Crown of Doom and Light

by Jayde Brooks

  He would’ve died if they hadn’t been stopped. In real world matters, yes, Prophet was her rock. But in matters related to the Omen, she was his. He didn’t understand, and she didn’t expect that he would. His ego got in the way of the truth.

  “Together, Eden, we’re a force,” he explained. “You have to remember that. They do. The Omen want me out of the picture because they know that as long as I’m here, you and I pose a very real danger to them. They are as afraid of me as they are of you. They can’t take you without killing me.”

  “Then all the more reason for me to keep that from happening.”

  “All the more reason for you to let me in when they take you, and let me do what needs to be done to—”

  “To what?” she asked, frustrated. “What? Do you think we can come together and rid me of these things? Remove them like taking out an appendix or tonsils?”

  “What makes you so sure that we can’t? Not to try is madness, Eden.”

  “It’s all madness, Prophet.” She shrugged. “Less than a year ago I was tending bar at Patmos, minding my own business and having a pretty decent life. The world was its usual shitty self, but it was my world. People did what people do, they went to work, they had families, they fought, laughed, cried, were born and died. It was pretty fucking simple.”

  It felt like a lifetime ago when she had a normal life. Eden would’ve given anything to go back to that.

  “I’m losing, Prophet,” she hesitantly admitted. “I know it. You know it, and the Omen certainly know it.” It was a sad testament to the truth. “The only thing that I might have some control over is how I lose.” She swallowed. “And I don’t want to give up my soul watching them cutting you into little pieces. I can’t do that. I won’t.”

  Prophet did the only thing he could do to comfort her. He pulled her into his arms and held her tight. Eden’s head rested against his chest and she closed her eyes, letting the strong rhythm of his beating heart soothe her. Sakarabru had damn near killed Prophet, spearing him through his heart the day she killed the Demon, or thought she’d killed him. But somehow the Guardian had found a way to survive a wound that he shouldn’t have survived to save her. Of course, she knew how strong he truly was, and how brave. But the thought of watching him die, or worse, being tortured for the Omen’s amusement, was unimaginable.

  “I am punished every single time they take you from me,” he told her, kissing the top of her head. “It breaks me to see what they’ve done to you when you return. This last time, Eden, you almost didn’t return. Do you remember?”

  She nodded. She had given up. She remembered a sinking feeling, the sensation of being wrapped in darkness, of suffocating, but she had been too tired to put up a fight. Eden remembered the need to sleep, hoping that she would never have to wake up, and she remembered feeling relieved that it was finally over.

  “I wanted to die,” she admitted. “And I was dying, Prophet,” Eden looked up at him. “Until I heard your voice.”

  “Of course you heard me. I knew that you would.”

  “You’re still my alpha,” she managed to smile. “And I know better than anyone how strong you are. But I’m not so strong. I can’t watch you die, Prophet.”

  “Then you should understand why this is wrong, Eden,” he argued. “My love for you is no less than yours is for me, sweetheart. Your suffering is tearing me up, and keeping me out is not right. I don’t care what your reasons are. You’re wrong for making me stay away.”

  She rested her head on his chest again. “Wrong or not, it’s the way it has to be.”

  He pulled her arms from around him, and stepped away from her. His expression hardened. “The only thing I’ve ever asked from you was that you have faith in me, Eden. And I have never failed you. I never would. After everything we’ve been through, I’d have thought that you’d never question my role as your Guardian.”

  “It’s not your role that I question, Prophet,” she said, sincerely. “It’s mine.”

  “I don’t question it,” he said. “Never have.” Prophet stepped out to the edge of the deck, summoned his wings, and left.

