by Tami Lund
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “It depends on what sort of poison they used, and how much. Tanner said she was complaining of severe nausea. Generally, poison meant to kill would do its job very quickly.”
“You have a theory,” Cecilia prompted.
Dane glanced at Tanner. His eyes were closed and his head rested against the passenger side window. “I think…I think they deliberately made her sick. I think they knew, or at least suspected, that Tanner would seek a healer, thus leaving the beach house and its inhabitants unprotected.” He shifted his gaze to the king. “I doubt they anticipated you would come to me, your majesty.”
“What about the guards?” the king asked.
“Drugged as well,” Cecilia explained. “A sleeping draught.”
“That means my daughter, my unborn grandbabe, and my mate are all trapped, without any means of protection.”
Cecilia and Dane exchanged a look. He was right, but neither wanted to say it out loud.
Tanner abruptly surged from sleep. “Olivia,” he shouted, looking around with wide, wild eyes. “Olivia.”
“Finn will find her, Tanner,” Cecilia assured him.
He didn’t hear her. He was too busy scrabbling at the door, trying to get to the handle, to push it open. “Why are we sitting in a truck in the pole barn?” he asked.
“Finn thought it was the safest place for us to hide,” Dane explained. “You agreed,” he reminded him.
“Fuck hiding. My mate is in danger.”
Although he wasn’t one hundred percent, he looked markedly better than he had when they found him earlier. Cecilia decided that was good. Because if Olivia was in danger, then so too was Finn.
“Let’s go,” she said, and she leaped out of the extended cab.
“Cecilia,” Dane called out. She rounded the truck and met Tanner as he climbed out of the passenger seat.
“Protect the king, Dane,” she commanded. Although she had no right whatsoever telling him what to do, she knew he would listen nonetheless. Dane took his responsibilities to the king seriously.
Tanner didn’t say a word. He simply started walking away. Cecilia hurried to catch up.
“Finn will kick my ass if I let anything happen to you,” he remarked after determining it was safe to slip out of the pole barn. “For that matter, so will Olivia.”
“Let’s just worry about finding them. I’ll handle Finn later.”
“I’ll bet you will,” Tanner said on a snort and then they fell silent as he led them across the small expanse of lawn separating the house from the pole barn.
They slipped into the kitchens and then ducked into a walk-in pantry. “Where do you think she would hide?” Tanner whispered.
Cecilia studied him while she considered his question. His complexion was still gray, his lips outlined in white. His eyes were bloodshot; his face was covered with bruises and cuts that still seeped blood. Dane had used his healing magic to close up the gaping wounds on his chest and arm, but both were still bright red and crusted with blood.
“I’m fine,” he snapped, clearly seeing the concern in her eyes. “Think, Cecilia. Where would she go? I know she would have realized at some point that she was in danger. But where the hell would she hide?”
“I know,” she blurted. “The nursery. Let’s go.”
“The nursery? Why the hell would she go to the nursery?”
“Because Uncle Sander, in a moment of surprising genius, suggested the builders add a secret safe room that is only accessible with an incantation that he intends for only a select few to be aware of. Your pup is his heir, after all.”
“You’re right,” Tanner said as he followed her out of the pantry, toward the servants’ staircase. “That is surprising. And fucking brilliant.” He sounded impressed by his father-in-law’s forethought. It was probably the first time since they’d known one another.
At the top of the stairs, Cecilia turned right, toward Tanner and Olivia’s suites. She was three steps down the hall, when she was abruptly grabbed from behind and pushed up against the wall, tucked into a darkened corner. Her magic flared, and then Finn’s face appeared in her line of vision.
“What the hell are you doing in here?” he demanded, his voice pitched low. His eyes glowed as brightly as they did when he and Cecilia made love.
“Do you not fucking get the seriousness of this situation?” he snapped when she didn’t respond. His hands glowed where they gripped her shoulders.
“I know where she’s hiding,” Cecilia attempted to explain.
“Good,” a coarse, whispery voice said. “Because we have thus far been unable to find her.”
Finn twisted around to face Cedric, pressing his back against Cecilia so she was almost entirely hidden from view. She leaned to the side, peeked around his shoulder and watched as Tanner shifted into the form of a lion and without warning attacked the group of Lightbearers crowded around her brother. They fell and scattered like bowling pins, while Cedric deftly stepped out of the line of fire and commanded another group to surge forward. Blasts of light exploded, indicating at least one Lightbearer was dead, and more appeared and jumped into the fray.
There were so many. Cedric had done far too good a job of recruiting, although as Cecilia had had time to think on it lately, she supposed he had likely been doing so for upward of ten years. Ever since he faked his own death.
“Help him, Finn,” she whispered, knowing only he could hear her.
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“It’s you he wants. And I’m not going to let him have you.”
Was he honestly choosing her over his own pack master? From what little she understood about his species, she knew that went against everything he believed, everything he had ever been taught.
They were more alike than she would have thought. But she couldn’t let Tanner die.
“Go,” she said, giving his shoulder a push. “Help him. I’ll run the other way. I swear. I’ll run right back to the pole barn and get in the truck, and Dane and Uncle Sander and I will leave the coterie. You have my word, Finn. Just please save him!”
