“Enough,” Knox snapped, pulling me up until I whimpered as pain burned on my arm where the cuffs were too tightly placed. “I love the sounds you make when you’re manhandled,” he chuckled.
“Yeah, there wasn’t much difference between being fucked by you and my body being abused; both were brutal. Shows what you know about the noises a woman makes when fucking, doesn’t it?” I smirked, walking past him as blood dripped from my fingers onto the ground from where the cuffs had torn my flesh.
“Brander, tend to her wrists. Can’t have her broken before I even begin playing with her.”
I turned, looking back at Knox over my shoulder, lifting an eyebrow. “Don’t worry about me; I’m fine with pain and betrayal. I’m starting to expect it. My sister said something before I took her head, y’know. I actually fucking get it now. She said to be careful who I let in because most people just want to destroy you. I wonder if she would find the irony in this situation. My lover, the only man I ever allowed to actually fuck me, is also the one who wants to break me. If that isn’t fucking irony, I don’t know what is.” I turned to watch as Brander approached slowly.
He moved behind me, and I started forward, heading for the horses and dismissing him outright, along with his offer to tend to the wounds.
“Aria, your arm is cut,” Brander stated.
“Yeah? Isn’t that the entire point of this? You want to hurt me, and so I am. Do not touch me, asshole.”
“You’re riding with me,” Knox whispered softly, stopping me as I peered into his eyes. “Believe it or not, Aria, I’m trying to save your fucking life by claiming it.”
“You should have let them take my head, it would have been kinder.” I winced as the cuffs were removed, and my arms were placed in front of me.
“Brander, tend to her. She doesn’t get to bleed out,” he said, watching me as he lifted his hand, touching my cheek.
I pulled away from his touch, staring at the horse. Brander approached and looked at the small wound on my arm, peering over at Knox curiously when he found a tiny cut. He placed an ointment and gauze around them. Once done, he wrapped transparent material over the gauze and then replaced the cuffs around my wrist in front of me. He tested them and looked up at me.
“You remember the last time we did this, sugar?”
“Yeah, I only sort of hated you then, now my hate is genuine.”
Brander smiled tightly, and I turned, watching as Knox produced silk and placed it over my eyes. My shoulders drooped as he leaned closer, whispering huskily.
“And then we played this part, and you screamed my name, remember that?”
“Yeah, I remember. I remember thinking you were someone else, but you were just fucking me over then too. I was just too naïve to realize how much or how hard you planned to fuck me back then. More fool am I, bastard.”
Chapter 57
The ride was insufferable, and no matter how much distance I tried to keep between Knox and me, it didn’t work. I’d scoot up until I was damn near riding on the horse’s neck, and he’d pulled me back against his body, wrapping one arm around my waist as he directed the horse with one hand on the reins.
He’d talk, and I’d block him out as fear for my family entered my mind, controlling my thoughts. His arm slipped further up my chest, and I cried out in pain as it pushed against my breasts. He lowered it immediately, exhaling while I fought the silent sob of pain from the accidental brush.
“You always said you wanted to see Norvalla,” he whispered against my ear huskily.
“Yeah, not anymore,” I answered in a clipped tone. “I have it on good authority that the king is a treacherous prick. Turns out, I don’t give a fuck about seeing it after all.”
“It’s a wild and untamed realm with the strongest creatures that the Nine Realms have ever created or produced. It seems fitting that something such as you would end up here, fucking its king.”
“Cool, can you stop touching me now?” I asked icily.
“I couldn’t leave you to die in the Human Realm, Aria,” he said, his voice hard and cold. “I made a choice to protect you, and I don’t regret it. If I had sent you back, you’d have fought and died. I couldn’t live with that choice.”
“Who says I would have died?”
“I do. I sent in my best assassins to bring your sisters and the others back, and if they fight, they will die in that cold, selfish realm that they chose to become a part of.”
“You assume we were not prepared for treachery, Knox. We were created from a land where everyone wants to kill each other. You think my sisters will be there when your assassins breach the portal to the Human Realm, but I assure you they will not. They were gone the moment my body ignited, and the House of Magic vanished from its current location.”
I prayed that it was what happened. I’d created a spell on my own and tested it on smaller objects in order to perfect it, but a house was another issue. If it had worked, the house would still be there, along with my sisters. They would be hidden behind a shroud on invisibility; no one would be able to see it or breach the house, but my family also wouldn’t be allowed to leave it, either.
To an outsider, it would look like nothing but a vacant lot. The house itself was straddling the portal and had been since it was built, but it was also able to be moved to sit over the creek where crystals were embedded into the surrounding land. They’d picked a location where the portal was the weakest. Witches were resilient like that, always prepared to bug out if shit got bad.
We always had a backup plan, but where Aurora had planned to seal the house and leave it visible, I knew Knox would figure out how to breach it sooner or later. So, I’d used my blood, slowly draining it, and then replenishing it to drain it again in the months I’d hidden in that house from Knox. I’d added my blood, along with the ingredients, onto the altar that the bones lay upon, shielding them from everyone.