  Eden stood there watching him disappear into the sky. He was right. Prophet’s purpose in her life was becoming null. It was his job to protect her, to guide her. And she’d stripped him of that role, believing that she was saving his life. Love was such a bitch.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Prophet hadn’t meant to go far or to stay away too long, but he needed to clear his head. He had been flying for just under an hour to nowhere in particular. Eden was getting her ass kicked consistently by the Omen at his expense and there was nothing he could do about it. Reason seemed to be a concept that was foreign to her young, human ass. To try and talk some sense into her was like banging his head against a brick wall. Eden needed to pull him into this fight, not push him away. They would defeat the Omen together, the way they had done the three times before when she went up against each of them to make and survive the bonds. She couldn’t have done it alone all those times and she couldn’t do it alone now, but for whatever reason, she wouldn’t let herself see that.

  He’d been flying for another ten minutes when the call from her came so powerful that it nearly knocked him out of the sky. This call from his Beloved didn’t come to him in words. It came in feelings, in pressure inside his chest, inflating his lungs to capacity with urgency and warning. His muscles flexed as he stopped mid-flight and hovered in the air over acres and acres of pine trees.

  She was in trouble. He spun to face home. It was the last place he’d left her, but no. That’s not where Eden was. Prophet slowly rotated in the air, searching for that point where her signal was strongest. South. How in the hell was that possible? He turned again toward home, but there was nothing. Eden’s call came distinctly from the south. It was powerful and clear. She needed him. The Omen must have had her. Maybe this time they didn’t just snatch her essence. Maybe they snatched all of her. She called to him now. It was about damn time.

  Her army had walked into a trap. She should’ve known better. The Lindai Valley had only one way in and one way out, and Mkombozi had led her platoon into it chasing the Demon’s phantom spies. The spies’ footprints were covered in black volcanic dust courtesy of Mkombozi’s troops, which was how they were able to follow and see them. They were to capture the phantoms and torture them if need be for information on Sakarabru’s next move, only the spies had led them here knowing that she would have to fight her way out or die trying.

  Hundreds, maybe even thousands of Brood soldiers, soldiers that Sakarabru’s Djinn, Kifo, had raised from the dead bodies of Ancients, followed Mkombozi and her troops into the valley, trapping them inside. They were outnumbered and the only way out was through Brood bodies. They were attacked! She had been foolish, daring to come to a place like this. Her mother would have called her arrogant and a slave to her pride. She would have been right.

  Mkombozi had won the kpinga from the bond she’d survived with the second Omen. She was faster than she’d ever been since she’d made those first two bonds, stronger, a fighter with the skills of the Demon, but she had yet to complete the final bond. Brood fell at her feet, sliced open, some decapitated. Mkobozi fought until her muscles burned, until her lungs felt as if they would explode and her heart beat like the deepest drum. And yet the harder she fought, the more she had to fight. An endless sea of Brood soldiers pushed through the bottleneck of the valley entrance, climbing on top of each other to get to her and her soldiers who were quickly falling to their deaths.

  Tukufu! His name never passed her lips, but it filled her chest. I need you, Beloved. Come! Or we will not survive. He was her wish. Her prayer and her only hope. If she had found and bonded with the third Omen, she could disintegrate the Brood soldiers and watch them being carried away on the wind. But with only two, she was a better fighter than she had been, but not good enough to survive them all.

  Beloved! She needed him. He had never failed her. Tukufu had nev
er let her down and he had promised her that he never would. Mkombozi believed him and she believed in him. Come to me.

  “Fuck!” Van Dureel yelled.

  A violent turn of the vehicle that she rode in jolted her awake in time to see them sliding off of the road and into a ditch.

  Mkombozi caught just a glance of him standing in the middle of the road before the Vampyre lost control. “Tukufu!”

  Eden’s call had led him here. Why? The SUV carrying the two passengers spun out of control a several yards away from running him over. He stood his ground, staring at the two in the vehicle. One, the male, had a cold, ice blue aura. He wasn’t human. A human’s aura was a warmer, darker hue. This was a vamp. Prophet had taken a few heads off his kind. The other, female, had no aura at all. Prophet’s silver eyes allowed him to see things that others couldn’t see. The woman was—he didn’t know what she was. A dark, tangled mass of hair covered her face. He braced himself, planted firmly in his stance as the male got out of the driver’s side of the vehicle. Eyeing Prophet cautiously, he circled around behind it until he got to the passenger side, and pulled the door open for her.

