“She didn’t have the demon with her, what the fuck was that about anyway?” Rhett asked. “I mean, she got herself to that medical ward to free him, as well as herself, right?”
“He couldn’t hurt her,” I laughed bitterly. “She kept him as a friend, her version of one she could trust. She took the head of the High Prince of Hell, one who runs Hell’s armies, and she kept him in her fucking freezer like a pet. I’m guessing he fits into this plan somewhere. I just have to figure out where. She’s got people helping her, that much is a given. She didn’t get out of here to plant those bombs. She told them where and trusted them to get the job done. Erie had the wives and children removed from the housing complexes. She planned that knowing with the grid being down, they’d be forced to move out of the city. She knew the druids were meeting tonight, she knew my father would be there. He can’t be killed, but she knew he would feel it, would know it was her. Erie is also aware that he doesn’t heal like us, and that it takes him time. She took away the chance of me killing him with her being elsewhere. Erie isn’t crazy; she’s fucking brilliant. She’s shown us what she wanted us to see, and this entire time, she’s been setting up fucking dominos.”
“So what is the plan now? Prepare for the end of days and let it ride?” Rhett asked. “It’s not like we don’t deserve it, but then, it won’t be us dying. It will be everyone else that we are forced to watch perish.”
“End of days? No, I’m going to walk right into Faery and take my girl back. She may be brilliant, but she’s mine. She knows it and feels it, and as much as she pretends not to care, Erie does. She won’t let those children die. She saved the druids’ mates; she protected their children. Erie is cold, she’s broken, and she doesn’t think she can be saved, but she won’t let innocent people pay for things that they didn’t do. She could have left those women and children in that building and blown it, and then it would have been the end of the entire druid race in the United States. Instead, she protected them because that is who she is. She’s more Templar than she is aware. We fight to protect those who cannot protect themselves,” I uttered. “The moment I tell the Fae the truth, they’ll no longer have deniability of interferences. They may have it now, but once they know, she won’t let them protect her. She’s faulted in this life, inflicted with humanity. Because deep down, she fucking cares about who lives and dies now. She’s one of us and always has been. Non nobis, Domine, non nobis, sed Nomini tuo da gloriam,” I said thickly as warmth flooded my chest for the woman she’d become in this lifetime, blossoming within me, giving me hope for the future.
“Non nobis, Domine, non nobis, sed Nomini tuo da gloriam,” they chanted, and we all smiled as the past crashed against the future.
Erie was mine, and no one or anything would stop me from getting to her. I couldn’t just run in with swords drawn, but not even the Horde King would stand against the beast I held within me. It was older, more calculating and deadly than he wanted to deal with. Besides, I didn’t want to fight them; I just wanted her back. The beast within me craved her touch. It wanted her as much as I did, but where I wanted to love her and fix her cracks, it wanted what she gave to him, bare fucking bones. She wanted the mindlessness that took away the pain, if even for a second. I wanted to heal her, to fix what had been broken. I exhaled as I looked around at the men. They had no idea who I had brought back, or why, but if I was right, and the witches had awoken to hunt her, I’d need to bring the real owner of her soul back.
“Get the horses ready and wear your strongest armor. We go for war, but we avoid it at all costs. I can’t watch more children die due to this curse. The Horde may want to protect her, but they’re held to the laws of their lands, and we can use it. I don’t like it, but we’re out of fucking time. I have two months left to knock her up, or our child won’t be born in time to save us.”
“Pony up, bitches, we’re going to Faery,” Rhett grinned.
“It’s not a good thing,” Uther snorted as he shook his head.
“How many Templars can say they’ve ridden to Faery with the intent to confront the King of the Horde to release a maiden?” Rhett laughed and then paused as everyone raised their hand except for him. “Why the fuck do I always get left behind?” he asked.
