Triumph

by Serena Akeroyd

  She squeezed Rafe’s fingers with her own, then curled her other hand around his arm so she was tucked into his side. The movement drew the creature’s attention, but it didn’t stay on Thalia, it fixated on Rafe.

  “B-Brother,” she hissed, and the sound was so serpentine that Thalia dug her nails into Rafe’s forearm.

  “I am not your brother,” he retorted, so at ease and so calm, that Thalia almost did a double take.

  In comparison to them all, Theo and Mikkel included, who both appeared disgusted by the woman’s state, Rafe was untouched.

  It astonished her because the man was a healer. She knew that part of his soul was as connected to him as these new talents of his were.

  She wanted to weep when he shrugged off her hold, but she let him go. Let him step toward the woman who was suspended about two inches in the air so she had to rest on tiptoe—the position must have been agonizing. Her muscles must be in a continual cramp.

  Her dirty black hair was ruffled and tangled, and she smelled. Thalia could scent her from this distance, and it wasn’t pleasant. It ran further than dirt and body odor. It was sour, and smelled of something she couldn’t really pin down, but it made her want to cover her nose.

  “You smell death, dearling,” Theo whispered as he dipped down to whisper the words in her ear, sensing her confusion and disgust. “She scents of death.”

  “Her coming death?” she asked, stepping back into him, her back to his chest, and loving the warmth of the cocoon that sheltered her senses from the scene around her.

  The walls were roughly hewn stone. They were dark too, and throw in the lack of light coming in from a thin window on the back wall above the woman, it felt like a pit.

  The floor was wet, and there was a drain in the middle. Thalia didn’t even want to know why—well, she knew why, she just didn’t want to think about it. If she did, she’d puke.

  Why were her fathers keeping this woman in this state?

  Why were they…?

  This violated so many human rights it beggared belief, and yet, this creature wasn’t human. None of them were. And this creature hadn’t cared for the rights of others, so why should her own be respected?

  But even asking herself this question made her want to turn her face into Theo’s throat.

  This was wrong on so many levels.

  “No. Death in general. She’s killed—if I did not know it from your father, I would know it from her scent alone.” His tone was low, low enough not to disturb the frozen tableau before them. “Once we kill, our scent changes. Morphs. But hers?” His nose crinkled. “She smells repugnant.”

  Rafe, having taken a step towards the woman, had halted about two feet from her. His head was tilted as he studied her, but it was with a clinicalness that made Thalia frown.

  Rafe should have been demanding to release her. To let her free. Hell, to throw her in one of the cages! That was better than this! Caelus, anything was!

  She swallowed, wanting to step forward, needing to break the stuporous trance both changelings seemed to have fallen into, but Theo tugged her back into him, and Mikkel reached for her hand to hold her in place.

  “Why?” she said on a soft moan, hating that Rafe was looking at this woman like a specimen in a petri dish.

  “Because he needs to understand,” Mikkel murmured, and there was longing to his words, one that told her he wished to understand his own situation. That the one conversation with his father, Ragnor, had merely made things more confusing.

  “How can this help?” she hissed under her breath.

  “She can give him answers.” Theo rubbed her arm. “Be patient.”

  “I should never have agreed to come here. We should have returned to Heden. We shouldn’t be here.” When Rafe had made the suggestion, why hadn’t she tried to dissuade him from this course of action?

  “Whether you’re aware of the truth or not, that doesn’t mean this isn’t happening. Whether you knew she was captured here in this state or not, she was. And she’s being punished,” Mikkel told her, but his tone was displeased. “I don’t approve of it, and I can’t see many agreeing with how they’ve gone about doing this; but your fathers aren’t sick men, Thalia. Sick men wouldn’t have protected you as they’d tried to. And sick men would keep her in an even worse state than this. There’s a reason. We just don’t understand it yet.”

  There was a low thrum that ran through the area. It made her wonder if they were directly under a furnace or something, but it wasn’t that warm in here, so maybe not. The vibration made her stomach even more unsettled, and she wanted nothing more than to step out of this torture chamber and head back to the office behind them.

