She stretched her hand over the railing, and Silas took it. He placed a kiss on the back of her hand. Shock wove through every nerve in my body. It was the sad woman from the vision in the Fate’s temple. In real life, she wore a smile that made her even more stunning. A crimson dress was draped loosely over her tall figure, and her long hair fell in an elaborate braid over her shoulder. She looked radiant as she stood and smiled down at Silas. Aria.
Her hand gently cupped her stomach for a second before she lowered it to her side. If I hadn’t been staring so intently, I would have missed it. The gentle curve of her stomach was barely more than a bump.
Aria was pregnant.
“I challenge you!” I yelled.
Everyone stared at me. My challenge echoed across a thousand pairs of lips until I caught a glimpse of myself on the tele-nets above. My face was flushed, and my eyes were flashing. I didn’t care.
Silas—and the Council—had mutilated and murdered that Traiten. They enslaved people and killed them. And there he stood, not even hours later, with a woman he supposedly didn’t love, yet she was smiling and pregnant. They were happy. No. Just no.
Stephan whispered furiously, tugging at my arm, but I ignored him.
Silas and I locked gazes across the arena. His eyes narrowed, and his mouth twisted into the condescending grimace I hated.
I marched toward him. The magic barrier melted away in front of me when I strode onto the field and headed straight for Silas.
The announcer’s voice rang out across the arena. “A challenger!”
The crowd roared in delight.
Silas stalked halfway across the arena and met me in the middle. “What are you doing?” he demanded.
“Challenging you,” I responded, using the voice I reserved for idiots.
“You’re making a mistake,” he said with an angry hiss in his voice. “A very public mistake.”
I dropped my voice to a furious whisper that only he could hear. “You are an arrogant, insufferable murderer—and your wife is pregnant, you cheating bastard!”
I clenched my fists at my sides so I wouldn’t start punching him. I hadn’t meant to just blurt my accusations at him like that, and challenging the Lord Commander of the Guardians in front of half of Aeterna was possibly the stupidest thing I had ever done, but I was raging mad. Someone needed to pay for the injustice of everything that had happened today, and I couldn’t stand by and do nothing any longer.
Chapter Twenty
“Out!” Silas snapped.
The few people still in the reception pavilion rushed for the exit. Everyone fled his wrath as I planted myself firmly in front of him and prepared to take down the dragon. I didn’t even care that he had stormed off the field and left all of Aeterna wondering what the hell was going on. I followed him. He wasn’t getting off the hook this time.
He paced the floor in front of me with a half dozen long, angry strides before he spun and paced back again. His magic flared around us in the pattern I recognized from the Council’s privacy spell. “Explain yourself,” he demanded.
“Explain myself?” My voice rose in outraged disbelief. “You have got to be kidding me! I just watched you murder a man, Silas! I’m sorry, but I won’t just sit there and do nothing while you go around being all happy with your pregnant wife. Not after what I saw.”
He bared his teeth. “That man was a Traiten.”
My fists were balled at my sides again. “Murder is always wrong, Silas! Slavery is wrong!”
“Exactly. He robbed and murdered three people! He deserved to die.”
“He—” My righteous anger stuttered. The Traiten was another criminal, of course. A murderer. “I didn’t know that.”
“You don’t know a lot of things. And yet you continuously pass judgment,” Silas said with a scowl. “He was sentenced to death or life as a Traiten. He chose to die in a way that would restore his family’s honor.”
“But the Council bled him for his magic!”
“Yes,” Silas said, his face hard.
“They stole his life energy, just like the Brotherhood.”
“That man deserved to die. The Council used his death for the greater good of the citizens. The world is better off than when he was breathing, and that is the honor he’s restored to his family. It’s our duty to enforce law and punishment.”
The way the Council chose to enforce their laws was barbaric. But I started to wonder if the world wasn’t better off without someone who had murdered three people. Still, I didn’t want to let Silas off the hook quite yet, not when he’d lied to me and tried to have sex with me while he was married. “What about your wife? You’ve clearly been doing more than ‘barely speaking’ with Aria.”
