Feel My Power: The Iron Fae book 2

by Cassidy, Debbie

  “Blade, you have made us proud,” the king said. “You have elevated Winter above all seasons. There is no doubt in my mind that Spring will experience the same defeat at your hands as Summer and Autumn have.”

  “Thank you, Your Majesty.” I kept my tone light and polite.

  He seemed pleased by that. “Once the next trial is over, you will have your pick of residence in the Keep and pick of domestic staff to serve you. You will be given the status of Airm Marfach.”

  Wait. What? “Apologies, Your Majesty, but don’t we already have an Airm Marfach.”

  He shrugged and picked up his goblet. “Not much of a weapon if he allowed himself to be captured by Autumn.”

  What the fuck? “But we will be claiming him back.”

  The Winter King’s gaze grew laser-focused as it fell on me. “Maybe. But it’s hardly worth a quarrel to claim back a blunt sword when we have a Lethal Blade in our possession already.”

  Was he serious? I looked to Aspen, who kept his gaze studiously trained on the table. My mind told me to shut the fuck up. To go with it, to accept the king’s words and confront Aspen later. I mean, he’d told me he was getting Slade back. Had he lied? But my heart… My heart was up in arms, ready to fight for him.

  I took a sip of my wine and composed my thoughts. “Of course. But I wonder what message it sends the other courts to see Winter concede so easily.”

  The Winter King looked speculative. “The Blade has a valid point. We cannot allow Autumn to claim what is rightfully ours. Aspen, you will retrieve our Airm Marfach.” He smiled, showcasing even, white teeth. “And Winter will have two Airm Marfachs to boast of.”

  I stifled my exhalation of relief as everyone broke into light conversation. Aspen leaned in on the pretext of refilling my goblet.

  “Nicely done,” he muttered.

  The Tuatha filled their plates, but Juniper, the icy blue-eyed Tuatha, looked up the table at the Winter King. “Any news of Minira?”

  The Winter King graced her with a closed-lipped smile. “Ah, yes. Your question brings me to my news for the evening.”

  Silence fell across the table. “You’ve been whispering and worrying about the ailment for some time. But I have good news. A cure has been discovered, and Minira is the first to be given treatment.”

  I had no idea what this ailment was, but my pulse quickened as the table lit up with a buzz of excitement.

  I turned to Aspen with a question in my eyes, but his jaw was tight, and the knuckles of his hand gripping his goblet were white.

  “We will no longer fear the ailment,” the Winter King said.

  The doors to the left of the room opened, and a small figure with brown skin, dark hair, and huge brown eyes swept in. The breath rushed out of my lungs because, despite the elaborate hairdo and the fancy clothes, despite the fact the small figure didn’t limp, I knew her.

  “Nina…” Her name was a whisper on my lips.

  Aspen squeezed my thigh under the table in warning.

  What was this? What was my sister doing here?

  Nina’s gaze slid over the gathered, over me, as if I was nothing, before settling on the Winter King. Her face broke into a smile. A smile I knew. A smile I loved, except there was no light in her eyes. There was no emotion in that smile. It was an action. Nothing more.

  “Brother,” she said. “What do you think?” She gave a twirl.

  “I think this new body suits you very well, Minira.”

  New body?

  “Thank you,” the thing in Nina’s body said. “She was a fighter, but no match for me. I edged her out soon enough. Human consciousness is so weak. And a child? Pfft, no match for an ancient mind.”

  The room broke into a cacophony of excited questions.

  “How many do we have?”

  “Are there enough for us all?”

  “When can I get one?”

  And in that moment, the truth was clear. Nina’s body was here, but Nina…

  Nina was gone.

  20

  The next fifteen minutes in that room with the thing that had my sister’s body were a nightmare. Aspen must have sensed my distress. He must have recognized Nina. He’d been the one to take her after all.