The spell would release a single piece of vellum from the ceiling, warning my family that trouble was brewing, and so it would begin. We would come back to the Nine Realms through the portal and take back what was rightfully ours.
“You think you will beat me, little girl?”
“That just depends on what you consider being beaten?”
“I have you, Aria Hecate. You’re my prisoner; that’s a fucking win I’m willing to take. I walked in and took the strongest fucking witch from right out from under their noses.”
“Technically, my evil bitch of a sister took me. I was just the idiot who fell for the whole ‘save the damsel’ routine. Guess I should have known you weren’t the saving type. Lesson learned. It’s a good thing I don’t make the same mistake twice, right?”
His lips brushed against my neck, and I shivered as he kissed the hollow column gently. “Take Aria and ride ahead, seal her in my room, and post guards outside of it. Do not leave her alone, Lore.”
I turned my head, listening as hands slipped around me, screaming out as he touched the wounded breast that had still yet to heal as he’d wrapped his arms around me. My body trembled with the pain, and I clenched my teeth as I swayed against the new body.
“Careful of her wounds, she is hurt more than she’s letting on. Tell no one who she is, not until we’re ready to protect her if they move to murder her for the blood that runs through her veins.”
“On it,” he said, pulling me against his body. Leaving me blindfolded, Lore started the horse at a gallop as we moved away from the voices. “Sorry, Aria.”
“No, you’re not. Don’t even try to say you’re sorry. It was his plan since the moment he set foot into Haven Falls to slaughter us all, and you were in on it.”
“Yeah, that much is true. You were supposed to be brought back with the others to face charges, but he couldn’t bring himself to kill you.”
“Magical pussy, I guess.”
“Nah, Aria. You’re something special, but you also have someone powerful protecting you. But, you have Knox too, and he isn’t willing to let you di
e yet.”
“I wish I knew who. Maybe he’d go to war against Knox to get me away from him.”
“Just don’t piss Knox off—and no one is crazy enough to go to war against him,” he warned. “You have no idea what he has been through.”
He was wrong. I was more than willing to wage war against Knox.
“Knox told me about his wife and his child, but I also know I wasn’t a part of what happened to them. I know that by the blood that runs through my veins, I am his enemy. He forgets that I wasn’t raised here, none of my sisters were either. That wasn’t by choice. That was because Hecate and the council demanded we remain in the Human Realm.”
“It doesn’t change anything, Aria. It doesn’t change what happened here. Imagine watching your child die a thousand deaths, each one worse than the first. They weren’t pretty deaths either. Imagine the most violent deaths that you could envision unfolding before you, and all you can do is sit there and hold your tiny child through each one. It took Sven four years to succumb to the last death, and Knox held him through each one. For four entire fucking years, he sat holding his dying child. No matter what form of death came for Sven, Knox held him until he succumbed to it. Liliana couldn’t bear it, so she hid in her room and refused to come out for the duration of his life. She forced Knox to live through that terror alone, and I wasn’t her biggest fan because of it.
“On the day Sven died his final death, we were called away to settle a fight for one of the high lords of the nearest town to the palace, but when we got there, he told us he’d never called us, to begin with. We rushed back to the palace, but it was too late. Liliana had found a witch hidden on our land and begged her to provide a spell that would send her into the afterlife with Sven. It did the opposite. It banished her to the one place she could never be reborn, or find eternal rest. It consumed her soul and sentenced it to the Void of Nothingness.
“We later discovered that the witch had sent a message to Liliana with the location of her cottage. It was an offer of help to ease her grief; she had never found her, but had been called to her. Add it up, Aria. Your bloodline ended his family’s lives. Imagine losing everything and knowing that the only way to prevent it from happening to other people is to cut off the head of the snake that is striking us down.”
“And so you started a war?” I asked, but he tightened his hold against me, and I held the cry in as it pushed against my breast.
Noise erupted around us, and people called out to Lore as the sound of a large gate opening met my ears, scraping over the ground. I could see nothing past the thick silk that covered my eyes, but I could smell dried meat, and the earthy scent of mead being placed into barrels to be stored. Wheat was being ground with cinnamon as someone else added yeast into the mixture. They argued over portion, and I inhaled the taste of the cinnamon in the air. Children laughed in the distance, and a baby squealed with hunger. Women catcalled to Lore, offering him their bed for the night as, somewhere close to them, someone beat against a carpet, clearing it of dirt. My hands were bound before me, and Lore’s arm had replaced Knox’s, shielding me from those around us. If I had to guess, I’d say Knox had brought me to his palace, and that meant my chances of escaping him were slim, all things considered.
“Keep your mouth closed, or I will cut that skilled tongue off myself, and that would be a fucking tragedy.”
I didn’t speak as he entered what I assumed was a courtyard, calling out that the king was en route and that the people should assemble. My heart hammered in my chest as he stopped, pulling me down with him carefully.
“Open the doors,” he demanded, and we went through quickly, or I tried to until my foot struck a stair, and I started to trip. “Steady.” He rushed me through the inside of what I assumed was the palace, helping me up countless sets of stairs, which he finally gave up on, hefting me into his arms, moving faster as we ascended them.
