years of screaming for a salvation that could only reach me through the flames.
Not because I resented the Dadga for not being able to answer, but because I was terrified that I had truly been abandoned.
I was terrified that being forced to turn to another, to the one who had answered my screams in the dark, would alienate my fire god.
But most of all, I was terrified that the sacrifice that had been demanded would be condemned by the one who loved me first.
But as I felt that beloved one move close to me again, my heart thawed like the sun had come out after a long and frigid night.
The Dagda embraced me with a warmth of such love and approval that it made me instantly break down in tears.
Because I was never abandoned. When the light could not reach me, it had simply allied with the dark in order to save me instead.
Which meant it was time for the ritual.