He turned his head to the side but did not fully look at her. She felt his hand squeeze her hip. And then he was gone, another lion leaping into the fray. Cecilia waited until he’d led the group a short way down the hall, and then she ran in the opposite direction, toward the king and queen’s chambers. She knew there was a staircase at that end of the hall that would lead her down into the kitchens and then outside, where she could skirt around the house and run to the pole barn. While she was desperately afraid for Finn and Tanner, this time, she would do exactly what she’d promised to do. It was the least she could do, given his decision to protect her over his pack master.
She made it to the top of the staircase before he caught up with her. In truth, she had sensed someone was following her. And if she was really being honest with herself, she would admit that she even knew it was him.
“Cedric,” she said when he grabbed the back of her dress and gave it a jerk, abruptly pulling her to a stop.
It wasn’t him.
“Father?” Her voice dripped disbelief. Her father had followed her? Why?
“I have her,” he called out. Cedric’s face appeared over his shoulder.
“Good. It is time to end this, once and for all. She will never accept the truth. I see that now. There is only one solution.”
Her father used his left arm to push her back against the wall, while he raised his right arm and summoned a sword.
“You’re going to kill me?” she whispered, staring into his eyes.
“You would not listen. Over and over, you disobeyed us.”
“Therefore the solution is to kill me? Your own daughter?”
“I have another child,” her father said, as calmly as if it was perfectly logical to consider killing his own child. “Cedric has always followed the way of the Lightbearers. He is a role model for the rest of us. He should be king. It only
makes sense.”
“This is all a plan to make you king?” she asked, looking at Cedric. “You killed Samuel and mother and who knows how many others—just so you could become king? What makes you better qualified for the position that your uncle—a direct descendent of every previous king we’ve ever had?”
Cedric waved his hand, dismissing her words. “I am technically next in line anyway. The queen did not bear a son, and Olivia did not mate with a Lightbearer and bear a son. That monster growing in her belly cannot rule our coterie. It is blasphemy.”
“I would choose Olivia and Tanner’s son over you any day,” Cecilia snapped.
“Which is why you must die. Do it,” he commanded his father. “Do it and destroy any evidence of yours and mother’s failings.”
“No,” Cecilia cried, her gaze flying back to her father’s face. All she saw there was blind faith, the belief that whatever words his son spoke, they were the truth, above everything else. Even the fact that he’d created the woman he was about to slay.
“Father,” she whispered, staring up at him. The hand holding the sword shook, but he did not release the magic. Instead, he lifted the sword, as if he intended to slash sideways, through her neck, just as Cedric had killed Samuel.
“No!” someone else cried, and as the sword swung, that person leaped between Gerard and Cecilia, and his sword sliced through the torso of his own mate.
“Lacey,” he cried, releasing the magic so that his sword disappeared, and catching her as she fell. The front of her dress was already soaked with blood. More blood dribbled over her lips.
“Lacey,” he said again, his gaze darted from her to Cedric and back again. “I thought—I thought you were dead,” he whispered.
“My daughter,” she said on a gurgle, as bloody spittle bubbled from her mouth.
“Mama,” Cecilia whispered, her wide eyes staring at her dying mother.
“I am so sorry … I love you, Cici…” It was the first time her mother had ever called her by the affectionate nickname Olivia had come up with when they had been younglings.
“I love you too, Mama,” Cecilia whispered. Her eyes filled with tears, and she choked on a sob. So many pointless deaths, all because of her brother’s misguided beliefs. Where had it all gone wrong? How could they have raised two so very different children?
The answer was, unfortunately, easy. Cecilia had not been raised by them, not really. The king and queen had taken her under their wing, had raised her in a way that allowed her to have her own beliefs, develop her own opinions. Although they too had once been afraid of shifters, they were open-minded enough to adjust their beliefs, to accept their daughter’s babe as the heir to the throne, despite the fact that he would be half shifter.
Maybe, had she mated with someone else, Lacey would have been as open-minded. Now Cecilia would never know.
There was a blinding flash of light as the last breath left her mother’s body, and then she was dead, lying in her mate’s arms, her lifeless eyes staring at the ceiling. He continued to hold her as her blood soaked his shirt.
“Enough,” Cedric’s voice burst from him, all attempts at whispering gone. “She is dead. Now do the same to Cecilia. Kill her.”
Gerard did nothing for several seconds. And then he stood, still cradling his mate’s body in his arms. “No,” he said, his voice raw with emotion. “I must tend to my mate.”
Without looking at either Cedric or Cecilia, he walked down the stairs and disappeared from view.
“I should know better than to presume others could do anything as well as myself,” Cedric said, his sneering voice as cold as ice. He pulled on his magic and a sword appeared in his hand.
Without consciously thinking about it, Cecilia did the same thing. He smirked. “Do you even know how to use that thing?”
She squared her shoulders, and using both hands, held the sword before her. It didn’t even shake. “You killed Samuel. And our mother.”
“And your shifter lover, by this point,” he said, his pale eyes like chips of ice. “And the father of the princess’s spawn.”
