Darker Side of Worlds (Guardians Book 2) (The Guardians Series)

by Lexi Ostrow

  Dale tried to push himself off the floor, to dispel the tremors his powers had started, but he couldn’t. His whole body fell out from under him as he tried to push off. Something connected with the back of his head. He didn’t see which man had hit him or with what, but when it connected the second time, Dale gave into blackness, turning his powers off as he slipped into unconsciousness.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Breena gasped for air as she sat upright. The coldness underneath her mirrored the dampness around her skin. Her eyes flew open, and she took in her surroundings. She was in a room, somewhere in a high floor of the castle. Bars lined the doorway, and yet, she was free to move about in the room itself. There were no luxuries, and the bed was little better than the prison cells, but she was locked away somewhere else.

  “But why?”

  Eyes squeezed shut again, she forced herself to push back through memories, to find out what had happened. It came back to her in a flashed collage of images with no sound, a silent picture. Her and Dale in bed, sneaking down a hall, finding Leandra. Her pressing against him, him pulling back and the door slamming open. The rest of the fight cascaded over her, and she raised her hand to the back of her head. Her hair was sticky, and when she opened her eyes and looked at her fingers, blood covered them.

  Panicked, she touched the back of her head again and again, finding no tender spots and no soft wet squish as her fingers dipped into a wound.

  “You won’t find one,” her father’s cool voice drifted over to her.

  She turned to look out the door for the first time. He sat on a wooden stool just outside the iron bars—iron so none of the Fae realm could get through them. Megara sat next to him, her eyes glazed over in shock and yet utterly focused on Breena. Breena could see dried spots where tears had tracked down her cheeks.

  What were they doing there? Why couldn’t she remember why Tanyan and the guards had attacked them?

  “What happened to me?” her voice held the bite of the authority she used to speak to the men she commanded.

  Her father’s face twisted in annoyance. “I am your father and your king. You will watch your tone.”

  “Father, please. She’s been through so much, being brainwashed like you say. Please, allow her to find her grounding again,” her sister pleaded.

  For the first time, Breena wondered just how much sway her sister’s innocence got her. Her father’s eyes darkened and a touch of magic flickered around him, as it did whenever he began to pull on his own elemental gifts. She had noticed that Dale’s worked much the same way.

  “Megara, leave the dungeons now. You have nuptials to plan, and I have a war to begin to win. To finally win.” He might have been speaking to her sister, but his eyes locked on Breena’s and held the crackle of electricity behind the depths of color.

  With a nod, her sister rose off the wooden stool, her gaze lingering on Breena’s. Breena did her best to twist her mouth into a grimace of a smile to help her sister leave. Megara sucked in a deep breath, turned away and walked around the corner to return to the palace levels above, where Sontan waited. She and her father both waited until her sister was out of reach, and then both tried to speak at once.

  “What lies have you told her?”

  “What betrayal have you wrought on your own kind?”

  Her nostrils flared as she forced air in and out at her father’s accusation. If the truth were told, she had not betrayed anyone. She had done what was asked, she had just fallen in love in the process. Something that she hadn’t expected but had happened anyway. Her father couldn’t have known that she planned on leaving with Dale once the way was won. It wasn’t her problem if they all stopped living. The gift had been given to her, not them.

  She gasped as the realization of her plan sunk in while she stared at him. It was a slow trickle of comprehension that became a rushing river as she reached her last thought. She did have darkness inside of her, darkness that wasn’t of her father’s making but her own.

  “That’s why he chose me. Because I’m just dark enough that if I could make Dale change his ways, if he loved me, he would succumb to the darkness we shared.”

