by Xuemei X,Meg
I forced myself to focus on the present and on my male.
The shouts and the sound of crossing blades hurt my ears, despite my dulling senses.
Seth fought through.
“The dungeon, please,” I reminded him, surprised at my burst of strength before it slipped away.
Angels’ blood shot up and spattered at Seth’s every brutal slash. Feathers fell all around. Seth had been taking great care to shield me, yet drops of blood still fell on my face. I only prayed none of the blood was Seth’s.
Seth carried me amid a heap of broken bodies and blood-tainted wings.
“Go to the dungeon!” he shouted an order at his team in the hallway.
“They’ve sealed the entire palace and Atlantis,” Ephraim called beside him.
Another eternity crawled by as we prowled through. Then I heard Seth yell, “Release the prisoners!”
Then Souline and Femi came forth among others.
Alive! They were alive! Even Hector and Lion, covered by blood, were still breathing. I choked back a sob. I tried to reach for them.
“Hang in there, baby.” Seth’s voice enveloped me in a dream. “Hang in there, please, for me, for us. I’ll get you out soon.”
He gently wiped something wet from my face, and I didn’t know if it was tears, sweat, or blood, or all of them mixed.
I gazed up at Seth. A thousand words were stuck in me.
No longer my enemy, but my mate. My first and last. My one and only.
My mate.
PRINCE SETH
I was an avenging angel. Only this time, I battled my own kind.
My soldiers and friends fought bravely beside me. Many of them, like Ephraim, had secretly held the same idea as the rebel angels across the universe, advocating freedom for every colonized species and condemning all forms of slavery.
I had looked the other way instead of purging them. I had never been crazy about punishing anyone for their ideas and dreams. No one could touch them while they were under my command.
Today, they fought by my side for my mate, and some of them had fallen.
After a few strikes, I gave up deploying my lightning. My sky power was best used on the battlefield for mass kills. In the narrow space while my soldiers tangled with the king’s, I would hurt them as well. Besides, my lightning wasn’t an endless well. It could exhaust and would take time to refill, so I’d better reserve it for when I needed it the most.
My hand held Rose tightly and carefully; my other hand wielded a sword. As my main goal was to shield her, I was greatly compromised fighting off my foes.
Fear incapacitated me. Every minute I was delayed from delivering Rose to safety could result in her bleeding to death.
But the king’s soldiers kept coming like endless locusts. They swarmed over their peers’ corpses to reach Rose and me, determined to snatch my lamb from my hands. They were afraid of me, but they were the warrior breed and had the king’s orders.
I blinked away the sweat that stung in my eyes.
Deep and shallow gashes sliced across my skin.
I was soaked with blood, mine and the sentinels.
When Ephraim and I reached the dungeon, the team I’d dispatched earlier to free the Mysthian prisoners was still fighting the king’s jailers. Roaring in fury, I charged, yet was careful to keep Rose out of harm’s way, and cut down the rest of the resistance.
My lightning struck open the lock. The surviving members of Rose’s court were all inside the same cell, the Dragonian commander among them.
Rose sobbed and tried to reach for her people, but failed to lift a hand.
“Hang in there, baby,” I begged her. “Hang in there, please, for me, for us. I’ll get you out soon.”
The Mysthian warriors, courtiers, and Rose’s maid rushed out of the cell. They picked up the weapons of the dead jailers, joining the fight just as a second wave of the king’s soldiers arrived. The enemies swarmed towards us, overwhelmed us with numbers, and separated me from Rose’s people.
The Dragonian commander swung a sword among the Mysthians, as if he knew what he was doing. At one point, he sent me a nasty glare. I would have impaled him if it weren’t for my female.
She needed him for the alliance for the future warfare against my kind, and I had chosen her above anyone and anything. For her, I’d fought with a Dragonian and the Mysthians against the angels.
It pained me to know that I had become the worst enemy to my lord father.
But what wouldn’t I do for my mate?
The Mysthian warriors and I cut our way toward each other. They had only one purpose—reach their princess and protect her with their lives. I had a similar goal—hand Rose to them and help them escape.
With our combined brutal, desperate forces, we reached each other, leaving dead angels in the archway.