  She had no trouble, no problem, with meting out punishments. She felt no guilt for having ended the lives of four evil men in challenges. But this?

  No.

  It was wrong.

  And then, the creature spoke. She practically purred, “I wondered when you’d come for me.”

  Thalia blinked. Come for her?

  What the fuck?

  “I’m not here for you,” Rafe denied, and he wasn’t flustered, if anything his tone was calm. Eerily so. “I’m here to ask you some questions.”

  The female stilled at his first words, but she stretched at his second comment. The stretch was distasteful. It was sinuous and sexy, even though she was filthy and covered in dirt, blood, and only the Gods knew what else.

  Hell, they were standing on a floor that she’d had to piss on and, Gods help them, shit on.

  Tossing a bevy of Victoria’s Secret’s Angels into this room wouldn’t make any of this, in any way, sexy.

  “You may ask, but I may not answer.”

  Rafe raised his arm and dragged his sleeve up to the elbow. Calm as you like, he lifted his forearm to his mouth, and the sudden scent of blood perfumed the air.

  In the blink of an eye, the female was straining at the chains. She dragged them taut, almost star fishing herself as she craned to reach him. The black pits of her eyes seemed to take on an endless depth that even the blankness of before couldn’t compete with.

  “You taunt me, brother?” she hissed, the words echoing around the chamber, making Thalia burrow harder into Theo’s chest. He wrapped his arm over her breastbone, gripping tight to her other shoulder to hold her close.

  She knew the comfort was for her, not for him. Though she knew they’d been surprised earlier, she sensed now that neither he nor Mikkel were overly affected. Which begged the question, what they’d seen and done in their lives…

  Thalia wanted to pull away but couldn’t. It wasn’t their fault they’d led hard lives.

  But Rafe?

  He was…

  He wasn’t supposed to be like this.

  What was this? Some kind of parallel universe?

  She sucked down a breath that was scented with Rafe’s blood. By contrast to the last time she was in the palace, with her She-Wolf tucked away inside her, her senses were weaker. But the sweet notes to Rafe’s blood were like wine.

  She could discern different perfumes in them, and they drove her wild.

  Shuddering as a need began to burn inside her, a need that had no place in their current location, she allowed Theo to ground her, and tried to focus on breathing through her mouth and not her nose.

  Was this what the female felt? This strange, wild hunger? A need that had no answer, no rhyme or reason to it?

  “Answer me and you can have some,” Rafe told her, his tone almost singsong.

  It was as out of place here as the Victoria’s Secret Angels would be.

  “You tempt me, brother,” she hurled the words at him, and her body continued to strain until her joints bled white with the force of the pressure she exerted on them.

  Rafe, taller than the creature by a good foot, raised his arm over her head. “Tilt back. You can sample some.”

  The female whimpered and did as he bid. They all watched as the bite mark on Rafe’s arm began to ooze, blood pooling
until, finally, a single bead allowed gravity to grab a hold of it.

  She made a mewling sound as she arched her head back, mouth wide open for the tiny bead.

  When it landed on her tongue, Thalia flinched. Then she cringed at the moan the female released. It was so sexual, it reminded Thalia of the day after her claiming in Isaura’s throne room.

  “Sweet Gods, brother, you taste finer than wine. You have not killed yet,” she murmured, running her tongue over her teeth, as though that single drop of blood could sustain her for a lifetime.

  “No, I haven’t,” Rafe informed her silkily. “You have. You stink of death.”

  The creature’s shoulders rippled with a shrug, and the heavy clanking of the chains seemed a bewildering juxtaposition to the delicate movement. “We all have a purpose.”

  “Yours is to kill?”

  She grinned, baring her pink gums. “My father gave me a purpose.”

  Rafe tilted his head to the side again. “You speak of a father as though we have one. There is the creature who raised us and loathed us. Then there is the creature who donated his sperm.”