  The woman locked gazes with Prophet. “No,” he murmured, furrowing his brow, fixated on the female.

  It couldn’t be. It couldn’t possibly be her.

  She jerked away from the creature attempting to help her up the side of the ditch by grabbing hold of her elbow.

  “Tukufu,” she said in that beautiful and rich voice of hers.

  Prophet couldn’t believe what he was seeing. He took a step back, not in fear, but in awe. It couldn’t have been her, but it was her twin. Identical, perfect.

  “Do you not remember me, Beloved?”

  Beloved. The word rolled off her tongue like a sweet, warm liquid.

  “Who are you?” he asked, refusing to give in to the deception of his eyes.

  This was not Mkombozi. It couldn’t have been. It was a shifter of some sort, an evil one dumb enough to try and play this cruel trick on the Guardian. He stepped defiantly to her.

  “Reveal yourself, shifter,” he commanded.

  Confusion shadowed its gaze.

  “You fuckin’ show your true self or I’ll choke it out of you!” he threatened.

  “What are you saying to me?” she asked, looking helpless. “I do not understand.”

  This was some bullshit trick of an Ancient. Or worse, it was a bullshit trick of the Omen. He didn’t know how they were pulling this little charade of theirs off, but he wasn’t about to fall for it. He charged at her. The male suddenly appeared between them, bowed up and ready to defend what was probably his mate. Prophet took a swing at the dude, but he was faster than he looked.

  “You need to calm down, Guardian,” the thing had the nerve to say to him. “Let her speak,” he said.

  If this fool thought that speed would save him from getting his neck broken, he was wrong. “Get the fuck out of my way,” Prophet warned him.

  This one was larger than the other vamps he’d seen, taller, more muscular. He must’ve been their alpha.

  “Tukufu,” she said, boldly shoving her bodyguard aside. “You have been lied to, Beloved. You have been betrayed. I understand this. Khale and this impostor have fooled you into believing that she is me, but I am here. Beloved, how can I be here and be her at the same time? It is not possible.”

  Prophet suddenly reached out and grabbed her by the throat and raised her, clutching at his wrists, off the ground. “Tell me who you are,” he growled. “Show yourself to me!”

  Two quick, hard blows landed in his gut, but he held on. The vamp moved in a blur, but Prophet was nearly oblivious to him as he focused all of his attention on this thing that dared to take on the form of Mkombozi. She was beautiful, the most beautiful creature he’d ever seen. More blows, powerful blows struck him across his back and head, but he resisted the urge to give his attention to that damn thing. Searing pain gripped Prophet’s trapezius muscle. An almost unbearable burning sensation surged down to his shoulder. The fuckin’ vamp was taking a bite out of him.

  Prophet clenched his jaws, ignoring the agony of the bite of that fuckin’ parasite. He’d deal with him after he finished with her. He was killing her. Her beautiful eyes bulged in disbelief and fear. And then suddenly, she raised one of her long legs, crossed it over his extended arm, and twisted her hips over it like she was pulling herself up onto a tree branch. The vamp released his bite as the position she took forced Prophet to release his hold and she flipped off of him and landed on the ground. The vamp hurried over to the side of the shifter.

  “Do not do this, Tukufu,” she said, planting one foot behind her, raising her fists in Mkombozi’s fighting stance. “Do not make me fight you, Guardian. You will lose.”

  It wasn’t what she’d said. It was the way in which she’d said it. Mkombozi jutted her chin up and to one side in a subtle but defiant and proud gesture. She lowered her chest, rounded her shoulders, and braced the bulk of her weight on her back foot—just like he’d taught her.

  He stepped back, shaking his head. “It can’t be. It can’t be you,” he said in English. And then in Theian: “It cannot be you. Impossible.”

  She reluctantly relaxed, lowered her fists and brought both feet together. “I dreamed that I called to you. I dreamed it and you came. I am here, Beloved. I am your Mkombozi. And you remember me.”