The Mysthian lead guard nodded his gratitude at me. For the first time, there wasn’t enmity in his hard eyes. He’d been wounded badly, yet he still fought bravely.
“This way!” the Dragonian called urgently and led us through shortcuts toward my study. He must have known every secret path above and under Atlantis since his engineers had built this city. And I had just learned there was another secret door inside my library that led to the subterranean passages.
I carried Rose and ran after the Dragonian, cutting down any angel on our path. I held the princess as gently as I could, so I wouldn’t cause her too much pain with all the running and fighting.
I wished I could suffer for my mate instead and take away her pain.
In no time, we arrived at my library through the inner route.
The main entrance door opened at my heat signature. But before I could rush in with Rose in my arms, a new section of the king’s angels zeroed in, positioning themselves to blast the glass door and windows and ceiling with their laser weapons.
They blotted out the sky and filled the ground.
If I went with Rose, they would chase her to the end. And my mate was bleeding out.
Our numbers were too small to fight the great angel army.
I knew what I had to do.
It was time for me to let her go and give her back to her warriors. Let them carry her home while I held the defenses.
Yet I couldn’t let her leave my arms. I knew once I did, I would never see her again.
My mate.
I’d come across light years and many worlds to find her. I’d waited for her for eons and stood alone in eternal bleakness.
Letting her go was like tearing myself apart right there, yet I had to if she were to live.
The Mysthians waited for me to enter the library with their princess and gestured that they would stay behind to fight the last line. I shook my head. None of them were in a good shape, and most of them could barely stand straight.
The lead guard was a complete mess himself, soaked in blood of both angels and himself. I wouldn’t entrust any of them to carry my Rose. I turned to my most trusted friend Ephraim. “You go with them. You keep her safe for me.”
“You go, Prince,” Ephraim said. “I’ll defend—”
“You won’t stand a chance, either,” I said. “Promise me to keep her safe.”
“With my life, Highness,” Ephraim said.
I waved the Mysthians through the door, and the lead guard organized the courtiers to go in first, following the Dragonian rebel commander, who shoved a device on a side wall and revealed a secret door.
The Dragonian ducked in first and down to the tunnel. He gestured for the rest of the Mysthians to follow suit, but none did. Every one of them stood beside the inner door, waiting for their princess. They wouldn’t go in without seeing Rose enter first.
As tenderly as I could, I transferred Rose to my friend, but she struggled to cling to me.
“No,” she whispered.
“Princess, you have to let go,” the lead guard said, trying to pry away her fingers that grabbed my collar.
She snarled at him, as did I.
/> “Let go, love,” I said. “I’ll find you.”
“They’ll…kill…you,” she said, using her every ounce of strength to persuade me. “I won’t leave…you…” She refused to let me go.
“You have to go now!” I said. “I’ll come for you, I promise.”
“No, they’ll…kill you,” she insisted.
“I’m still their high prince,” I said. “And I’m too powerful for them to kill. I can’t fight them off while I have to worry about you, female!”
The lead guard successfully pried her fingers open, which were frail anyway, and I gently put Rose in Ephraim’s arms.
The ceiling in my library shattered. The king’s soldiers were about to come through.
“Go!” I shouted at Ephraim.
“Please,” Rose pleaded, “don’t leave…him.”
Carefully carrying Rose, Ephraim dashed toward the secret door, and Rose screamed for me.
I didn’t even get to kiss her goodbye.
The Mysthian courtiers rushed after their princess, and then the fey guards followed.
My lightning burst toward the broken skylight, crashing into the oncoming angels and scorching everything in its path.
I did not care for the screams of my kind—not when they came after my mate.
Burned feathers fell after the raining glass and splinters of woods and concrete. Angels dropped from the air.
As soon as the last of Rose’s people entered the tunnel, I kicked the door shut behind me, sealing off Rose’s weakened curses and begging.
It wasn’t time for my heart to bleed.
It was time for me to defend the only female I had ever loved in the universe, in my long existence.
So I stood my ground.
Then I found the rest of my team and a Mysthian guard joined me.
We formed a wall before the door to the tunnel.
Wave after wave of the king’s sentinels surged at us from all openings.
“Hold,” I ordered, “and hold.” I roared, “Charge!”