“You were young, unable to control the beast that chose you. Couldn’t have you facing off with Alazander and creating another war, now could we?” I scoffed. “We already had a war on three different fronts, and someone had to get the High King’s daughter back. He hid her within that harem knowing the other kings wouldn’t touch her. She was, after all, mortal and played a servant to Kiara, and was unsubstantial to his cause. We also went in to get Laura back so the druids would stop whining about it. That one we did right in the middle of a war within their own court. It was easy enough unless you consider the women inside that tomb.”
“Whatever, let’s just go, Mister I been to Faery enough times that I could draw a damn map,” he muttered beneath his breath.
“You asked,” Uther chuckled.
“You did,” I snorted.
“Let’s just get this shit over with,” Lance groaned.
“To the ends of the earth, and whatever it brings, gentlemen,” I said as we started forward. My throat bobbed as I imagined her with the men of Faery, now unleashed sexually. Erie wasn’t that girl, but then she wasn’t the girl I’d thought she was either. I swallowed down the pain of her betrayal, knowing why she felt we too deserved to die. My own father had prevented me from protecting her, and that created a hatred that burned deeper than anything else. He’d allowed her to be tortured, to be brutalized, which, now that I knew, it made perfect sense. I’d been so focused on saving her that I hadn’t stopped to think of how he knew certain things about her.
He knew how to null her powers, which would have taken scientists time to perfect a serum. How I’d been gone every single time something had happened to her, and Arthur, his fucking obsession with her. I hadn’t even considered that or where he had come from. She’d known, she had hidden it from me, but why? Why hide it unless even then she had begun planning her revenge? This woman, this beautifully broken, chaotic woman that made my blood pound and my body ache, was brilliant. The one thing she wasn’t was fucking heartless, or at least she wasn’t yet.
“Is now a good time to tell you that Erie kept all of your corpses in the basement of the shopping mall?” Lance asked. “She also set them up to appear to be having a tea party. I had begun to wonder where the corpses were being hidden. She even dressed your naked corpse into a pink dress.”
I laughed as I turned to look at him, and my smile fell. “You’re fucking serious?”
“Dead serious, I’m afraid.”
“Fucking Erie,” I laughed.
Chapter 34
Erie
I stood upon the battlements, staring down as the men below it trained. Zahruk was covered in sweat, and God love him, the man was all muscle and sexy Fae. He moved with precision, ageless knowledge that he’d perfected. Every move he made, I learned, and every once in a while, he’d peer up at me as I studied him and the way he moved. Not his body, not the fact that he was beautiful and lethal combined, but because he was cold, like me. I was still staring at him as he wiped his face off with a towel and then disappeared before my eyes. I leaned over, searching the ground below me until hands touched me.
Spinning around, I stared him down until my eyes lowered to the washboard abs that pulsed with brands. I sniffed him, noting that he smelled nothing like Callaghan and then I sighed with an ache in my chest that I couldn’t understand. I lifted my stare, watching as he examined me with a curious gaze.
“You stare any harder and I may start to think you want me.”
“You’re not ugly,” I stated as I took him in once more and then lifted my gaze to his.
He laughed coldly as he stepped closer. “Do you want to fuck me, Erie?”
“Do you
want to have sexual relationships with me?” I returned, carefully watching his eyes as his pupils dilated. Something within him peered out at me and, sizing me up, he lifted his hand to touch my cheek, pausing as I flinched, only to drop it, a sad smile playing on his lips.
“I think you’d be wild in bed, but I also think that heart is taken by another. I can smell him on you, which means you’ve been marked by something ancient. If I thought you were my girl, you’d be bent over screaming as I drilled that sweet pussy of yours until it dripped and sang for me in approval.”
“Why don’t men ever watch their dirty mouths? I mean, do you think a woman wants to know that you will make her come, and she’s supposed to just fall down and spread her legs apart, like come and get it, big boy? Those words slay me? I don’t get you creatures.”
