The Relentless Warrior

by Rachel Higginson

  Absolutely true.

  “I already have,” he taunted.

  My mind flashed back to what he said about the Citadel being taken over. Could Eden, Avalon, Amelia and Kiran really be in trouble?

  Oh, god, Olivia.

  “Maybe the cause you fight for, but your personal aspirations die today.”

  “I brought you here to save you.” This time when I met his cold gaze, I could see the traces of sympathy and concern wrinkling his expression. “The Citadel fell an hour ago. I didn’t want you near Romania when it happened.”

  Olivia.

  She was forefront on my mind. Not even my friends could add to the panic, not when I knew she was in danger.

  My father must have noticed my panic because he held a hand out for me, but I stumbled back out of his reach and landed in the leather chair. I felt sick, so sick the room began to spin and a massive headache attacked my frontal lobe.

  “It’s better that you’re here,” my father intoned with the same concrete authority he’d used my entire life. He spoke in facts, not suggestions.

  “And Mom?”

  “She’s alright,” he told me with a heavy sigh. “She’s with Analisa, that part was at least true. But they’re not in danger. At least not yet.”

  “What do you mean not yet?”

  “I need you to cooperate,” he shrugged as if that were obvious.

  “So you would hold your own wife ransom if it meant I would concede to your will?”

  “You are my son.”

  “Not anymore.” I pushed to my feet and decided to call his bluff. My mind spun at a thousand miles an hours. Olivia. My mom. Analisa. The Citadel. My friends. Where do I start?

  “Don’t make me do something we will both regret,” he warned. He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a set of handcuffs. “I’ve been a generous father so far. I’ve let you act out your youthful rebellion and go off to sow your oats. But this ends now. It’s time to claim your place in this family and start doing what’s right.”

  I breathed a sigh of relief. I expected an epic battle between the two of us, but I had overlooked the most important fact of our entire altercation. My father was a politician. He’d been one his entire life.

  And he came from a Monarchy that only allowed their Guards to fight.

  He had been constantly comparing us since I arrived: both of us politicians, both of us fighting for a cause we believed in by playing games and working for kings.

  But there was a very important point he’d overlooked.

  While he, in his own words, was born and bred a statesman, an aristocrat with the ability to sway masses and follow royal orders. He’s sat behind a desk or in front of a crowd his entire life. He threw money at causes and funded uprisings.

  But he had never really fought for what he believed in.

  Not once.

  On the other hand, my training was born on a battlefield, my position gained and secured through blood, sweat and loss.

  I wasn’t a politician. I was a soldier.

  And I knew how to fight for what I wanted.

  When I finally engaged my father, it was pathetically easy. All my life I had this image of him of being something he wasn’t. I had believed that he was strong, relentless… ruthless.

  But in the end he was weak.

  And I took his Magic before he put up much of a fight.

  I started pulling on a force that had been with me since birth. I didn’t have the ability to sense other people’s Magic, but there were certain energy fields that would always be familiar to me, like my parents.

  It nearly killed me to watch him realize what I was doing. His dark eyes grew big, his mouth twisted first with frustration then with painful realization. The handcuffs dropped to the floor, clattering against the polished wood.

  He tried to talk to me, but the effort to hold onto his Magic kept his words from anything more than grunts and curses.

  He fell to one knee and I nearly lost my resolve. His hulking, towering frame rattled with the effort to stay upright and then he jerked to one knee like Goliath before David. I sucked in a steadying breath and continued to pull.

  His arm reached out to me, pleading, begging me to stop, but I couldn’t. I was beyond sympathy and compassion. This wasn’t exactly what he deserved; I couldn’t be the judge of that. It wasn’t my place. But this was what he had brought our relationship to.

  If I didn’t stop him, then he would stop me.

  The most frustrating part was that this was so unnecessary. He could have retired with grace. He could have stayed here and lived out the end of his life in a satisfying way.

  But he couldn’t stay out of it.

  He couldn’t even keep his racism and prejudice to himself. Instead, he had to join up with the worst kind of evil and plot and plan until it was impossible to forgive him, or save him.

  He was beyond me, in the same kind of way I had to assume I was beyond him.

  The tables could easily be switched and I could be lying on the ground, grasping for breath, clutching at my chest, cursing my own blood, but he underestimated me.

  To his own peril.

  “This is where we’re different, Dad,” I knelt down when the last of his Magic had been absorbed into mine. My body felt heavy with grief and my heart cracked open from the job I just completed. “We might both be statesmen, but I wasn’t born this way. I became what I am today through combat, through blood. You’re a politician. I’m a warrior.”

  He was on all fours, barely able to hold the weight of his body. His labored breathing came out in ragged gasps; his limbs trembled with the effort to sustain his hulking, weakened frame. When he lifted his usually perfectly groomed head, his hair was wild and his eyes panicked and pale.

  “You’re too late,” he wheezed with a sinister smile. “Terletov has the Citadel.”

  The weight pressing against my back tripled at his words. So worried about his schemes and evil deeds, he couldn’t care less about what was happening between us.

