“Aidan,” Kianna said. He looked to where she pointed at the top of the wall. More figures, completely frozen. These, however, were facing away from him. Guards? But that didn’t make any sense.
He stepped past Kianna, toward one of the more misshapen forms. Lightning flashed, and he nearly jolted back from shock.
It was a kraven.
The Howl stared at him with eyes as bulbous and white as a decaying fish. Like so many of its brethren, it had been broken and torn in the act of being created from Earth—very little of its humanity remained. Its jaw had unhinged, cracking open and expanding to twice the width of its skull, teeth as long and sharp as a tiger’s. Its entire spine was bent, its vertebrae pressed through flesh like jagged spines, and its arms and legs had elongated as well, each skeletal finger ending in a fierce talon.
Kravens were grotesque, but—Earth being the heaviest and thus quickest Sphere to tire—they were the backbones of the Dark Lady’s army. Aidan had gotten used to the walking nightmares.
As used to a monster as he could be, that is.
“Maybe they were being punished,” Aidan mused. He tapped the kraven on the forehead. The ice cracked. Not coated as thickly as the Hunter. Had it been frozen recently? Maybe Calum had killed them as an example, or out of boredom—Calum was an incubus after all, which could account for the frigid air and frozen guards. He was probably insane—who knew how his mind worked?
“They look like guards,” Kianna whispered. She crept up to another kraven and poked it with her sword. The blade went through easily. When she pulled it out, a thin stream of black blood dribbled down like sap. “And they haven’t been frozen long. An hour or two, tops.”
Again, that shard of doubt. Calum wouldn’t have killed his own guards when his palace was under attack. Someone had come here before them. Maybe a rogue necromancer, wanting to claim the throne for themselves.
But there weren’t any tracks in the deep snow. No sign of struggle. No blood.
Another rumble shook them. The kraven beside him toppled, crashing to the snow with a soft thud. Even though he was accustomed to dead kravens, he still had to look away from the sight of its obsidian blood leaching into the white.
“I don’t like this,” Kianna muttered.
Aidan didn’t like it either, but he wasn’t about to tell her that. He pulled deeper through Fire. Burned the fear away.
“Scared?” he asked.
She elbowed him in response, then started walking up the sloped path without him. He rubbed his ribs. One day, she’d learn how to show affection without leaving a bruise. Maybe.
He unsheathed his daggers, curling flame around the blades, and followed her deeper in.
Every step revealed another frozen guard. Every step and the air dropped another degree, until it was only his hold on Fire that kept him from freezing. He glanced at Kianna. She wasn’t even shivering.
The castle layout was simple, and the frozen monsters were a veritable breadcrumb trail leading to the heart of the castle. They followed the bodies up and around a few outlying buildings, the world outside practically forgotten in the deep quiet of this place. Aidan kept glancing around, staring at the snow and the abandoned structures, the gargoyle fonts and the old cells and the café. The statues that weren’t statues, and the bodies piled up like haystacks. How much of this had just been sitting here, frozen and empty, for the last three years? How much was recent, and why?
Coated in snow and swept of any sign of historical importance, the castle seemed like any other broken structure in this new land. It pissed him off. The castle had once been prestigious. Grand. And just like the city, Calum had bastardized it in his arrogance.
Aidan would restore it, that much he vowed.
When he was on the throne, he would ensure this place of ice and despair would be something better. A light in the dark. A pillar of his power.
It didn’t take long to reach the building where Calum waited. Past the barracks and under a high arch, into a courtyard that had once bustled with tourists, he found figures of another sort. More guards. A dozen or so. All of them facing outward. Human necromancers and kravens and probably a few higher-level Howls. All of them dead without a wound. They stood in an arc before the raised entrance to what Aidan thought was once a museum. A stone horse and lion and old regimental guardhouses flanked the tall doors, the etched words above scratched out.
“This is not good,” Kianna whispered, echoing Aidan’s thoughts.
Aidan squeezed past the guards. Tried not to look any of them in the eye.
