Knox grabbed a jug of water and handed it to me, and I gulped it down until it was running down my chin. I swallowed, wiping my mouth off with the back of my hand, and I realized the brazier had been brought in as I slept. Scooting closer, I shivered as the heat warmed my flesh.
“There aren’t enough blankets for everyone, and this forest is rather cold at night. You will share with me,” he said, and I nodded silently.
He sat behind me, pulling me against him. “Can we sleep by the fire?” I asked, unable to stop the tremble that never seemed to stop.
“Yes,” he agreed, scooting his body against mine until we were as close as we could get. I stared into the flames.
We didn’t speak for a long time. We just sat together in silence with his arms around me, reassuring me I was safe. His lips would occasionally brush against my shoulder, where he had claimed me. The flame danced hypnotically as I watched, noting that it danced toward us as if it knew we needed its heat. I replayed what had happened and tried to detach it from my mind, but then my mouth opened, and I spoke barely above a whisper.
“My sister traded me to that monster to be raped and mutilated.”
He didn’t speak, but his mouth kissed the arch of my neck and didn’t pull away; he just left his lips against it as he felt my pulse.
“She planned to give all of my sisters to him as well, and all because she assumed I took her powers from her in the womb. Hecate witches are born unequal. One is always much stronger than the other, like a failsafe in the event it was needed to obtain balance. If one turns to the dark arts, the other one can either pull her back or end her life. It’s just balance, but Amara didn’t care. She traded us as her bride price; her fucking dowry was her sisters. The others were to be used as Gerald deemed, but I was to be beheaded after being tortured and raped. She hated me that much.”
Tears rolled down my cheeks as I said what had been consuming me out loud to the silence in the tent. His arms tightened, and his breathing slowed as I continued.
“She let her husband hurt me. He pushed his fingers into my body as she watched him,” I said as my sob filled the tent. “She fucked him in front of me, and together they stared at me the entire time. He hurt me, and she just watched him doing it. She did nothing to stop him, and I’m her sister. He tasted me as he fucked her, pushing his fingers that had been inside of me into his mouth as he watched me. The only thing that prevented him from raping me was that I was a gift for his father, and they couldn’t smell that I wasn’t still a virgin over the rotting corpses of their other victims. She said I was to be a grand gesture of her devotion to her new life, the virgin witch of the Hecate bloodline as a trophy for his hallway,” I whispered, staring at the dancing flames for strength.
“I saw such horrible things there. Irina, a human, had something inside her. It was consuming her, eating her from the inside out. They had ripped apart her rectum, and something inside of it kept it open, I think. In the morning, she was dead, and the thing inside of her was escaping through her mouth. The others, they were missing limbs or pieces, like they were slowly being taken apart as they ate their bodies. My sister walked right by them, and she did nothing to help, and that isn’t something we do. We are supposed to protect the weak. She bragged about their torture and explained in vivid, disgusting details what would happen to me. She wanted me to die like the other girls had died. She hated me enough that she was crazed and excited to watch me be raped and brutalized in front of that crowd of people.
“Brander said it was three days that I have been gone, but I can only recall waking in the cell the day Amara appeared, and maybe one time before that, but I couldn’t stay awake. I could feel hands touching me. I could feel hands touching my face, and other parts of me, yet I don’t remember any of it. It was as if I was in a dream state, and it was happening to someone else, but I know it was me. I felt everything that happened, and yet I couldn’t see their faces, and I couldn’t wake up from the nightmare. When I first awoke, I smelled their scent on my flesh, as if they’d touched me enough times to leave their scent on me as I slept. Everything before I awoke in the cell is a blur, and yet their taunts continue to echo like they’re speaking down a tunnel, and I am on the other end of it, trying to make out what they’re saying.