“How did you know?” he asked.
“Know what? That you’re a cheater?” The till had made my tongue even sharper than normal. At the moment, I didn’t care what he said about bond-mates and power agreements and all that. He’d made a promise to someone else and then tried to have sex with me. That made him a cheating bastard.
He ran his hand over his face. “How did you know about the pregnancy, Maeve?”
A little flutter hit my stomach when he said my name. I punched it down with both fists. “She cradled her stomach.” Looking back, it wasn’t a whole lot to go on, but Silas had just confirmed my suspicions.
He continued to pace, mumbling something I couldn’t make out. Something was wrong with the way he was acting. I’d expected his anger. And I was prepared for him to tell me it wasn’t any of my business. But something different emanated from him, and it felt strangely like fear. He seemed overwhelmed, almost nervous. Silas was usually so confident. The uncertainty I could sense from him made me pause. Then I reminded myself that he was a terrible person and I didn’t care.
Aria rushed into the tent with Stephan right on her heels. Silas stopped pacing as they passed through the privacy spell.
“Silas?” Aria reached for him, her face tentative and... scared?
He stepped away from her and resumed pacing. “She knows about the pregnancy.”
Aria and Stephan wore matching expressions of surprise. Stephan shifted on his feet.
I could feel his anxiety. I had gotten into the middle of something I did not understand at all, and confusion tempered my anger.
“How?” Aria whispered, her hand flitting to her stomach protectively.
I nodded at her hand, and she dropped it immediately as understanding crossed her face. She leaned into Stephan, who wrapped his arm around her, and it finally hit me. Aria and Silas had never wanted to be together, but...
“Oh my God.” I stared at Stephan in shock. “It’s yours.”
Stephan nodded, a mixture of fear and protectiveness in his face. He cared about Aria. It had been obvious in the way he’d talked about her. But I hadn’t realized the kind of love he had for her was romantic and that Aria felt the same way about him. Silas still paced the floor, his shoulders tense. I’d misunderstood—again.
“Silas has agreed to claim the child as his own,” Aria said quietly. Her eyes were wide and watery, reminding me of the vision of her in the Fate’s temple.
Silas stopped pacing and frowned. His eyes were dark with the weight of too much responsibility. That look on his normally confident face hurt me in a way I hadn’t anticipated. Right on the heels of his pain, my anger surfaced. This time, I directed my ire at Stephan.
“So, Silas is what, your cover story? You get your happy ending together while he plays out the shitty-ass prophecy and pretends to be Aria’s baby daddy? How could you do this to your own brother?”
I was so angry, I accessed my power without thinking. The room glowed in shades of white. The pattern of each of their lives was written in the magic all around me and pulsing in time with my rage. Aria and Stephan flinched and stared at my aura. Their matching expressions of surprise and fear didn’t stop the rage burning through me.
“Enough.” Silas put his hand on my shoulder. “You d
on’t need to defend me. I gave them my blessing a long time ago. I love Stephan too much to make him suffer through a shitty-ass prophecy with me.” His lips twisted upward at my terminology. “And Aria too. We don’t all need to suffer. If anything, it is I who owes them an apology. With Stephan as Prime of our House, we’d planned to petition Lord Alaric to absolve the bond-mating and allow Aria and Stephan to be together.”
“But then you took back the Council seat to save my life.” I released my magic. The energy faded away, returning the world to everyday colors. “This is my fault.”
“Lord Alaric will not agree to absolving the mating bond now that Silas is Prime to House Valeron,” Stephan said.
Silas frowned at his brother. “I failed you.”
Stephan laid his hand on Silas’s shoulder. “We’ll find another way.”
The brothers nodded at each other in solidarity.
Aria took shelter under Stephan’s arm, and something heavy settled in my heart. This whole situation was just too much misery for one family, and I’d made it worse.
“This arrangement works for us,” Silas continued. “Aria and Stephan get their happy ending, as you called it, while we fulfill our obligation to the prophecy. The pregnancy is new, and we haven’t figured out all the details yet.”