“It’s either this or retreat,” Aidan said, glancing back at her as he put a hand on the door.
“Retreat has never been an option.”
She stood next to him. Placed her hand on the other door.
He wanted to have something witty, something assured to say. He’d visualized this moment so many times—bursting or burning the door down, entering in a billow of flame and vengeance, his army at his back as he reclaimed Scotland for the living. Dozens of scenarios, dozens of ways to save the day.
None of them had looked like this—the quiet, frozen courtyard filled with bodies; the distant echo of thunder and magic in a battle he hadn’t taken part in; the fear that this was all a trap.
“Let’s go,” he whispered. Even that was off from his daydreams—he didn’t sound reassured or confident in the slightest.
He pushed open the door, and the two of them crept inside.
Frost glistened on every surface, lit by a few candles dripping from sconces, everything ghostly in the glow. Past the small gated foyer, he stood in a long hall stretching far to the left and right. The hall was almost churchlike in appearance, the high ceilings and shimmering windows, the white stone walls and slab floors. Church-like, save for the bodies.
Everywhere—everywhere—were more corpses, just like those outside. They crowded before him, a veritable maze. Unlike those outside, though, these weren’t random bodies.
These were crafted.
Sculpted.
In front of him was a man, nearly naked save for a cloth wrapped around his waist, his arm raised and his hand holding a caduceus and his back leg extended behind him, as though in flight. His standing foot was nailed to the wooden pedestal he rested on. And there, beside him, a girl in a tutu, frozen in a pirouette, her eyes glassy and staring. A woman kneeling beside a fallen deer, both gazing to the heavens in reverence. Everywhere he looked was another statue, another twisted corpse.
He’d expected an attack. He’d expected Calum to be at their throats. But this room...it was so cold, so silent. So dead. He stepped forward, trying to figure out a way to navigate this maze of statuesque corpses, trying to ignore the fear that muted the heat in his chest. Trying to ignore the works of grotesque art. There was a sadism here that made even him blanch. Each of these people had been murdered and shaped, or shaped and then murdered. It was beyond his Sphere’s usual need to consume. This was pure, human evil.
“What the hell is this?” Aidan whispered.
Kianna didn’t answer him.
Someone else did.
“Amazing what a few years of boredom will do to a man.”
Aidan turned on his heel, daggers ready, Fire blazing in his chest.
To see Kianna, crumpled on the ground in the foyer, a man slowly straightening up behind her.
A man in black jeans and polished shoes. A man with dark olive skin and tousled black hair, his shirt unbuttoned and smooth, chiseled chest gleaming in the candlelight. Gleaming like the glint in his perfect white teeth, and his copper-flecked eyes. Gleaming like the spark igniting in Aidan’s lungs.
The incubus from Aidan’s nightmare smiled. Spread his arms in a half bow.
“Welcome home, my prince.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Aidan’s brain short-circuited.
He star
ed between Kianna’s prone body and Tomás’s glowing eyes, his heart paused midbeat and his thoughts stalled.
He couldn’t be—
She couldn’t be—
“Don’t worry,” Tomás said. “She lives. For now.”
Tomás stepped over Kianna’s body. Every inch closer and the heat between them rose, until sweat beaded across Aidan’s skin. So warm. So warm.
Despite everything, Aidan took a small step forward. Fire thrummed wildly in his chest. He knew he should be worried about Kianna. Should be panicking over a nightmare turned flesh. But this man...this creature...seemed less nightmare and more promise than Aidan wanted to admit.
“You’re real,” Aidan whispered. He couldn’t tell if his voice was husky from shock or desire.
“Of course I am.” That devilish quirk of the lip. That tilted head. That smile sending heat down Aidan’s spine. “I’m too perfect for you to dream up.”
In the dream, Tomás had been alluring. But here, in the flesh—and he was most assuredly in the flesh—he was intoxicating. He smelled of musk and vetiver, like the wildest, darkest parts of a jungle, the places where sunlight doesn’t shine and leopards prey. Everything about him moved with sensuous purpose—even the folds of his sheer shirt curled around him like a cocked finger. Aidan knew it was part of the Howl’s design, knew incubi were created to evoke desire.