“Then there’s what Amara said she had done and was planning to do in the Nine Realms. Amara said that she has been moving pieces around, granting the witches permission to wage war with other factions of immortals within the Nine Realms. She said that the witches have been doing it for over five hundred years without us knowing or suspecting a thing. I don’t know if it is the truth, or if she lied to make herself sound more powerful. I don’t even know who the hell that evil woman was because she couldn’t have been my sister. That would mean I have lived my entire life with evil right beside me, and I never even noticed it. How stupid would that make me?”
I leaned back, letting his heat take away the bone-deep chill while he remained silent behind me.
“I once asked my aunts how we could enforce the laws if we weren’t a part of the realm, and Aurora said that to trespass against the ones we had in place was treason. Now…now, I have to wonder if maybe we were wrong. I don’t think we should have left anyone else in control of our realm. If what Amara said is true, then the witches are doing whatever they please without us knowing it. If it was happening five hundred years ago, that would mean my aunts were knowingly a part of it, because we hadn’t entered the realm of humans yet. I guess I could see some of the need to take down monsters; if any of them were akin to Gerald, they deserved to die by whatever means necessary. Some beasts don’t deserve to live, not if they terrorize others, or can’t listen when told to do something, I guess. I could see their reasoning for trespassing against laws and attacking creatures, but then it is still treason, is it not? I don’t think we should have ever left the Nine Realms to go claim the tenth one. It seemed to me that they are far too innocent for our kind to live among. I wonder what we will find when we return to the Witches’ Realm, now that we are being forced to see if they have trespassed against the laws. I wonder if I will agree with them because of what I have been through and be glad they slaughtered others within the Nine Realms.” I had begun rambling, and he’d gone stiff behind me.
I turned to peer at him over my shoulder, and then faced him only to find him glaring at me through an angry stare. A shiver snaked down my spine as I opened my mouth to speak, but he moved, crushing his lips against mine until I moaned from the intensity of it, but it was a different kind of kiss. It was violent, as if he was kissing me to end my mouth from saying anything else. He pushed me down to the ground, moving my legs apart until I cried out when he touched my flesh. Knox paused, breathing angrily as the tick in his jaw hammered wildly. While he fought to control his anger, I lay silent, staring up at him as he shook his head, glaring down at me as if he was fighting something I couldn’t see. He turned me abruptly onto my side, curling against my back, and hissed out his next words coldly.
“Go to bed, now,” he snapped gutturally. “We ride the moment the sun rises.”
Chapter 56
I awoke alone, shivering against the cold morning air. Sitting up, I stared around the empty tent. It held only me and the blanket I’d slept in. I’d felt Knox leave in the middle of the night, but he hadn’t come back, and I’d been too exhausted to go after him. Standing up, I slid my hands down the ruffled dress and rolled up the blanket, pushing it back into the satchel, which, in reality, was the size of a large duffle bag. I exited the tent, staring at the armed soldiers and the skeletal mask of the King of Norvalla.
My heart jerked against my chest as I watched him stepping closer to me. He paused, tilting his head in the mask he wore, studying me. Unlike the last time, his eyes were oceanic waves that rushed over me. He laughed coldly as my breathing grew labored, and I dropped the bag onto the ground.
“You didn’t rescue me,” I whispered as I sensed the other men closing in around me
. I stepped closer to the tent, watching his eyes studying me as the realization of who he was sunk in.
“I told you, little lamb, someday you’d get eaten. It’s someday.”
I turned, running with everything I had left in me, zigzagging around trees as branches snapped beneath the thin shoes I wore. I could hear them giving chase, the sound of men calling out orders and directions as I rushed headfirst into a forest that led to…I had no idea. A branch crunched beneath a boot close to me, and I veered the other direction, slipping beneath a fallen tree only to slam into something hard.
I stared up at Knox, who watched me in his armor with something dark in his gaze. He started to bend down, and I kicked out, knocking him down before I got back up to my feet. I started to run away, only for his hand to wrap around my ankle and pull me back down onto the ground hard enough that it knocked the wind out of me. I turned onto my back, kicking against him, and I screamed with frustration as he got to his knees, settling between mine, watching me fight him.
“Let me go!”
“I can’t do that, Aria.”