My heart raced as heavy footfalls sounded around us. The smell of freshly polished steel hit my nose as Lore adjusted me in his arms, issuing quick, rapid orders to men, who answered in the same strange language they spoke. Once we stopped moving up the stairs, he walked slower as the sound of a doorknob turning and hinges clicking into place met my ears. We were finally at what was to be my prison cell.
Chapter 58
A door opened and closed, and then the blindfold was yanked off, and I blinked to adjust to the light of the room. Lore frowned, moving to a large box. He opened the lid and removed a shirt, sniffing it before pulling it over my head and down my body, covering the cuffs. Next, he pushed me toward an open balcony door and stopped me before I was through it, turning to stare down at me.
“Watch, but don’t make a fucking sound, or I’ll choke that pretty throat until you’re a fucking mute, understood?” he asked. I nodded, turning to watch the large party that we’d been with earlier enter the gates. Lore pushed me to the corner of the balcony, concealing us in the shadows.
The soldiers obscured Knox’s presence, but the moment they parted and spread out in the courtyard, he came into view. I closed my eyes against what he held in his armor-clad fist. Amara’s head was held by the hair, a trophy that made the cheers for their king’s return go silent.
“I give you Amara Hecate, the daughter of Freya Hecate. An original bloodline witch,” he roared, and the crowd went crazy.
And just like that, he claimed my kill, fucker.
Knox wore full armor, but gone was the obsidian that matched his men’s. He wore a silver chest plate that was covered in ravens, with a larger one etched into the middle. His skull mask was more silver than bone this time, proving he had many. His crown was gone, replaced with horns that stuck back instead of forward. He looked like the legends of the knights of old, and yet his armor was more advanced and easy to move in. Metal protected his neck, and underneath was a wicked covering of thick chainmail. The shield on his free arm was also etched in ravens, with the initials SK in the middle of the design, reminding him of what he had lost.
Knox dismounted from the warhorse, walked to a statue of a beautiful woman and boy, and placed my sister’s head at their feet, like an offering. I watched him peering up at me, staring as I shook my head, feeling as if I was intruding upon his sacrifice. I backed up, I turned to look at Lore, who smiled, slipping an arm around me to cover my mouth as he held me there, forcing me to watch Knox.
“You will watch and listen, because the king demands it,” Lore uttered, barely above a whisper.
“As I speak, those from the original bloodlines that followed Hecate to the Human Realm are being collected and brought here to face charges of treason, as are the leaders of these bloodlines that remained here, in the Nine Realms, watching as the rest of us suffered at the hands of the witches and their supporters. They will be brought here and given a traitor’s death. Soon, we will prepare to march on the first of the House of Witches castles and take their heads for our walls!” The crowd exploded, and I closed my eyes, silently praying that people got out before he reached them. “Tonight we feast! Tomorrow, we prepare for war on those who murdered thousands of our people, and our beloved queen and our prince!” His voice held hatred, and worse, it held the hope of victory. Hope could kill and win more wars than any other emotion. Hope made them believe they could win, even against insurmountable odds.
Knox left Amara’s head sitting on the base of the statue as people cheered him on, touching him as he passed by them, staring directly at me through the slits of his armor. Lore pulled me from the balcony the moment Knox vanished beneath us and walked me back into the room.
It was the same room as in the library with books piled on tables, and pillows covering the white bed where he’d watched me flicking the magic bean while withholding the stock. I shivered as the sound of heavy footsteps walking over granite floors echoed as they closed the distance to the door. Lore stepped away from me, staring at Knox as he came through the door. I refused to meet his eyes, hating that he’d taken me from one prison only to
hold me in another.
“Wait outside, Lore,” he growled, not moving from the doorway as I stood with my hands in front of me, staring away from him.
The moment Lore was gone, Knox started toward a large dresser. I closed my eyes and listened as he removed his armor and then stood in front of me. My eyes were mere slits that were glued to the floor when his hand brushed my cheek. I snapped them open wide, glaring at him as I stepped away from his touch.
“Sit down, Aria.” His eyes narrowed, emphasizing the demand, so I moved to the couch and took a seat. He snorted, looking around the room before turning back to me, “You’re alive because I decided you can be useful.”
“Like the other witches, you control? The ones you turned into mindless zombies? Pass, mowing down on bones and brains is a hard limit for me. As is being your little bitch, Knox,” I snorted.
“You witnessed Gerald and his depravity. That is who people left in charge of taking care of the Nine Realms. In fact, he is tame compared to most of the monsters that rule in your absence. Your people gave the power to corrupt leaders, and they, in return, tore this fucking place apart. I intend to rebuild it.”
“Yeah, in fire and blood sounds like an amazing place to live,” I stated, looking at him dead in the eye.
“I want you to help me fight this war, Aria.”
“Pass.”
“If I bring you the head of the witches to clean for my walls, I bet you change your mind. It changed the witches who served me in Haven Falls, minds. I’m guessing you don’t want to find your sisters’ heads among the pile?”
“You won’t find them,” I stated confidently.
“Oh, but I will.” He held his arms out wide, watching me. “Look around you, Aria. You’re in the same library that stood in Haven Falls.”
Flames of Chaos Page 43