  “We are born amid loathing to make us stronger,” the creature informed him, her look knowing. “We can’t take it personally. It is our first challenge in this life.”

  Thalia winced, but remained silent. She longed, with every part of her being, to grab Rafe and to leave this awful place, but she couldn’t.

  She understood why he needed answers. Understood that this creature might be able to give them to him. She just hated what he’d have to do to get the information he needed.

  Was the changeling right? Were they related?

  Why did she keep on calling him brother?

  And why had she said that she’d wondered if Rafe would come for her?

  Could they communicate wordlessly? Like Rafe could with her?

  Gods, so many questions with no answers.

  “Challenges… you consider misery a challenge?” When the creature didn’t reply, he murmured, “And of which father do you speak?”

  The woman studied him under her lashes. “The sperm donor.”

  Rafe’s nostrils flared. “You know him?”

  “He came for me,” she revealed, sounding proud.

  “Why?”

  “He wanted my help.” Her eyes widened, as though the notion still surprised her. “It was my honor to give it to him.”

  “Why did he need you in the palace?”

  “He didn’t just need me here, brother. He has needed me in several situations that only a creature of our talents could assist.”

  “And what are our talents?” he murmured, and he did it again, bit down onto his forearm to open another small wound. He lifted his arm and held it overhead. She mewled, straining for it, desperate for the blood like a starving man would be for a hamburger. “Come now, what are they?” he enticed.

  As the blood pooled, he shifted his arm. The drop tumbled to the ground. Thalia watched it so hard, she saw the delicate splash of it as it hit the stone.

  The woman screamed. “No!” Her rage, fury, and distress ricocheted around the chamber with the power of a spray of bullets. The force of that ire pushed Thalia back into her mate’s embrace once more.

  Why was it she could face three Alphas, strong males, whose intent was to kill her, but in the face of this female, this unknown, she was scared?

  As scared as she’d been when she’d leaped off that damn cliff a few days ago.

  Theo, seeming to sense how overwhelmed she felt, rested his chin atop her head. If she could have, she’d have turned around and hidden her face in his throat. Instead, she had to stay where she was, watching Rafe be the man she’d never envisaged him being.

  A tormentor.

  Her mouth quivered as she watched another drop of blood fall to the floor, and the female’s agony seemed to drown them in a tidal wave of emotion.

  Unsure if she could bear it, she whispered, “What’s he doing?”

  “Making her talk,” Mikkel murmured gently.

  “Why?!” the changeling raged. “Why do you waste it?” Her sobs broke Thalia’s heart.

  “Because you won’t give me what I want,” Rafe told her, and his voice was as much a purr as the other changeling’s had been when they’d arrived. “I need answers. You’ll give them to me. Won’t you?” He grabbed the back of her hair and tugged her head back. “You destroyed my mate’s life. Why?”

  “M-Mate?” The gasp was unfeigned, and it made Thalia realize that the book Rafe had read from had been true. Not all of these creatures had mates. “You’re not mated. You can’t be.”

  “I am,” he countered. “She is in my blood and I’m in hers.” He was so certain, so sure that her heart nearly quivered in response. Gods, she wanted to touch him, wrap herself around him and have him entwine himself with her.

  Instead, he was taunting this thing. Tormenting her, when she’d never thought him capable of such a deed.

  “Why did you set out to destroy her?”

  “We need her,” the female whispered.

  “Who’s we?”

  “F-Father and I.”

  “Why?”

  “She is of the prophecy. We wanted to isolate her, make her ripe for Morningstar’s plucking.” She closed her eyes, then opened them, but her gaze was trained on the stone floor where three beads of blood had settled in the cracks. “I had to leave. I-I had other duties. I returned and Thalia had gone.”

  “What other duties?”

  She swallowed. “You’ll let me sup from you? They’ve starved me, brother. I’m dying.”

  “You’ll starve some more if you don’t answer me,” he told her coldly, then he tapped her cheek with his fingers. “You’ll feast if you give me what I need.”