My black lighting struck, and my blade lashed out to claim the lives of my mate’s enemies.
PRINCESS ROSE
Seth’s body heat couldn’t reduce the cutting coldness in my bones.
I knew I was fading when I heard the call from a distant shore in the veil of darkness. I heard the doting yet regal voice of my empress mother, whom I’d never met.
My connection to Earth was ready to break.
It comforted me that I was in Seth’s arms.
“Hang in there, love. Don’t leave me.” Seth kept calling to me, our bond the only thread that made me linger.
My consciousness snapped back to the present and sharpened as Seth handed me over to Ephraim. “You go with them,” he told his friend. “You keep her safe for me.”
I realized that he wouldn’t come with me. He would stay behind to defend me and my people and die doing just that.
I would never see him again. Even in death, I wouldn’t find him. Angels and faeries were supposed to go to different planes, as we were from different worlds. Our souls, set apart by light years, would never meet again. It would be an eternal separation.
I’d just found him. I had just gotten to know him.
I clung to him with desperation and refused to let him go.
“Let go, love,” he said. “I’ll find you.”
Loving me was the truth. The rest was a lie. He wouldn’t find me. They would kill him. No matter how supreme he was, he alone couldn’t defeat an army. Not when he didn’t have the Forbidden Glory at his disposal.
Many of his soldiers had died for him and me. He soon would join them.
My guards pried my fingers off him. I didn’t have any strength left to fight them off.
Then Seth’s scent and warmth and solidity abandoned me.
I cursed and begged, “Please, no, please…don’t leave…him.”
An explosion and blast of light and shrieking and raining glass erupted around me. It hurt so much to be in the middle of the havoc and chaos. It hurt so much to be broken like I was.
Ephraim sprang me away from Seth. I heard myself scream his name.
Mate. My mate.
The last thing I saw was fire and smoke and endless, mighty wings surging at Seth, and black lightning striking amidst the apocalypse.
The door shut in my face, completely cleaving Seth and me.
Someone told me that I was safe and we were in the tunnel.
Ephraim carried me and ran, tearing me further away from Seth.
I’d left my male to face a nightmare alone.
My heart shattered to pieces.
A bond forged when two souls first entwine is impossible to sever, a voice, carrying potent, ancient magic, whispered. I shivered. No force of the universe or any individual can break them apart.
Yet they had broken Seth and me apart. Soon he would fall under blades, all because of me.
I had been his curse since the day he met me.
No wonder he had called me eroma, the thorn in his side and the bane of his existence.
Not all hope is lost, Rose Jekaterina Faylinn, the voice whispered again, gently brushing my mind before vanishing into the mist and the unknown.
Even when all hope is lost, even when the world burns to ashes, I vowed as the bitter darkness completely took me and the mortal world slipped from my grasp. I’ll come back for you.
I’ll find you.
And I’ll be with you.
My mate for life.
THE STORY CONTINUES IN
THE LAST INSTALLMENT
THE EMPRESS OF MYSTH 8: ANGEL’S HOME
Coming in October 2016
Dear Readers,
Thank you for reading the Empress of Mysth serial. And thank you for coming so far. It would mean a lot to me if you could post a brief review (even a single word matters) on Amazon. Your reviews help me be a better writer as well as sell a few more books.
Happy reading!
~ Meg
THE EMPRESS OF MYSTH SERIAL
THE EMPRESS OF MYSTH 1: ANGEL'S LUST
THE EMPRESS OF MYSTH 2: ANGEL'S OBSESSION
THE EMPRESS OF MYSTH 3: ANGEL'S INDECENT PROPOSAL
THE EMPRESS OF MYSTH 4: ANGEL'S GLORY
THE EMPRESS OF MYSTH 5: ANGEL'S FURY
THE EMPRESS OF MYSTH 6: ANGEL'S MATE
THE EMPRESS OF MYSTH 7: ANGEL'S WAR
THE EMPRESS OF MYSTH 8: ANGEL'S HOME
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Meg Xuemei X is an award-winning author. She loves dark chocolate and gazing a
t the stars. She lives in Southern California with her husband, a panther, and a fox.
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Email: megxuemei AT gmail.com
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