  Anger raged in my blood, an inferno with nowhere to go and nothing to burn. If Aspen hadn’t made excuses about humans needing their rest and gotten us out of there, I might have exploded.

  We made it to Aspen’s quarters, and he’d barely closed the door before I launched myself at him, hands hooked into claws, ready to rake his pretty face. He caught my wrists neatly and held me at bay with an ease that made the lava in my veins surge.

  “You did this. You fucking did this!” I glared at him through the burn in my eyes, past the sheen of tears that I was damned if I’d shed in front of him. “You took her from me, and they…” I let out a growl and twisted my arms to try to break free.

  He released me. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

  His tone was sincere, and real sorrow filled his eyes. The rage rushed out of me, leaving nothing but grief, and that… That was worse. I couldn’t, wouldn’t cry. Not now. Not here.

  “How? How have they done this?” I walked away from him, hands on my hips to quell the tremor in my hands. “How did she take my sister’s body? Where is Nina?”

  There was a clink of glass behind me, then Aspen was beside me, offering me a small glass of amber liquid.

  “Drink this. It will calm your nerves.”

  I took it and downed it. It burned like fire down my throat, but then a gentle heat bathed my limbs, and my pulse slowed and steadied.

  “Better?” he asked.

  I nodded. “Tell me what’s happened to my sister.”

  “It seems that Minira’s soul has been transferred into your sister’s body. An ancient’s soul is powerful, and I believe she burned through your sister. I believe your sister is gone.”

  I’d felt it. Suspected it. But to have Aspen confirm it was like knives slicing into my heart.

  Nina, my baby. I swallowed the lump in my throat. “Would it have hurt her? Nina, I mean. Did it hurt?”

  Aspen sighed. “I can’t say. I’m sorry, Danika, I just don’t know.”

  “Why?” I looked up at him, blinking back the stupid tears that were determined to be shed. “Why would they do that to her?”

  He looked thoughtful. “I have a theory, but I’ll need more information to validate it.”

  I needed something, anything to make sense of this atrocity. “Tell me.”

  He rubbed an index finger across his chin. “I believe this turn of events is linked to the ancients’ longevity. You saw Minira before. Wizened and sour-faced. She’s the Winter King’s younger sister, yet she looked much older. She’d begun to age. The ancients call it the ailment. I don’t understand how they’ve stayed alive for so long, but something changed in the last decade, and I think the children taken are to be used as hosts for the ancients who begin to ail.”

  It was a sound theory. It was also fucked up. “Why Nina? I mean, you’ve taken so many children before. Surely, they could have used a child taken last year, or the year before?”

  His mouth twisted wryly. “Every experiment has a test period. Test subjects…”

  Oh god. I felt sick.

  “Your sister was obviously taken once they’d perfected the procedure. You ask if she felt pain? I can say with confidence, her pain was probably nothing compared to the pain of the subjects that went before her.”

  Nina was gone.

  Her soul burned up by Minira.

  My sister…The whole reason I’d volunteered for the stupid Regency Games, the main reason I’d stayed here and not gone with Killion a week ago, was gone.

  Aspen placed his hands on my shoulders and looked into my eyes. “I’m sorry for your loss. I empathize with your pain. But we can’t lose sight of the bigger picture. If they’ve done this once, they’ll do it again. They’ll take more children because a human child’s soul is weake
r than an adult’s. Because they’ll be able to burn through it quicker and take that body. We need to push my father from the throne. We need to stop this.”

  He was right. I needed to pull it together. Lock it down. The pain, the grief. Oh god, Nina, my baby sister. I’d failed her.

  The wave of clawing sorrow surged up, desperate to be given voice.

  “Breathe.” He squeezed my shoulders. “Breathe, Danika.”

  I took a shuddering breath and squeezed my eyes closed briefly, allowing the tears to spill down my cheeks before dashing them away. “I’m fine.”

  The concern on Aspen’s face told me he didn’t believe me. “Get some rest,” he said. “Tomorrow, we get Slade back.”