  “That man, the one in leather, the one who goes by Demus. He paid me a nice little visit earlier. Left me fucking frozen in time and space for spirits only knows how long. When I finally was able to break free, I was told you’d been here. Which pleases me, as I know that the demon of a man had been racing to get Dale out, so that I could not trap him. How pleasantly surprised I was to find that he had been subdued.” Eldan rose as he spoke and walked right up next to the cell bars, close enough to touch them, but even he didn’t dare inflict intentional wounds on himself. “Imagine my surprise when Tanyan told me that you not only attacked him, but refused to even act like you knew him.”

  Breena mimicked her father’s actions and drew as close to the bars as she could. She could feel the energy of sleeping prisoners and reached out along the electrical path to two of them. Slowly she severed the golden threads of energy—one per slumbering prisoner—and then grinned at her father. She reached out and wrapped her hands around the iron bars. The pain of it struck her like thousands of little pinpricks, but she held on. The extra energy wrapped around her to cover what was stolen by the iron, but it wouldn’t work for long.

  It worked long enough for her father’s face to show an iota of fear and he stepped back from the bars.

  Anger blazed out of her eyes, and she could see her reflection in her father’s, but she didn’t care “I did what was asked of me. Dale was going to help fight in a war that did not concern him. I was helping him to see without glasses so that he would be better in a fight and be protected. I was going to show him our world, let him see the people he had agreed to fight for. When I was certain you could not tarnish the way he felt about me, I was going to bring him to you. To introduce you both and let you go to war like men do!” she spat the words at him and felt the iron bars taking too much of her energy away from her.

  Dropping her hands, she held father’s gaze. He merely nodded his head.

  “Then why did you attack Tanyan? Why is this the second time you’ve chosen a human over your own people? If he were truly ready to help us, a simple sentence would have gotten you all out of this mess.”

  “And damned me to hell in Dale’s eyes,” bitterness laced her every word.

  “Had you not developed feelings for him, it wouldn’t have mattered. You are not the dutiful daughter you once were.” He turned his back on her as if he was going to walk away, but didn’t move because she spoke back first.

  “I am his Guardian! I am to protect him, to see that he is safe. You sent our men after him, and had I not lied, he would never have come back. Not to you and your stupid war or to me. My loyalty has always been to this family, to this war. To you. Dale opened my eyes to the truth of us. Megara is your daughter. You love and cherish your youngest. I am simply an extension of your sword, of your battle arm. I do what must be done at whatever the cost to my soul. I’m tired of being used. I wanted this one thing for myself. I wanted to live a life outside of this world because whoever dreamed it up is an asshole, they know nothing of emotions and destiny if all they can do is give people roles to play. Yes, Father, I wanted more than that, and I fell in love along the way. I fell in love with Dale.”

  She was heaving with exertion, her nostrils still flaring with every few words and she gasped when she realized what she had said. She knew she felt for Dale, for his past and the person he was struggling to become. There had been no doubting the way her body came to life under his touch. But to love him? She stepped away from the bars and ignored her father, letting the knowledge take hold.

  Breena thought about it all—the good and the bad since she had met Dale. She turned over the way she wanted him near her even when there was no purpose in him being around. He had been the one to show her who she could be, not just who she was.

  “I do love him.” The admission was said with no anger
, only admiration for the feelings she had never thought she would have.

  “Do you love him enough to abandon your family?” Her father’s words were cold as ever, but the anger in them from the moment before had been replaced by the smallest hint of sadness.

  “I wouldn’t call it abandoning. If he gave me the chance I wanted, to be something real beyond the pages of this book, I would still be able to come back. I have seen him open the doorway between our story world and his more than enough to know that it is under his control. I wouldn’t be gone forever, just for long enough to live my life away from the person you’ve created in me. I don’t want to be just a warrior. I want to be a daughter.”

  She turned back to face him, and she watched as a war of emotions briefly flickered over her father’s face, and she was shocked he had turned to face her once more. Anger, compassion, fear. And then the indifferent mask he wore to battle settled in over his features and she knew any conversation with him would be lost now.

