Found and Forged

by Ivy Asher

  What the fuck?

  Terror floods me, and I push him out of my lap and scramble back away from the still gasping body. My body lights up with pain, and I call on Siah’s runes and fix myself. I search the room for Laiken, trying to understand what the fuck just happened. Then it dawns on me. It was never her.

  A gasping sob tears out of me with the realization. And I cover my mouth to trap another one trying to escape. It’s chaos and mayhem all around me, but all I can do is try to hold the pieces of me together and watch the man I stabbed in the throat take his last breath. I look up and see Talon across the room, fighting Sorik. I don’t spot Suryn or any of my Shields, but my blood runs cold when Bastien screams, “Vinna, no, it’s me!”

  The anguish and betrayal that rings out in his voice hit me like a truck. I’m on my feet in seconds, running for him as he drops his sword and shakes his head. He’s fighting a woman who looks nothing like me, and if I hadn’t just had my heart shredded by what just happened with Laiken, I wouldn’t understand anything that’s going on right now.

  I scream in rage as I bring my sword down and cut the bitch fighting Bastien in two. Bastien roars out a lament and reaches for imposter me as he looks up with vengeance in his gaze. His pain and anger tear at me, but when his agonized and enraged hazel stare meets mine, shock and disbelief are suddenly all I see. He reaches for me and pulls me to him.

  “What just happened?” he begs me as he runs his hands and eyes all over my body to make sure I’m actually there and okay.

  “They’re illusions. Very, very fucking good illusions,” I pant at him as he wraps his arm around me. “Bastien, if you see me again, ask me what the code word is, and if I don’t say pineapple, kill me. Okay?” I tell him, but he looks so fucking haunted, I don’t think anything is sinking in.

  “Bastien!” I yell in his head, and he blinks out of his horrified stupor. “Use the runes. We need to talk in each other’s heads. There’s no way to know what’s really going on otherwise.”

  I light up all my runes and shout into my Chosen’s heads. It goes against every instinct not to distract them, but how else are we going to be able to tell what’s happening?

  “If any of you are fighting me right now, kill her. Someone here is creating very powerful illusions, and what’s in front of you is not what you think!” I tell them.

  “You mean Bastien is not trying to kill me?” Valen asks, his mental tone filled with heartache and confusion.

  “Never, Val! I would never!” Bastien confirms, and then he runs off in the direction of where Valen is and cuts off the head of the Sentinel he’s fighting.

  “Vinna, go wolf mode!” Torrez yells in my head. “You can smell whether it’s us or not if we try to approach you.”

  “Got it,” I confirm as I activate Torrez’s marks on my shoulder, tapping into the extra smell and deactivating the change in sight it usually causes. Wolf vision is not going to help me in this cluster fuck of a battle.

  I wrinkle my nose as the sour stench of fear and the metallic tang of anger flood my senses. I stab through the back of Talon, telling myself over and over again it’s not him. I invite fury and wrath to take over everything inside of me. Sorik holds up his short swords threateningly as I approach him.

  “Sorik, it’s me, Vinna. I’m not going to hurt you,” I tell him as I drop my weapon.

  “Yeah, not buying that since that’s what the last you told me,” he growls, and my heart hurts for him.

  “You are my mom’s Chosen. I first saw you in a club. I thought you looked like an ancient Viking. You helped save me when Faron kidnapped me. You crossed into Silas pack territory where you showed me your runes and told me who you were. That was the first time I saw Siah.”

  “Thank fuck,” Sorik declares as he steps in to give me a tight desperate hug. “They can’t answer personal things. They look like other people and sound like other people, but they don’t know details,” he tells me, and I immediately relay that back to my Chosen.

  Someone charges me from behind, and I spin and slam my sword through the chest of the Colossal Douche I fought and beat the night I met Lachlan and his coven. Whoever is doing this can’t differentiate between people we care about and just people in our past. There’s a flaw in however their ability works. Ryker moves toward me, his face haunted. I breathe in deeply and get a nose full of fear and disbelief. Under that though is a clean scent of sun-dried cotton, santolina, and amber.