He also knew that what he felt toward Tomás was more than just carnal want.
When he looked at the incubus, he saw a dream made flesh. Many dreams made flesh. He saw more than just a seductive man; he saw the promises Tomás had made. He saw his place as king.
For a moment, he forgot where he was. Felt himself thrown back in the dream. Him and Tomás in a castle. Him and Tomás, ruling side by side.
Then Tomás stepped past him, gesturing to the frozen corpses around them, and Aidan was firmly back in the present.
“My brother has always had a certain...knack...for eccentricity.” Tomás gently caressed the face of a man frozen with a sword upraised. “Personally, I think it’s a waste of good flesh. He doesn’t even play with them.” He patted the side of the statue’s face and turned back to Aidan. “At least, not while they’re alive.”
“What are you doing here?” Aidan asked.
Why hadn’t he already attacked Tomás? Why hadn’t he run to Kianna’s side to ensure she was okay? Why was he standing there, frozen, while one incubus stood at his side, and another lurked somewhere in the shadows?
For that matter, why the hell hadn’t Calum attacked?
“Helping you,” Tomás said. He circled around Aidan like a panther, looking him up and down. Aidan felt entirely exposed.
He didn’t hate it as much as he probably should have.
“Helping me? Why? How?”
Tomás’s grin widened. “Come now, my prince. We both know you couldn’t have taken Calum on your own.” He opened to Air. The Sphere unfurled in the incubus’s throat, and of all the things Aidan had seen that day, that scared him the most. Normal Howls couldn’t use magic—everyone knew that. Which meant...
“You’re one of the Kin,” Aidan whispered, fear and awe curling in his chest.
Tomás turned and bowed.
“Attractive and intelligent. You truly are an upgrade,” Tomás said.
“Upgrade?”
But Tomás didn’t answer. Instead, he waved a hand, and with a pulse of magic the statues before them parted, blown away in a gust of air.
Revealing a throne in the chamber before them.
Calum strained above it. Crucified and writhing ten feet in the air between the stained-glass windows.
Aidan nearly toppled back.
Blood dripped from the stakes pounded through Calum’s hands and feet. Those bloody rivulets turning to icicles that stretched like talons from his outstretched hands, crimson and thick against pale gray stone. Everything about the man seemed gray, bled out. His torn white shirt. The faded black jeans. Even his skin was sallow, a color Aidan had never seen a body go before. Calum looked like he was made of wax. A wax that breathed. Shallowly. Painfully. Every inhalation a curse.
And above the body, written in what could only be Calum’s blood, were four words.
MY GIFT, MY KING
“Do you like it?” Tomás asked, walking right past Aidan to nod at Calum. “I thought it was perhaps a bit much. But then I thought...” He looked at Aidan. “For you, too much is barely enough.”
Aidan stared at the Kin nailed to the wall. His gut churned with disgust and rage—anger at Calum, for everything he had done to Scotland; angry at himself, for not being the one to torture him so.
“You slit his throat,” Aidan whispered, staring at the blood congealing on Calum’s neck. How was he still alive?
“Of course,” Tomás replied, as though the reasoning was obvious. “I didn’t want him to ruin my grand entrance.”
“But how...”
Tomás cut him off by placing his hand on Aidan’s mouth. Even that move, forceful as it was, made Aidan’s chest race with desire.
“Oh, my Hunter. Why waste time with small talk? I have given you my brother on a silver platter. Now, you stand on the edge of greatness. Relish in it.”
It shouldn’t have been enough to sway Aidan’s thoughts, but it was. His mind was sluggish, unable to connect the dots, unable to do anything besides feel. Fire flamed so bright within him, he felt drunk on its power. And when Tomás pulled his hand away, he couldn’t feel anything beyond his own unveiled destiny.