“Fae, or men, Erie?” he scoffed as he leaned in closer, invading my space with his dominating presence, and yeah, okay, maybe those words had affected me. It could also be the male Fae pheromones oozing from him that was alerting what my brain thought it wanted. One or the other, it was working.
“Are you going to kiss me?” I asked, watching as he smiled and then he did just that. His lips pressed against mine, and I opened for him, moaning as his Fae magic washed over me. His hands settled on my hips, and then he pulled back as his eyes locked with mine.
“What the fuck are you?” he demanded as he backed up. “You’re not just something created; you’re something brought back.”
“Does that make you not want to fuck me?” I asked as I smiled coldly.
“You know that I’m Fae, right? There isn’t a pussy that I wouldn’t fuck; just because it scared me wouldn’t stop me. You, woman, terrify me. You make me crave shit that I don’t want to crave. You know that though, don’t you? I don’t think you want this; you want the one you’re fighting against. I get it, I do. But are you really going to let them all die? There are children involved, Erie.”
“I was a child once,” I said as he stepped back, watching me. “I wanted death.”
“Gods, Erie, you plan to let them die,” he uttered as he stared at me like he didn’t know me at all, and well, he didn’t. None of them knew who I was, or who I was becoming. Once they did, they would cower before me, and I’d lose them and whatever friendship I was trying to forge. What I was, well, we didn’t make friends.
“I don’t know what I have planned for them. I murdered thousands of people, innocent people, for merely being part of what sought to destroy me. You want to see the good in me, but there is nothing good to find within me. They did this. They need to pay for their crimes.”
“What did you do?” he asked carefully.
“I killed every male druid of breeding age or older,” I said with a shrug as I turned away from him, unable to watch the hate fill in his sapphire depths. “They murdered women and children to teach men of other species a lesson. They sent me to slaughter innocent people like I was something that held no soul and wouldn’t feel what I did to them. Zahruk, I’ve killed so many people that when I close my eyes, it’s all I see. I hear them, and I laugh. I don’t cry or feel bad. Does that mean I am bad?”
“Did you enjoy killing them?” he asked as he moved to stand beside me and he leaned against the edge, staring out over the land that spread out before us.
“Some, yes. I craved their pain because I can no longer feel it. It’s like I’m numb, and I’ll never feel again, but then Callaghan touches me, and I feel home. I hate it, and yet I crave it. I am his; I know that. I can’t go to him like this. Like this broken fucking thing that needs to be fixed. He believes he can save me, but I don’t want to be saved. I’ve learned to live with who I am, what I am. I am who this world forged me to become in order to survive it.”
“How many innocent lives have you taken?” he asked.
“Too many to be redeemed,” I admitted as I watched the children beneath us run towards their waiting parents. “When I was first freed of my cage, I did what I was told. I murdered entire families to be released, just to be able to smell fresh air or feel the sun on my flesh. I had to; I had to figure out how to remove the spells that held me beneath their thumb. It took time, so I did what they said so I could survive long enough to make them pay for doing what they did to me.”
“That isn’t on you,” he said as he folded his hands and leaned over, watching the kids. “We do what we’re told to do when we have no other choice. I murdered hundreds of thousands of innocent Fae, merely because I was ordered to do it. I didn’t blink, not fucking once. I just fucking did it to survive my father. I murdered babes in their cribs, mothers as they fed them,” he admitted as his hands turned white against the memories. “I did whatever it took to keep my brothers safe, including taking the head of the second-born son to appease my father that I was willing to fight Ryder for the crown should it fall to him.”
“I guess I’m lucky that I had no siblings. I may have killed them too,” I admitted as I turned, studying him. “Did your father really cook the Winter Court’s children and feed them to their parents?” I watched him swallow before dropping my gaze. “You guys are seriously twisted here. I may have to hang out for a while.”
“You won’t,” he laughed as he stared at me. I turned, gazing back out over the land as I tilted my head. “Oh, wildfire, you’re evil, but you’re not that fucking evil. You don’t plan to let them die, not when you can stop it. People like us will spend the rest of our lives trying to undo the wrongs of the past. Just as you did when you saved the rest of them.”