  “Ryker!” I shout into his mind and release the magic to any weapons in my hands. “It’s me,” I reassure him, and he crashes into me, burying his head in my neck and squeezing me so hard my bones are protesting. Shouts and the clang of weapons all around us keep me centered in the battle raging all around us and keep me from getting lost in his hold the way I want to.

  “I’ve killed you three times,” he confesses, his bright blue eyes haunted. “I knew it wasn’t you, you would never attack us, but I don’t think I’m ever going to get the image of you dying out of my head.”

  “I’m so fucking sorry,” I tell him, squeezing him tighter. “I’m here, I’m in your arms. I’m safe. We need to make sure everyone else is too though,” I explain, pushing out of his hold.

  Ryker nods and sticks with me as we cut our way through the fighting. Sabin comes running for us. I breathe him in, but the scent is all wrong. I throw a dagger, and Sabin’s feet go out from under him as it hits him so hard in the throat he flies back. Ryker’s words and tormented gaze resonate through me as I watch Sabin die. I know it’s not him, but it doesn’t make the visual any less fucking traumatizing.

  “Vinna, Enoch and his coven are cornered in the back bedroom on your left,” Siah tells me. “I’m trying to get through to them, but I have to kill off my whole family…” he trails off, and white hot rage surges through me.

  When I find whoever the fuck is responsible for this repeating nightmare, I’m going to strangle them with their own guts. I run in the direction where Siah must be. I don’t know what’s going to be more fucked up to him, having to kill people that look like his long lost, dead family or watching your mate cut them down. I don’t see what Siah sees, thank fuck, but I know his siblings were kids when some of them died, and I don’t want to think of the scar it will leave on him to watch them cut down, even when he knows it’s not actually them.

  “Siah, close your eyes,” I mentally shout at him as I break through the ring of Sentinels that are surrounding him.

  He does it without question, and I’m so fucking grateful and honored by his trust. Ryker and I start cutting them down, and they go from random strangers I don’t recognize to people I know in a blink. I cut off Mave’s arm and then stab her through the heart. The sisters lose their heads one by one, and then Beth steps into my path.

  I shake my head at this illusion. “You got the wrong face,” I tell the Sentinel behind the illusion. Beth stabs me in the stomach with a short spear-looking thing. I push forward against it and shove my hands against her chest. Flames erupt all over her, and she screams as they lick up her body and catch her hair on fire.

  I’ve always wondered how I would feel if I could give Beth a taste of what she dished out to me my whole life. Would it make me feel better to starve her and beat her? Would I find comfort in verbally tearing her down and breaking her like she so often tried to do with me? I watch Beth fall to the ground, completely engulfed in flames, and realize the answer is no. It doesn’t change anything.

  Ryker quickly dispatches the last of Siah’s attackers, and I reach up and caress Siah’s face.

  “It’s over,” I tell him softly, and he opens his eyes and leans into my hand.

  “Thank you,” he whispers, his voice pained.

  “I’ve got you,” I tell him, our vow coming full circle.

  I give him a soft smile and then move away in the direction of the room he said Enoch and the others are trapped in. Valen and Bastien join us, and relief spreads through me when they smell right. There’s a bottleneck
of people at the doorway into the room. The presence of so many of us makes it easier to identify the enemy. The illusions seem to work better when it’s more one on one. It’s as if the magic can really only focus on the people in one person’s life at a time.

  With me, Ryker, Siah, Valen and Bastien there, the people stuffed in and around the entryway take on various identities. Laiken comes for me again, as does Keegan. Bastien cuts them both down before they can take two steps in my direction. Ryker cuts through Silva and a woman I recognize from a picture Bastien has in his room.

  “It’s not real,” I yell at Bastien and Valen as they both watch Ryker slit their mother’s throat.

  Tears well in Valen’s eyes, and he blinks rapidly to clear the emotion away. My throat gets tight. I want to scream and punish and kill these fuckers for putting the ones I love through this torture.