“Knox, let me go.” I stared up at him in his armor, his power rushing through the woods from his pores, which he no longer hid, making me realize just how fucked I was.
“If I let you go, you’re as good as dead.”
“The Council of Immortals will never let you get away with this!”
He smiled coldly, pushing his hand against my throat before he brushed his lips across mine and whispered against my ear. “What council would that be, sweet girl?”
“The one that rules over the Nine Realms while we are gone!”
“I don’t think they care anymore,” he smiled wickedly. “Not since I took their fucking heads and mounted them on stakes outside my palace. You and your kind abandoned this land, and you left those who ruled in your stead to brutalize the people of the realms. You and your kind, my sweetest little lamb? You’re the worst of them. You murdered entire families because they wouldn’t bend a knee to the Queen of Witches. It’s a new day, Aria Hecate. When the dawn comes, the Nine Realms will no longer be yours, but they will be bathed in your bloodline.”
“You can’t do this, you have no right!”
“I have every fucking right! I watched my people being slaughtered by magic from your fucking people. I held my son through one thousand deaths that the Queen of Witches bestowed upon him because I wouldn’t bend my knee to that whoring murderous bitch! After my son died, my wife went to a witch, and she begged her to take her immortality away so that she could join him in death, so they did. Only they gave her a potion that ended her soul forever, destroying any chance she had to join our son in the next life or find me in mine. They took her away from me, and they did so in a way that she would never escape death’s torturous grasp,” he snarled as his grip tightened on my throat until air wouldn’t pass through my airway. “You say I have no right? I have every fucking right to end the witches’ reign, and anyone who would oppose the new leaders of the realms.”
Knox watched me gasping for air and pressed his forehead against mine as lights exploded in my vision, and I stopped struggling. Knox’s lips brushed mine, and he pulled away, watching my body jerk violently as my brain starved for air. My body seized, and his hands released me.
“Fuck!” he snarled, taking his hand from my throat as I gasped for air, turning onto my stomach as I gagged, crawling through the dirt to escape him. “Where the fuck do you think you’re going?” he asked coldly, slowly following me as I crawled on my hands and knees, slipping through the wet, frost-covered leaves.
“Home,” I whispered gutturally, barely able to make words leave my tongue past the damage of his hands.
“You have no home left to escape to, Aria.” He watched me struggling, following me soundlessly for several moments before using his foot to push me onto my back. “As we speak, Haven Falls is being captured, and all inhabitants are being rounded up and brought back to the Nine Realms to face charges by the High King of the Nine Realms for treason against the realms they abandoned. They are to be put to death so that their magic will return to where it belongs, to the people they left behind.”
I stared at him in horror and shook my head vigorously. I sat up slowly, staring at him as he watched me absorbing the news of what he had done. Using my claws, I clasped my hand together and closed my eyes before his power pushed against me, forcing them to open. He smiled, kneeling down to stare into my eyes as he lifted his mask, watching me.
My eyes locked with his as I drew the Celtic symbol for sisterhood in my palm and smiled up at him sadly, slamming my hands together as magic roared through the land. It shook the trees, and Knox grabbed my palm, staring at it before he stood, issuing orders as his men rushed away from where we stood. I watched him, amused as he bent down and ripped me up from the ground.
“What the fuck did you just do?”
“You will never find my family, Knox.” I smiled, and he shook me as his men watched in silence around us.
I laughed soundlessly, ignoring the tears that rolled from my eyes with how stupid I had been, but I had taken precautions against him. He’d fucked up, he’d told me he would ruin me, and I wasn’t about to go down without a fight.
“You will pay for that, Aria.”
“How, Knox? How can you make me pay any more than I already have? What the fuck can you do to me? Beat me? Violate me? Rape me? Destroy me? Fucking bring it, motherfucker. I am no one’s bitch! You want me dead? Fucking do it and get it over with. Do it!” I screamed with tears running down my face as I stared him down in open challenge.