“What about you?” I asked him.
His brows drew together in confusion.
I finally understood why he pushed me away. He was protecting his family, allowing Aria and Stephan to be together, even if it was in secret. “You’ve made the best out of this situation for everyone else, and I respect the hell out of that. But don’t you want more... for yourself?”
“You seem to be under the impression that I’m not happy,” he said with a frown.
I searched his face for any hint of his feelings and found nothing. His expression was completely blank.
“I need you to keep what you know to yourself,” he said.
My gut tightened into a nauseous ball as I agreed. I would keep their secret because it was the right thing to do, especially after Silas had traded away their collective freedom to save my life. But it hurt that he still didn’t want me in his life. He’d told me multiple times he wasn’t interested in more. I just hadn’t realized until now that he wasn’t interested in more with me. Yet I kept naively inserting myself into their lives.
Stephan cleared his throat. “We’ll leave you two to discuss—”
“No, you stay,” I said. “I’m leaving.”
I exited the pavilion quickly, leaving them to their private business and vowing to be done with the whole family. All I did was make a mess of things I didn’t understand.
I was so wrapped up in my own thoughts that I didn’t pay attention to the crowd outside.
“The challenger!” the announcer roared as my feet stepped outside the pavilion. The crowd cheered as my face, all splotchy and red, appeared bigger than life on the tele-net above the arena.
A thousand sets of eyes weighed on my shoulders. My hot temper had gotten me into trouble again, and now my furious anger was gone. I felt deflated, and I’d completely forgotten about the stupidity of my challenge.
The crowd started cheering when Silas strode out of the tent behind me. He grasped me by the upper arm and dragged me into the arena with him. Then he released me at the edge of the clearing and strode to the very center, ensuring all eyes were on him.
He faced Alaric, Elias, and the other Councilors standing near their seats. “I won’t fight someone who has no training.” His voice echoed around the now-silent arena.
The crowd murmured, trying to figure out exactly what was going on.
“I withdraw my challenge,” I said loudly.
Murmuring continued as everyone tried to make sense of the situation.
Up on the raised pavilion, the Aeternal Council conferred together. Alaric was the only one not whispering in someone’s ear as he glared at me, his aura lit with golden power.
The air around me thickened into a blurry fog. I squinted at it until the mist straightened into a distinct pattern and a portal opened ten feet in front of me.
I dove out of the way as a Rakken leapt out, barely managing to avoid a full collision. I rolled to my feet just in time to see a cascade of energy shiver down around me. All the air rushed out of my lungs. I was trapped inside a twenty-foot dome of magic with three Rakken and a portal.
The first Rakken—a giant, scarred monstrosity with an ugly, hairless hide—lifted his head and sniffed the air. One of his ears was a torn, deformed stump. Ugly twisted his head to the side, and slitted eyes fell on me. The beast’s nostrils flared wide, and his jaw hinged open to let loose a blood-chilling shriek.
I slapped my hands over my ears and tried to hold my brain inside my skull as the noise reverberated against the dome of magic trapping us together.
Fear and confusion tangled in my head. Silas had said the Brotherhood couldn’t attack me in Aeterna, but the snarling Rakken in front of me proved otherwise. Another shriek sounded outside the dome, and I noticed two more Rakken loose in the crowd. Screams cascaded across the arena, setting off mass panic. On the ground level, the elite and powerful citizens of Upper Aeterna skimmed out of danger, leaving the coveted arena-side seats empty. Everyone else shoved each other and rushed for the exits.
All the Rakken took up the howling, and the deafening noise echoed off the dome, freezing my brain as pure, primal fear slithered down my spine. I was trapped and weaponless.
Ugly stalked forward. He was less than ten feet away—an easy leap for a Rakken.
Outside the dome, Silas threw a wave of blinding gold magic at the loose Rakken. The animals dodged, and the energy slammed into the shield with an audible boom, fracturing into veins of magic that crackled across the surface.
All three Rakken inside the dome paused to assess the potential threat.