  I call on my short swords and get to work. My Chosen and I move like the unit we are as we weave in and out of each other, spinning, dipping, bending and leading in a death dance. One dead Sentinel at a time, we make it inside the room. I step over bodies and through the doorway. I find Enoch, Kallan, Nash and Becket each battling several Sentinels, while Suryn stands there...guarding the fucking Sovereign.

  I take one look at the leader of the Sentinels and know exactly who we have to thank for today’s trauma fest. I’m surprised she’s even down here getting her hands dirty, but maybe she has to be within a certain proximity to keep the illusions up. Neither she nor Suryn have noticed that we’ve just walked in on their little party. The Sovereign’s entire focus is on Suryn, while her stare is locked on my Shields.

  I don’t know what illusion the Sovereign is making Suryn see or if she’s even making her see an illusion. Didn’t she say something in the hall that night about getting Suryn on board. Maybe Suryn, the first in line to rule the Sentinels, doesn’t give two fucks about the males her magic has marked getting slaughtered in front of her.

  As soon as that thought enters my mind, it feels wrong. The way she reacted at the training facility isn’t the way someone reacts when they don’t care. She may talk the Sovereign’s talk when it comes to Enoch, Kallan, Becket, and Nash, but I don’t actually think she believes it. At least not the way the Sovereign and her cronies do.

  There’s a glimmer in the air around the Sovereign and Suryn. I study them and try to drown out the battle cries and sounds of weapons and magic clashing all around me as my Chosen unleash hell on the Sentinels attacking my Shields. Suryn doesn’t take her eyes off of what’s happening, and the Sovereign stares at her with such intensity it makes the hair on my arms rise. I move fluidly against the wall, chanting a steady mantra of you don’t see me, you don’t see me.

  The massive bed in the room splinters as Sabin picks up a Sentinel by the throat and slams him down on top of it. Furniture is reduced to a pile of rubble as it’s used as a weapon or a projectile, and still Suryn and the Sovereign seem unfazed. I push magic out toward the barrier, but I can’t get a feel for what comprises it. It doesn’t feel threatening, more like a magic brick wall of some sort. I approach from behind and place a hand against the barrier.

  It gives as I push against it, and I hesitate. I can get through here. Unease strikes through me as the words too easy twist around in my head. No one has noticed that I’m here, and I push further into the magic wall around the Sovereign. It feels similar to when I walked through the barrier into Tierit. I shove through it and call on my throwing knives as I surface on the other side.

  I shake off the staticky feeling that coats my limbs and pull my hand back, ready to end the Sovereign and her reign of terror. And that’s when she looks over her shoulder at me and smiles.

  30

  Her lips pull back in a grin filled with pure malevolence, and my blood turns to ice in my veins.

  “Nice of you to join us,” she coos venomously, and then she flings out her palm and slams me square in the chest with a white bolt of pain. I’m shoved back against the now rock hard interior of the barrier, so hard I can hear my bones crack.

  I can’t even scream, it all happens so fast. I make a haunting, gurgling sound as my vision tunnels, and my skin starts to feel like it’s melting off my fracturing bones. I can’t think through what the fuck is happening, my mind is so overwhelmed by pain.

  A tinkling laugh fills my ears. “Thought you could just waltz in here and play the hero,” the Sovereign tuts and then sends another bolt of pure torture into me with her other hand.

  I can taste the blood gurgling up my throat, and whatever it is she’s doing...is killing me. I try to call on my weapons, but nothing happens. I beg my runes to give me their shields and protect me, but my magic doesn’t respond. I grit my teeth until they feel like they’re going to crumble to nothing in my mouth, and reach out to grasp the white bolt hammering into my chest.

  It feels like lava in my hand, and I look down, fully expecting my limb to crumble to ash, but it doesn’t. It fucking hurts, but it’s still there. I tighten my grasp, and like I’m kinking a hose, the stream of agony flowing into me tapers. I reach out with my other hand and grab the second bolt the Sovereign shot into me. I grip it as tightly as I can, and the mind-numbing pain diminishes just enough to give me hope that there’s some way to survive this.

  I hold onto the bolts like the misery-filled lifelines they are. I push away from the barrier I’m pancaked against, each step feeling like it’s taking every ounce of energy I have. I stare at the Sovereign, her waning sneer my only goal. Surprise flickers through her eyes as I hold onto the bolts and take one more staggering step toward her.