  I nodded, lips pressed tightly together because if I spoke, it would be to scream... Then the dam would break, and it couldn’t. Not here.

  Not with him watching.

  I took my leave and once I was outside his quarters with the door closed behind me, I took to my heels and ran.

  * * *

  “Get out!” I snarled at Rose.

  She looked up from setting a mug down on my dresser. “I brought you a drink.”

  “I don’t want it. Take it with you and get the fuck out.”

  She didn’t flinch or shy away. In fact, there was a slight smile on her face as she retrieved the drink and sashayed past me.

  “Sleep well, Mistress,” she said.

  The door closed behind her, and I threw myself onto the bed. My chest heaved. Once, twice, then the tsunami I’d been holding back erupted.

  I let it crash through me, over me, and wash me away. I rode the waves of rage and grief and the need to hurt someone or something the way my baby sister had been hurt.

  I must have cried myself to sleep because the sensation of a hand stroking my head woke me.

  I sat up sudden and alert and was pinned to the spot by piercing blue eyes. For a moment, my mind failed to recognize the man sitting on my bed, then the final dregs of sleep fell away.

  “Killion!” I threw myself at him, wrapping my arms around his neck and hugging him tight. “Oh god. Killion.”

  He took a moment to hug me back, but I didn’t care. He was here, and that was all that mattered. He was here, real and solid, and warm.

  “Danika…” His voice was soft, with an edge to it that I didn’t quite understand, and then his fingers slid into my hair and fisted it.

  Fresh tears stung my eyes as the memory of what had happened a few hours ago surfaced. “Nina’s gone. They burned her soul. They took it, and now the king’s sister is wearing my sister’s body.” My words were muffled against his shoulder.

  Killion pulled back. His hands slipped from my hair and fell to his sides, so I was forced to release him or feel like a limpet clinging to an unwilling rock.

  Confusion squeezed my bruised heart.

  “It’s time to go, Danika,” he said.

  I’d been waiting for him to come for me, but now he was here, it felt all wrong. Why was he early? It didn’t matter. I couldn’t go with him. I had to save Slade and work with Aspen to take the throne. The feelers’ lives depended on it. Humanity’s safety depended on it.

  I clasped my hands together. “I can’t go with you.”

  He frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “Everything’s changed.”

  “Your sister is gone. There is nothing here for you.”

  Pain lanced through my chest. “I know she’s gone, but there are others who need my help. There are Tuatha who have emotions and are being executed by the cold ones. The bastard prince is a feeler. He wants to change things. I can help him claim the throne, and once he’s in power, we can stop the atrocities.”

  He pressed his lips together, his beautiful chiseled face falling into an expression I didn’t understand. He looked as if…as if he pitied me.

  The cloud of confusion morphed into a chilling uncertainty. “Killion?”

  “I said I would come back,” he said. “I gave you seven days. We had a deal.”

  A deal? “I still have three days left.”

  “But your sister is no longer a factor, and I can’t wait any longer.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He gripped my wrist, his blue eyes darkening with sorrow. “I need you, Danika. I’m sorry.”

  Sorry? What—

  The world fractured and melted away.

  21

  We materialized in a cavern hewn from rock, and panic immediately gripped me. I’d just escaped a mountain city, and I had no intention of going back. But my senses told me this place was different. It smelled fresher, as if there was clean air in circulation. The stone walls on either side of us were dark rock, and wall sconces lit with actual flame flickered, creating shadows on the wall opposite.

  I shoved Killion away and tugged my wrist from his grasp, staunching the panic that hovered on the periphery of my senses, because this was Killion. I was safe with Killion, wasn’t I?

  “What the hell, Killion? Why did you do that? Where are we?”

  “Follow me.” He set off, but I dug in my heels.

  The panic had migrated to my gut, refusing to be ignored. I wasn’t following him anywhere.