He watched me, holding my dress, glaring at me through cold eyes before he released me abruptly. He stared at me silently, stepping back as someone came up behind me, pushing me down to my knees. On the cold ground, steel touched against my neck. I smiled sadly, staring him in the eye as I stretched my neck across the blade, ready to die knowing my family was safe. If this was the cost to protect them, I’d pay it a thousand times over again.
“Any last words, Aria?” Knox asked softly.
“Yes, I’ll say my prayers,” I smirked, preparing to whisper the witches’ prayer. “I am the fire of the cauldron that heats the realms. I am the wind that fills the land and sails the ships upon the rough seas. I am the earth that grows the crops and feeds those within the Nine Realms. I am the water that bathes the soul. I am of Hecate, created from within her soul. I am the magic that creates the land and feeds it power. I leave neither child nor a mother behind who will grieve me, only my magic to be returned to the land from which it was given. I give it back on this day. I now go to my grave without regrets. I go to where pain cannot touch thy soul. I leave this vessel of flesh and go to lands of plenty, and land of promised peace. Blessed be, for the ones who will go on, do not weep or grieve for me, for I am finally free.” I lifted my eyes to his and smiled wickedly as I held my arms out with my palms held up. “I am ready to die—go time, fucker.”
He stared at me through mere slits and shook his head. “No, no, I will burn down your fucking world, and you will watch me do it.” He kneeled down, staring at me as he grabbed strands of my silver hair, rubbing it through his fingers.
“That’s anticlimactic, Knox.”
He shook his head, and a dark smile tugged at his lips. “Your sarcasm won’t work, Aria. You’re wrong, you know. I will find your family. Just as I found your mother and took her head. Your Aunt Hysteria and her daughters? Their skulls are what I have built my throne with. We covered my throne room walls in the skulls of your people. A reminder of what my purpose is, and soon, my entire kingdom will be covered with them.”
“You killed my mother?”
“Before I came to your shitty little town, I took her head.”
I laughed, and then threw my head back, laughing even more as he watched me. His lips pulled into a tight line at my response. “Oh, is this where I’m supposed to cry because you killed my mommy? Nah, wrong bitch, Knox. If you hadn’t don
e it, I would have eventually; but my sisters? You won’t find them, because no matter how strong you are, I don’t fucking bend my knee either.”
“You will bow for me.”
“Hard pass,” I chuckled as my arms were grabbed and put into cuffs behind me. “I only get down on my knees when I want to, and I don’t fucking want to for you anymore.”
He studied me as if his mind went back to that room with me, and his thumb traced over my lips as if he were imaging them around his cock. “You will break the moment I deliver your sisters’ heads to you and make you clean their skulls for my throne. Only pureblooded Hecate witches adorn my throne, the rest only get to line my walls. I wouldn’t sit on anything less, little lamb.”
“Knox, I don’t plan on sticking around long enough to clean shit for you. You need help cleaning shit, hire a maid service.”
“You won’t escape me,” he said, touching my throat where it felt bruised. “You’re mine now, Aria. You will see none of your family again. You will never taste freedom, nor feel the sunshine glowing on your pretty flesh unless I decide to allow it.”
“You’re wrong, King of Lies,” I said, smiling impishly. “I am no weakling, and no matter how far you bury me in chains, I will fucking rattle them until they break, and I am free of you. You want to burn my world down? Fine, but you will watch me rise from the ashes. Legends always rise from the ashes.”
“You will rise. But only to be captured by me, Aria Hecate, because you’re mine from this moment on,” he smirked, standing up. “Get her up, and let’s go home.”
I was lifted painfully and shoved forward, only to land face-first on the ground with my ass in the air, exposed.
“Pretty little ass,” Killian growled, reaching down to grab it. I moved, turning to glare up at him as my body trembled violently from his touch. My skin lost color, turning a ghostly white with memories of my time in the cell. He watched, stepping back as if realizing what he had done by touching a witch he loathed, and instantly looked as if he regretted it.
Flames of Chaos Page 42