  “Perhaps, when he has won my war, I will let him free. Free, but in shackles, just enough to be with you. I am not the horrid man you paint me to be. I am the man left to rule a kingdom without a queen. That is what this war has taken from me, at its core. It’s stripped me of my family. It took your mother. It turned Megara into a shell of what she could have been had she not seen your mother killed before her. It made you a warrior, and not my daughter.”

  He sighed deeply, and for just a moment, Breena thought her father would say something that didn’t continue along the path he had started.

  “But I will not allow you to leave. If my life and struggles have been nothing but some blasted story until he arrived, I will not let him leave. I cannot, for the good of our clan. For the Unseelie court. We are done speaking on this matter. Forever.”

  The last word was little more than a growl, and when he turned the swish of his forest green cloak almost flicked out and touched her face. She watched as he walked away until she heard the opening and closing of the heavy iron door that locked all the prisoners in the dungeon.

  Freedom would be quite simple. There were enough sleeping around her, despite the racket the pair of them had made, that she could siphon enough strength to pull the iron bars apart. But what good would it do her? Would there be any way to get to Dale? And if she did, she could only pray he didn’t remember the events in Leandra’s healing room?

  She dropped down onto the pathetic excuse for a bed. “No, there’s not a chance.”

  His growl was almost more animal than man as the thrash of leather struck him. Dale’s whole body tensed with the lashing, and his teeth gnashed together. There was no way to be certain on how much time had passed, but easily an hour had gone by since Tanyan, who he’d learned was Captain of the Royal Army, and another man had entered the cell.

  Water, freezing and filled with ice had been thrown over him, jolting his senses and his consciousness awake. He’d had no time to process anything as the one man, a fairy actually, had punched him in the stomach and then the temple. His world had spun and the ground had just barely trembled as he focused on shifting it.

  That was when Tanyan had begun to speak. He’d been taunted at first, the sprite had mocked his time with Breena. Had wanted Dale to know that, at one point, Breena had been his. He’d sent a fireball whizzing past Tanyan’s head, which had only gained him a kick in the lower back from the fairy guard. Blood had trickled out of his mouth when Tanyan’s fist had struck him next, but he hadn’t been asked any questions or given any options.

  Whatever was occurring had been nothing more than an assault. At first, he’d simply thought they were jealous that a mere human had entertained the princess. However, as the beating had continued, little secrets had slipped out. Secrets that destroyed the feelings he’d built for Breena, brick by brick.

  He winced as a hand gripped his hair and jerked his head backward into the wall. The warm ooze of blood wasn’t lost on him as the room stopped spinning. He’d been beaten for so long, he couldn’t focus enough to summon any of the power. He wished, for the first time since accepting Breena, that Nessa was present. He couldn’t heal without water around, but she could. They’d never figured out how to get him to that point before she’d been ripped away. No one had let him hit the ground. If one attacked, the other held him up, so they could always reach him he supposed.

  “So, what’s it like to know the pretty dark haired woman you were sleeping with only did so because she was ordered to?”

  The words took him off guard, and he didn’t even flinch as a fist landed in his stomach.

  Tanyan jerked his head up and stared at him. “You do know that’s all you were, don’t you?”

  Another punch, this time across the nose, and he felt the bones crack and blood drip over onto his lip, but he couldn’t process anything but the words.

  “Can’t speak, human?” A lash of leather across the back of his ankles dropped him to the floor. “I believe you were finally spoken too.” The fairy lashed out again, and it struck the back of his neck.

  Dale spit blood onto the floor and tried to stand, but failed, only to have Tanyan’s foot connect with his stomach for what felt like the twentieth time. “Fuck you.”

  A foot to the face this time, and Dale couldn’t stop the howl of pain as his nose was twisted and broke further than he would have thought possible.

  “That’s enough for now, Perry. Let’s leave him to process everything. Eldan has elemental magic, he won’t get far should he try to escape, and he’s helpless to do anything but what we want him too. No point in killing him and ourselves.”