  Something was off. “Take me back. Now.”

  He turned to me with a sigh. “Danika, please. Just… Trust me.”

  But the way he said it was also wrong. It tasted of lies and deceit, and my stomach churned with the wrongness of it. I studied my mentor, the creature I’d relied on and trusted for years, and for the first time since he’d saved my life, I doubted him. For the first time since he’d saved my life, I feared him.

  I took a step back, my boots scuffing against stone.

  He moved so fast he was a blur, then his hands were on me, and the world fractured once more.

  This time when I materialized, it was to iron bars and a cold stone floor. The chill seeped into my bones where I lay. I pulled myself up, scanning my surroundings. An empty cell. Killion stood on the other side of the bars, his handsome face in shadow, his blue eyes hooded.

  He’d put me in here.

  I stared at him in confusion. “What are you doing?”

  “What needs to be done,” he said.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You owe her an explanation,” a female voice said from the shadows.

  I scanned the darkness and tensed as a figure moved forward, ethereal and ghostlike, but still radiant in her beauty. I could see the wall behind her through her body. She was a spirit. An apparition.

  Killion turned to look at her, and his expression melted into one of awe and…love.

  A knot formed in my throat. He loved this ghostly woman?

  I hadn’t thought my heart could ache any more than it already did, but I’d been wrong.

  “Hello, Danika,” the woman said. Her gaze raked over me. “Yes. You’ve grown into a fine specimen.”

  “Who are you?”

  “I am the Night Queen.” She lifted her chin and looked down her nose at me. “I’m Killion’s wife.”

  Killion’s wife?

  He was married? An empty pit opened inside me, desolate and cold.

  The Night Queen… Wait, that would make Killion the Night King. The Night King… That rang a bell. Oh fuck. The old woman in the death realm had mentioned him. What had she said? But my mind was a mess of confusion and grief, and, in that moment, her warning was lost to me.

  “Danika,” Killion said. “This is my wife. My love. My trigger.”

  His trigger? “You said I was your trigger.”

  I wanted to take the words back as soon as I’d uttered them because they sounded desperate and plaintive, and I hated that. That wasn’t me. This aching, hurting woman wasn’t me.

  He dropped his gaze. “I was confused. I didn’t understand the feelings I was having for you were a reaction to an enchantment woven into your body.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  “Allow me to explain,” th
e woman said.

  “No, my love,” Killion said to her. “You go and prepare the ritual. I’ll explain it. I owe her that much.”

  The ghost brushed close to Killion, her green eyes flashing hungrily as they skated over me. Her lips brushed his ear, and he closed his eyes, a small smile playing on his lips in response to whatever sweet nothings she was sharing with him, and my heart fractured a little more.

  With a final glance my way, she melted away, and it was just Killion and me.

  He opened his eyes and locked gazes with me. “This must all be very confusing for you, Danika.”

  How could he be so calm, so cold? Anger bloomed, hot and destructive, in my chest.

  I fixed him with a glare. “What? The whole kidnapping me and locking me in a cell thing? Or the whole ghost-woman-being-your-wife part?”

  “Everything. Believe me, I’ve wanted to tell you so many times, but being trapped in the box limited what I could reveal, then when I was free, there was no time.”

  I shook my head, ignoring the burn of betrayal behind my eyes and fixating on the anger. “There was time enough to kiss me. Time enough to tell me I meant everything to you.”

  He had the grace to look away. “I meant those things at the time, when I thought… I thought you were my wife.”

  “I don’t get it. You thought I was the ghost woman?”

  “Let me explain,” he said. “Let me tell you a story. A story of a lonely king and the way he found his soulmate.” He stepped closer to the bars, and I moved away from him. His eyes flinched, but he didn’t comment on my action. “The Night Court has watched over humanity for as long as humanity has existed. We are their guardians, their shadows, and their protectors.”

  Anger warred with the need to understand what was happening here.