  She tries to close her palm but can’t. She stares down at her hand like it’s betrayed her, and I can see her try to force it into a fist. I think she’s trying to cut off whatever she’s doing to me, but she can’t. She scowls up at me, her eyes glittering with malice. She looks down at where I have a stranglehold on her magic, and snarls.

  The Sovereign yanks her hand back, and the bolt of torment slips slightly out of my grip. I don’t know what will happen if she can retract the crackling pain filled strikes, but I’m not about to find out. She tries to dislodge them from my grasp again, and I almost lose my balance, trying to hold on to them, and I cry out as I struggle to keep my feet underneath me.

  “Suryn!” the Sovereign screams out.

  I look over and watch as Suryn’s head snaps from where she’s still watching the fighting, over to us. She blinks and shakes her head like she’s trying to clear it, and then it registers in her eyes and features what’s going on. Suryn looks away from the struggle between the Sovereign and me out into the room. She cries out and slams a hand against the barrier. She slams a fist and then another against the magic trapping her and growls out her frustration.

  I look away from Suryn’s struggle to get out, and wrap the beam of agony around one wrist and then the other. Anguish sears through me at the contact, but I use the white bolts as leverage to get me closer to the Sovereign. If I can just get within striking distance. I don’t fucking care if it kills me in the end to try, but at least I can take the bitch with me.

  I glare at the Sovereign, vengeance and death flaring in my eyes.

  Let’s see how good this bitch is at tug of war.

  I wrap the beams around my arms again and scream from the pain that hammers through me.

  “Suryn!” the Sovereign shrieks in time with my voiced agony. “Kill her and I’ll spare your Marked,” she offers, and Suryn turns away from the barrier back to us. “Kill her and no one will ever touch your Chosen again. I vow it, Suryn!” the Sovereign bellows, and my screams rip my voice in half. Blood dribbles out from my clenched teeth. I’m dying, but I can’t let go.

  Something massive slams against the barrier. I look to find Sabin tearing at the magic and shouting my name. I can’t hear him, but I can see his lips call out to me, his eyes frenzied and anguished. Bastien shoulders the barrier next to him, and not too far away from them, I spot Becket hammering the magic
with his mace.

  My screams are nothing but blood-filled gurgles as I tense and make another loop around my arms, bringing myself one step closer to the Sovereign. My legs feel jellied, and I know I won’t be able to stay on my feet much longer. Deafening thumps sound off all around me as the barrier is hammered by all of my Chosen and my Shields. Rage and terror streak through them as they soundlessly scream and scramble to get in.

  “Swear a blood oath that all of us will be safe, Aunt. That no one will lay a hand on them or on me,” Suryn shouts out, her words partially drowned out by the booming efforts of all the guys trying to force their way in here.

  The Sovereign narrows her eyes, and her pursed lips form a snarl.

  “That’s what I thought,” Suryn growls, and then she leaps for the Sovereign, her katana glinting in the flashing magic that’s doing its best to kill me.

  I hold my breath and will her to close the distance and end this once and for all. My knees give out. I fall to the floor and lose my hold on one of the bolts. It snaps back to the Sovereign. I try—and fail—to get to my feet to stop her from shoving her palm out at Suryn. The strike of white undiluted pain surges out of the Sovereign’s palm. I watch like it’s in slow motion as it crackles toward Suryn. It slams into her mid-leap, and it’s like watching someone get hit by a semi-truck. Suryn folds in on herself and is thrown back, the katana blinking to nothing in her grip. She screams a blood curdling scream that I feel scar my soul.

  The Sovereign watches her niece writhing in pain, with an unhinged look of glee that makes me feel sick and tainted just from witnessing it. I grab the bolt of pain still wrapped around my right arm with my other hand and pull at it, using it to help me get to my feet. I wrap it around my arm again and close the distance even more.

  Five feet.

  Four.

  Suryn’s screams make my ears bleed.

  Three.

  I look over at the thundering fists against the barrier.