  Her eyes pleaded with him. “Do you speak the truth?”

  “I speak nothing but the truth,” he instantly rejoindered.

  She sucked in her bottom lip, and Thalia winced at how dry the flesh was. She was in a true state. Her emaciated features were stark, the bones jutting out. Her eyes dark pools. Her nose a beak on her too-thin face.

  Did Thalia recognize her? Or had the woman always been in ‘costume?’

  “W-We had plans for T-Thalia.”

  “What kind of plans? Don’t jerk me around,” Rafe hissed. “Give me the answers, and I’ll soothe the ache in you.”

  Why did that sound sexual?

  Even as a jealous rage swirled inside her, the creature whimpered, “There is much to explain. I’m too hungry to speak.”

  “You’ll be hungrier still if you don’t answer me. I’ll tell them to leave you here in your own filth. To close that door, lock it, and leave it for days. Weeks.” He whispered a word Thalia couldn’t catch, but the female stiffened.

  Had Thalia known Rafe was capable of cruelty?

  No.

  Was this another side he was showing her?

  Yes.

  And did she like it?

  No. She fucking didn’t.

  She trembled as the woman sagged in her chains. “You know of the Fae?”

  “Yes.”

  “There is important land there. It is called Trierna.” Thalia tensed. Trierna? “It guards the gates to the kingdom. Beyond, there are waters. The waters are important. I don’t know why. Father didn’t tell me. H-He just said we needed an in at Trierna. So we found one.”

  “What kind of an ‘in’?”

  “The factions there are led by people called Legios. There was a female. An aid. S-She frequented the bars in Portland. I-I’d heard of her. She liked to use the lash. Could often be found in the S and M clubs.”

  Behind her, Theo stiffened.

  “What was her name?”

  “M-Magda.”

  “What of her?” Rafe asked, not by one note did he betray the fact they knew the AydLegios of whom this pitiful woman was speaking.

  “I was to entice her. The Fae can fall.” She snorted out a laugh. “Where do you think the phrase ‘fal
l in love’ comes from? When they love a human, they will fall. And they will do things to protect their human lover.”

  “Like what?”

  “Humans cannot live forever. The Fae do. Morningstar offers to save the humans they love for a price. That price is loyalty. The Fae must fall from grace and they must do his bidding.”

  “And this was your plan for Magda?”

  She mewled. “Blood. Please. I need sustenance.”

  “And you will get it. Answer me,” Rafe growled.

  She licked her lips and her tongue seemed to rasp against the tender flesh, making Thalia cringe—the female wasn’t lying. She was severely dehydrated. “Aye. She had to fall. We needed to destabilize Trierna.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know,” she whined. “Father doesn’t tell me everything.”

  “And this is why Thalia slipped away from you?” Rafe countered. “You were busy dealing with Magda?”

  “Y-Yes. She’d fallen for me, the perfect sub. Then I sipped some diseased blood so I scented ill to her. Not long after, when I was sobbing at my fate, she told me there was something she could do for me. That I could live forever. She disappeared shortly after.”

  “Have you seen her since?”

  The chains rattled as she shrugged. “Why would I? My purpose was done.”

  Magda hadn’t lied, Thalia thought. She’d said she’d been betrayed too. Which meant what? Her word could be trusted?

  “And why did you need Thalia?”

  “She is Morningstar’s mate, you fool,” she hissed. “With her, they can return to their rightful kingdom and I can cease living on this realm and return to my true home.” The dark pits of her eyes sparkled. Amid that vacuum of color, Thalia wasn’t sure where that glint came from, but knew it was there nonetheless.

  “Where is that?”

  “Heden.” Her bottom lip popped out. “Feed me.”

  Rafe raised his forearm to his mouth again. Another bite—the other two had already healed. This time, the tear was a little more ragged. More blood pooled quickly. He lifted his arm and let blood drop into her mouth. The creature moaned when he pulled the source away but her skin, with that small amount, looked healthier. Her face appeared less emaciated.