Guardians flooded the field and began attacking the Rakken and the shield alongside Silas, smashing even more magic into the dome. Their efforts lit up the barrier with every blast, but the shield held.
Ugly focused his attention back on me with a very human snicker on his demonic face. The other two Rakken flanked him. The one on my left darted forward. I twisted away from him, and they all shifted with me. Lefty darted forward again and snapped his jaws in the air just shy of my face. I stumbled backward, and they adjusted with me again. The Rakken surrounded me, leaving no escape other than the portal five feet to my right. Its dark, opaque surface rippled ominously, giving no clue what could be on the other side.
I pushed my back flat against the shield, and dark power sizzled along my flesh. It sank into me, and I jumped back instinctively. The tainted magic had the same bitter taste as Atticus’s compulsion sigil, which shouldn’t have been a surprise considering the Brotherhood had conjured this spell. If I tried to absorb the magic out of the dome, I would probably end up puking my guts out while the Rakken ate me.
All three Rakken stalked forward with their teeth bared. Ugly crouched. His lean muscles were tight along his forelimbs, and his long claws dug into the earth as he prepared to pounce like a giant cat. I glanced at the portal. I couldn’t go through that doorway and straight into Titus’s arms. I just needed to figure out how to stay alive until Silas broke through the barrier between us. I wished fervently for Ripper. Even a small knife was better than no knife when faced with three innards-eating demon dogs.
The Guardians took care of the loose Rakken and concentrated their efforts on pounding the shield from the outside. Every blast of energy sizzled across the surface, weakening it. It shivered with each impact but held my rescue outside the barrier.
“Maeve!” Silas yelled, his magic causing thunderous impacts every few seconds. “Don’t go through that portal!”
No shit. For once, I fully intended to do what Silas told me.
Lefty lunged at me, but I had no more ground to give. He snapped a double row of teeth inches from my leg. If I had Ripper, I could have stabbed him i
n the eye. He was so close, I could smell his rancid, meaty breath.
But he didn’t bite me. He could have bitten me.
They were trying to herd me into the portal! They needed me alive and on the other side of that doorway. My chances of living through this were looking up.
Lefty pulled back, and his head twisted to the side. He seemed confused.
“Screw you!” I screamed in his face and kicked him like a toddler having a tantrum, swinging my foot right up under his jaw.
His mouth smacked shut from the impact. My sandal-clad toes crunched, and pain radiated up my foot.
Lefty growled and swiped a massive paw at me.
My head slammed against the shield. Air whooshed out of my lungs as magic sizzled over my body and pain flamed across my back. His claws had shredded my right shoulder.
Lefty stood over me, and his nostrils flared as he inhaled the scent of my blood. Every shred of human intelligence I’d seen in his eyes fled. He opened his maw. His lips were pulled back, exposing killing teeth and dripping saliva in long, wobbly strings.
He was going to eat me, orders be damned.
Ugly slammed into Lefty, pushing him away from me. Lefty snapped back, and the two grappled. Ugly apparently remembered they weren’t supposed to kill me; they were supposed to herd me through that portal to Titus. And apparently, Titus needed me alive to get their magic back.
Righty jumped into the fight, and I couldn’t tell if he was for or against keeping me alive.
As the animals fought each other, my mind raced for a way out of this mess. I had no weapon and no way to reliably access Marcel’s magic. Silas was trapped on the outside of the shield, and regardless of which Rakken won their argument, I was dead.
Lefty got a hold of Ugly’s throat, ripped it out, and yowled in triumph. The foul smell of Rakken blood hit me just as Lefty leapt over his dead leader and skidded to a stop in front of me. Righty circled around and joined him.
I swore in frustration. They were going to eat me. I glanced at the portal. Going through that meant certain death and giving Titus the magic Marcel had died to keep out of his hands. I glanced around for any other salvation, but all I could focus on were the two Rakken covered in the blood of their leader. I tried to decide if being ripped to shreds by animals was better than the torture Marcel had endured.
Fate Forged Page 21