“Finn is still alive,” she retorted. “I can feel it.”
“Well, if we get lucky, he will feel it when I slay you.” He lifted his sword, preparing to strike.
“I don’t think so, asshole.”
Cedric whipped around to face the owner of the voice. Lisa stood at the top of the stairs, with the queen and Olivia each peering over a shoulder.
“Cedric?” Olivia gasped. “But—how? You died—over ten years ago!”
“Obviously not,” Lisa drawled. “Magic or no, no one can come back from the dead. Trust me, I know.”
“Ah, you brought the princess and queen to me. Excellent. Now I will not have to burn down the house to kill them. I had been looking forward to making it my own residence.”
He started up the steps, his sword at the ready.
“No,” Cecilia cried, and she stabbed out with her own sword. She felt it as the tip greeted flesh, and after a moment’s resistance, pierced it, going all the way through until it stuck out through his belly. Shock caused her to release her hold on the sword and lift her hands to her mouth.
Cedric twisted around and stared at her, his own shock spelled out on his face. “You …You…” He looked down at the steel protruding from his body. It was dark with his blood, seeping around the wound and soaking his scarlet cloak, intermingling with the dried blood from when he’d killed Samuel.
“You bitch,” he snarled. “I’m going to kill you, I swear it. Whether I die from this wound or not, my last goal in this life is to destroy you!”
“Why?” Cecilia cried. “Why do you hate me so?”
“Because you ruined everything for me,” he snapped, stabbing his finger at her. “Our parents adored me, paid all their attentions to me, lavished me with their love. And then you came along, and suddenly I had to share them. And if that wasn’t bad enough, you didn’t even appreciate it. Forever disobeying them, forever doing exactly as you pleased, without a care for their opinions or beliefs or—” His voice abruptly cut off on a gurgle as Lisa grabbed the hilt of the sword and jerked it up, widening the hole in his gut.
Cedric’s mouth opened and closed several times, and his fingers curled into fists, and then there was an explosion of light as he crumpled to the stairs. Cecilia shifted to the side so as to avoid his body as it rolled down the steps.
“Sibling rivalry’s a bitch,” Lisa said into the ensuing silence. “And some idiots just don’t know when to stop. Everybody good here?” She looked at Cecilia, then shifted her inquiring gaze to Olivia and the queen.
Olivia dropped to her knees and retched. Her mother patted her back and clucked sympathetically.
“Whelping’s a bitch, too,” Lisa added, then she climbed to the top of the staircase. “Let’s go. I’m sure your respective mates are ready to see for themselves that you all are safe and sound.”
Cecilia obediently followed, even as she thought, But I don’t have a mate.
Chapter 26
“Cecilia’s father is dead as well. Apparently he jumped off the cliff, with his deceased mate in his arms. Alexa confirmed his death.”
Finn recited the list of casualties to Tanner and the king, along with the report of those who had been injured thanks to Cedric’s attempted coup. They were locked in the library, and the king had warded the doors and windows for extra security. They weren’t afraid of another uprising, but they had all agreed to do this part in private. It was the first time in the Lightbearers’ five-hundred-year history that such a bloodbath had occurred, and the last thing the king needed now was for mass hysteria to occur if someone overheard Finn’s emotionless retelling of the events.
Dane and the queen were overseeing the arrangements for the burning ceremonies for the various dead. Olivia had been relegated to her bed by both Tanner and Alexa, and the healer had given her a sleeping draught that she assured Tanner would not harm the pup growing in her belly. She had
also assured both parents-to-be that the growing pup had not suffered from his mother’s poison-induced illness.
Cecilia had crawled into the bed with her and had fallen asleep without the aid of a sleeping draught. Finn ached to be with her, to comfort her, to assure her that he would always be there for her. It killed him that he hadn’t been there when she’d stabbed her own brother. If he could change the hands of time, he would have arranged it so he could do it for her. The man had needed to die, but Cecilia should not have been the one to do it. Killing another person was a heavy burden to carry for the rest of one’s life.
“What?” he asked, because he realized Tanner had asked him a question, but he hadn’t heard the words.
“I asked about Carley. What’s the prognosis?”
Carley’s crumpled, broken body had been discovered at the base of the staircase leading up the cliff wall. Miraculously, she had been alive when Alexa found her and had enlisted the help of the guard, Jake Azenor, to carry her back to Alexa’s cottage so she could heal her.
Alexa and Tanner had missed one another in the process, when he had been heading to see her for help with Olivia’s nausea. That was when he had been attacked by Cedric’s rebels.
“Alexa and several healers are taking turns working on her, round the clock. She won’t give us a definite answer yet, other than to say, ‘I will save her.’ Which is admirable, but not exactly a prognosis.”
“And her mate?”
“We haven’t located him yet. My current opinion is that he left the coterie. Josh Tigre from the Detroit pack has agreed to send a small group up here to help us scour the area immediately surrounding the wards.”
“What do we do with the others?” Tanner asked, turning to face the king. “There are seventy-three Lightbearers currently being held prisoner. Each one has admitted to being a follower of Cedric Druthers.” Like Finn, Tanner refused to call Cedric by the name he’d given himself, the Chosen One.