  Mkombozi slowly approached him, extending her lovely arm, and pressed her hand against his cheek. It was impossible that she was here. And yet, here she was.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Until this moment, Mkombozi had felt as if she were living in a dream. Nothing about this world seemed real—from its dull, muted colors, to its ridiculous-sounding inhabitants, to the buffoon of a Vampyre who considered himself a god to these pitiful creatures. But if this was a dream, she prayed she’d never awaken. Tukufu was even more breathtaking than she had remembered. The Guardians were the most beautiful of all Theian beings. Their beauty was as much a weapon as their strength, speed, or fierce fighting skills. Guardians could crush young and wanting hearts as effortlessly as they could crush bone, and yet each of them devoted themselves to one being for a lifetime, swearing an oath to protect and love them until death.

  Tukufu had been a child when he first saw Mkombozi and swore his oath to her. She was an infant, still suckling from her mother’s breast. Even as young as they both were, the moment he first saw her, he knew that she had to belong to him. And so, ignoring the prophecy surrounding her birth, sacrificing his relationship with the other Guardians who would eventually come to make him an outcast, Tukufu had been hers.

  “I called for you in my dream,” she said, hauntingly. “And here you are now.”

  The muscles in her neck ached from his grasp, but Mkombozi relished the pain, the heat still left behind from his palm on her skin. His touch.

  “How is it that you are here now?” he asked, his southern region Theian accent as strong and melodic as ever. She couldn’t help but to smile at the sound of it. But the look on his face, especially in his reflective eyes, revealed his suffering and his confusion.

  He had been betrayed for so long. Khale and her impostor had planted a lie in him that had taken root and grown into massive belief, belief so big and tall that she couldn’t help but wonder if it were even possible to convince him that everything he’d believed since she’d gone was a lie.

  “I am so sorry for what Khale has done to you, Beloved,” she said. “She wove her deception so intricately, so completely, that it is no wonder that you believe her.”

  He knitted his proud brow and lowered his chin. “How is it that you are here, Mkombozi?”

  She stared at him, stunned at the realization that there was no love in his voice when he said her name. He spoke as if he were angry with her.

  “I am here for you, Tukufu,” she admitted. “My love for you brought me here.”

  Why would he even question her? He should have been happy that she had mad
e her way back to him. “Are their lies so deeply embedded in you now that you hate me?” she asked in disbelief. “Are you not happy to see me, Guardian? As happy as I am to see you?”

  There! Mkombozi saw it, a flicker of uncertainty in his eyes. It was as if her presence here in this world was just starting to register with him.

  She took a step toward him. “Yes, Beloved,” she whispered. “I am here. I am real. I came for you.” She pressed her hands against his broad chest, closed her eyes, and relished the strong, rhythmic beating of his heart. It was steady, as was his nature.

  “I watched you die, Mkombozi.”

  He said it with so much sorrow, so much pain.

  “That was four thousand years ago,” he continued. “I have lived all this time without you, and so I have to know. How is it that you are back? And why now?”

  “I understand,” she said sincerely. His pain was hers. His emptiness and loneliness were hers as well. “I did not know that I was lost, Tukufu,” she explained, gazing up at him. “I was so filled with the rage of being betrayed by my mother that it swallowed me for so long.”

  “It is impossible for you to be here,” he said slowly shaking his head. “Impossible.”

  Mkombozi remembered as far back as she could before coming into this world. Memories came to her in pieces, scattered shards that she had to struggle to make sense of.

  “Khale. She was with me for a time.”

  An image of her mother, broken, half of her in dragon form, disfigured and ugly.

  “Something that belonged to me was taken,” she continued. “Stolen and used against her to send her to her death.”

  He clenched his jaws and held back whatever it was that he wanted to say.

  “An impostor pretending to be me took those things most cherished and loved.”

  She should not have to tell him that he was one of those things stolen from her. If he was still her Beloved he should know.