  Dale’s eye felt as if it was swelling shut as he watched both men step out of the cell and lock it behind them. His thoughts were a blur as he army crawled as best as he could to the cot like bed no more than fifty feet from him. His muscles screamed, and he could feel blood leak from various wounds as he did. There wasn’t enough energy left in his body to do anything except hoist himself up to a sitting position against the bed.

  “This must be what the strange voice had been apologizing for.” He wheezed and heard a bubble of blood, there was probably plenty in his lungs at the moment.

  For the first time since learning about his insane gifts, he wanted Demus to show up. The man leaked deviousness from every pore in his body, and while Dale was certain he killed his warriors often enough, he had tried to save Dale just before the strike. He was a prize to be had, and if it kept him protected, maybe it didn’t matter whose side of the war he fought on.

  Dale gave a sharp bark of a laugh, not even he believed that he wanted to work for a man like Demus. But, at the time, the other brother hadn’t been around. No one had saved Nessa from vanishing. No one had helped him realize that Breena wasn’t all dark. Demus had been the only one looking out for him. Even Ciara hadn’t given too shits about what he’d wanted. All she cared about had been running off to her happily ever after, she hadn’t realized she might have condemned people to death. People like him because of everything she gave him.

  Breathing hurt, almost as much thinking did, but he forced himself to do both. His heart ached at the mere thought that Breena had been disloyal. She had asked him to fight in the war though. “And you had all but told her to fuck off in the beginning,” he muttered to no one at all.

  If Breena had been ordered to sleep with him to earn his favor, could he blame her? Anger licked a quick path through him, and his hands squeezed into fists at his side. Yes, yes he could. She could have come clean and told him the truth. If anything they’d shared had been real, she might have. Instead, all he knew for certain was the way her body yielded to his when they fucked. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to groan or cut off his dick when it surged to life with a mental image of Breena’s intricately colored hair spread out on a pillow as he drove into her willing body.

  She’d done it before. Just before she’d appeared to him, he had a read a section in her book where she slept with a guard in order to steal from the queen
. Just because she had seemed into it, didn’t mean she actually was. Except for the way she’d looked at him more than once. As if he was her world, her savior even. No one, not even Nessa had ever looked at him like that.

  Maybe it had all been a lie, something to keep her away from him. She hadn’t seemed entirely shocked, but she hadn’t been aware of any sort of planned strike. When they’d burst into the room earlier, she’d been just as shocked as he was. He had to trust that, whatever was going on, she hadn’t been a part of it. At least not since he’d returned and apologized for how he’d behaved. Love could blind even the strongest of men, and he knew that, mentally, he wasn’t among those ranks.

  Please don’t let her have been using me. Let it have been real, just this once. He deserved his own happily ever after ending, didn’t he?

  Slowly, he let his head tip back and lean against the bed. He could feel the blood from his lip and a cut on his head he hadn’t even know about, but the rest of his body had finally gone blessedly numb from the beating. His eyes shifted closed and he let out a deep breath. He needed to rest, that was all he was certain of, everything else would have to wait.

  That was when he felt it. All the energy in the world was at his fingertips. Left of him, right of him, all around, he could feel sleeping energy. The gold spun lines of power weaved around him in the cell like a miracle. All he would have to do was reach out and sever them. Sever just enough energy lines to heal himself and get out. He didn’t think about what he was about to do as he reached for the closest and strongest pattern he felt. In his mind, he pictured a pair of scissors hovering open around two of the threads. Just as he was closing the blades in his mind, it clattered to the floor, and he cried out.

  Breena.

  He’d almost attacked Breena. She was asleep somewhere down there. Or close enough that he could feel her. Why wouldn’t he find her first? As his Guardian, they had a bond that ran soul deep. A connection that allowed him to call to her whenever he was in trouble. What was to say it couldn’t happen that way? That she hadn’t been reaching out to him, to offer him the energy.