“Why did you do it?” Aidan asked. He didn’t break his gaze from Calum—the ragged rise and fall of the man’s breath, the slow, crystalizing drips of his blood. “All of this.” Because he knew, too, that Tomás was the reason the guards outside were frozen. Tomás would have no problem dispatching a castle’s worth of minions.
The Kin had carved Aidan’s path to victory.
Aidan barely had the brains to wonder what Tomás would want in return.
“Because we seek the same thing,” Tomás said.
“And what is that?”
“Something better. Something more exciting than this.”
He strode forward, eyes locked on Calum. There was something about the way he moved up the aisle of frozen corpses that made Aidan think of a coronation, their bodies all witnesses to his ascension.
“Oh, brother dear,” Tomás said, head tilted, a broken marionette, “how far you have fallen.”
Aidan followed at his heels, up the row of frozen dead, until they stopped at the foot of Calum’s throne. Only then did he realize the throne was made of bodies. Naked and frozen, twined together with faces downturned, arms raised in supplication, the throne back a man and woman wrapped in what seemed like a loving embrace, save for the looks of horror etched into their faces.
In Fire’s embrace, the sight didn’t disturb him nearly as much as it should have.
“You were given a kingdom,” Tomás said to his frozen brother. “And yet you failed to bring the glory of our Mother to this world. You failed her, and she does not take kindly to failures. Or betrayal.” He glanced at Aidan, and that one look made Aidan’s heart flip with desire, with excitement. “We all reap what we sow, brother dear.”
Tomás walked around the throne of corpses and reached up, placing a hand on Calum’s ankle. Without the slightest bit of pause or ceremony, he yanked Calum from the wall. The sound of ripping flesh and snapping bones made bile rise in the back of Aidan’s throat, as did the thud and muffled groan when Calum hit the floor. Even that disgust was distant, though—he was too busy focusing on the way Tomás’s biceps corded with the motion, the flex and strain of his lats. Fire burned off whatever revulsion he might have felt. Fire saw only strength. Fire felt only power.
Tomás stared down at Calum, a sneer on his face, revealing his sharp canines, emphasizing the
hard cut of his jaw. There were a dozen battling emotions in that face—sadness and rage and pity, all of it tinted with disgust.
“You deserve to suffer,” Tomás whispered, voice rising with every word. “For what you have done. For what you failed to do. You were never her favorite. Never. Never! I was the one she cherished! I was her perfection!”
Then Tomás shook himself, shuddering violently, and stood straighter. He held out a hand toward Aidan. “Come.”
Aidan never took orders. And yet his feet guided him forward, past the twisted throne, Tomás’s voice a hook in his heart that he knew he couldn’t—and wouldn’t—ever defy.
Tomás took his hand when he neared. The Howl’s flesh was hot and cold, a wave of fire that pricked Aidan’s skin with icicles. But when Tomás’s fingers curled around his, everything about that moment felt...right. His heart burned and his thoughts swum, his whole body moving as though through warm molasses.
He felt as though every atom in his body had waited for this moment, and now that it was here, he would soak up every molten second.
Even if it wasn’t how he’d planned to take down Calum, even though—in the farthest corner of his mind—he knew that accepting the aid of a Kin was borderline treason, this was the moment he had waited for the last three years. This was the moment he had lived and fought and bled and burned for.
And he was more than ready to take on the role of king.
Even if he was doing it hand in hand with a Kin he should have wanted to kill. Fire told him that this was how things were meant to be; Fire was a voice he could always trust.
He stared down at Calum, and perhaps he was only mirroring Tomás, perhaps the feelings were not his own, but he could find nothing but disgust for the creature sprawled and bleeding on the ground.
This close, Aidan could see every wrinkle in the Kin’s lined face, every scar on his waxen flesh. Calum was old—older than most humans managed to live. But he also seemed weak, and while Aidan stared down at the man who once was king, he could only think that Calum had failed in every single way. He’d been content to rule fields of nothing, cities of ruin. He had never strived for greater. He had never dreamed of more.
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