I blinked, and I pulled my power to me, turning to stare at him as the air grew thick around us. “You need to tell me how you know about my people!”
“Calm your pretty tits, woman,” he scoffed. “You think I allow anyone close to the King without knowing every fucking minuscule detail about them? I watched you, and when you didn’t go back because you were stuck in the Order’s compound, who the fuck do you think had food dropped to them? I’m not against you, never will be unless you threaten those I care about. You are not evil, Erie. You’re just like me. So fucking twisted that we push those we want away because deep down, buried so fucking deep no one can touch it, is a heart. It’s easier to bury it, to hide that it ever existed because it’s been broken and abused, and the only way we know how to survive anymore is to forget that it is there.”
“You fed my people?” I asked as I let the magic fade away. “I don’t even do that,” I frowned. “If they’re not willing to help themselves, neither am I. If they’re weak, this world will destroy them.”
“Then how the fuck did you earn their loyalty?” he asked.
“I gave them a choice. Follow me or die. I offered my protection, but it comes with a price.”
“Which is?”
“Loyalty,” I said softly. “If I don’t have their loyalty, I won’t hold their respect. If they don’t respect me, they die. I cannot have snakes in my field, for one miscalculation and everything I’ve worked to build will fall. I cannot fail. I will not fail.”
“You know he is coming here to get you, don’t you?” he asked.
“I’m aware,” I uttered as I leaned against his arm and we watched the sun setting behind the mountain range that surrounded their fortress.
“Erie, just because you are broken doesn’t mean you’re not fucking beautiful. Sometimes we need those cracks to let the light back in. The darkness is there, so we remember, but it also lets us see the beauty within it. Broken things are often the most beautiful. Also, woman, you’re touching me.”
“You kissed me, so I guess this makes us even.”
“So now I can touch you because I kissed you? Should I fuck you so that I can hug you, too?”
“You like that cock where it is?”
“Noted,” he laughed, and I smiled, staring out of the beauty of their world. “Two fucked up assholes. That is what we are, girl.”
> “I don’t mind it so much anymore. I’ve accepted my demons, but I don’t think I can be what Callaghan needs. I can’t be a mom. Mine left me on the floor of a church to die; I think she prayed for my death. What if I am like her? What if I hurt my son?”
“So don’t,” he said so calmly that I lifted my head, staring at him as if he’d grown another head. “Look, Ryder was terrified of being a father. Synthia was horrified at the idea of being a mother. You can’t judge who you will be as a parent based on what yours did. If those two have done anything right, it’s those kids. You won’t be your parents, who, from what you said, weren’t even willing when they were pushed into that cauldron.”
“You’re not as big of an asshole as I thought you were,” I admitted as we watched the Horde King moving below us.
“Thanks, Erie. Don’t tell anyone that shit. And if you ever need me, I’m right here, girl. I will protect you, even at the cost of my own life.”
“I don’t need to be protected. I can destroy the world at will; the difference is, I don’t want to. I want to fix it. I want it to be a world where no child suffers needlessly. If I have to set it on fire to make them fear what I am, so be it.”
“Well, that wasn’t ominous at all.”
“Don’t worry, Zahruk; I’ll protect you.”
Chapter 35
I stood outside the room, listening to the Fae speak to one another with respect. A total stranger, and just like that, she was considered their family. My eyes moved to Zahruk, who smirked, watching the intensity on my face as I stared at him. He knew I was leaving, and he didn’t try to stop me. I almost wished he would, and yet I knew, I knew I would never let those children who had stared up at my Knight with wonder die. Not even if it cost me my life, which, if everything the seer said was true, may come to pass.
I pushed off the wall, moving to the middle of the room as I waited for them to cease their endless banter, and then whispered my goodbyes, knowing it may be the last time I saw any of them.
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