  Obviously, we grew apart over the last several years. Even before Lucan fell, we’d parted ways. I couldn’t support him while I fought for a new regime. Yet, in all these years, I tried to persuade him to see truth, to see justice.

  And in that same amount of time he’d tried to convince me of the opposite. But never before had I realized the extent of his prejudice or how deep his belief system went.

  “I’ve fought for that Citadel before,” I growled in pure frustration. “Terletov won’t be able to hold it. Not for long.”

  “Your gaze is too narrow,” he gasped. “You don’t see the larger plan.”

  “Dad.” My voice sounded hauntingly sad, even to my own ears. “You’re going to die. Doesn’t that mean something to you?”

  “I fought for a good cause.” He shook his head as if agreeing with himself. “I did my part. There is nothing else that matters to me.”

  “Not even me?” I asked because I couldn’t stop myself.

  A weak laugh fell out of him and he collapsed onto the ground. With all the energy he had left he rolled over and held his hands to his rattling chest.

  “You failed me since the moment you were born,” he confessed. “I wanted a strong son. I wanted a son that would carry out my legacy and serve his family with honor. Instead…” he sucked in a tortured breath. “Instead, I got you.”

  Those words should have shattered me. That deathbed confession should have splintered me into a million insecure, disappointed, fragmented pieces.

  Instead, I felt empowered.

  “And I got you,” I growled before I took the last bit of Magic he owned. There was nothing left of him. Now he was the shallow shell he’d tried to make me into with his words.

  His body contracted violently with the loss of life in his blood. His back arched awkwardly and his limbs bent in stiff, tightened angles. His face contorted with pain but he didn’t look at me. He kept his stare fixated on anything in the room but me.

&nbs
p; And I felt… nothing.

  Not yet, anyway.

  Shock, possibly. But maybe there weren’t any lingering emotions to feel. Maybe whatever familial connection we shared had been severed years ago.

  Maybe we had always been fighting on opposite sides of the war. No, not maybe. Definitely.

  There would be sorrow that came later, there would be pain and grief; I knew that. But right now I just needed to get to Olivia. I could deal with the rest later.

  “He’ll kill me,” my dad rasped when I moved to leave him.

  “Maybe not,” I shrugged. “I’ve heard he has all these new techniques for exchanging Magic.”

  “He won’t…” His voice was nothing more than a strangled whisper. “I’ve let him down.”

  “Then at least you’ll die for the cause you believe in,” I called over my shoulder.

  Outside of the house, I could finally breathe again. I leaned against the siding and rubbed my hands against my face. Holy shit, what a day.

  The air was cleaner out here and I sucked it in with gulping breaths. My dad. My freaking dad betrayed me.

  And all this time…

  No, now wasn’t the time to worry about this.

  I walked to the end of the driveway, thinking I would have to grab a cab. My parents would have cars in their garages, but I just couldn’t bring myself to take something of theirs.

  Not ever again.

  A cab would be a little difficult to find this far from the civilization though. The estate wasn’t exactly close to city limits.

  Turned out I didn’t need to worry about any of that. Just as I reached the end of the driveway, Sebastian pulled up in a sleek, black Hummer, containing the team I’d sent for.

  This was the first thing to go right in days, maybe weeks.

  Xander rolled down the window in the front passenger’s seat and cocked an eyebrow at me, “What’s going on?”

  Where to even start, “The Citadel fell. Terletov took it over an hour ago.”

  I felt the atmosphere in the Hummer shift dramatically as the information rolled over them like an ocean wave.

  Sebastian leaned forward and demanded, “What are we doing here?”

  “This wasn’t meant for you guys.” I shrugged, trying to keep my anger in check. “My dad used this to get me out of there. He didn’t know I would call you in.”

  “Analisa? Your mom?”

  “They’re taken,” I confirmed. “But I don’t know where.” I glanced back at the house, wondering if he would give me that information if I asked… or applied pressure.

  I shook my head, knowing he wouldn’t.

  “So what do you want to do?” he pressed. “Go after them or back to the Citadel?”

  “Is there really a choice?” I pulled open the back door and Seraphina and Roxie scooted over so I could jump in. “I don’t know where to start with Analisa. I’m not sure my mom is in any danger. But I know where to find Olivia.”

  “Olivia?” Sebastian snapped.

  “We’re good, Dude,” I told him. “Now get me back to her.”

  “And your Kings and Queens, right?” Xavier didn’t even try to hide his amusement.

  “Sure, them too.”

  “This is going to be a hell of a fight,” Sebastian sighed. “But I guess your dad did us a favor in getting us out of there, yeah?”

  I didn’t even know how to respond to that. Was it a favor? Could we have done something to stop Terletov? Or was the Citadel changing hands inevitable?

  I wondered if I could trust his information to begin with, but when we tried getting in touch with anyone that should be inside, we were all unsuccessful. The faint tether to Olivia’s Magic I held seemed to weaken and strain with every passing moment.

  My father hadn’t lied about the Romanian castle.

  But had he also saved me? Had he also given me an opportunity to save those inside?

  I didn’t- couldn’t- believe that he did it on purpose. But Sebastian was right; we were the only hope now.

  “We need to prioritize,” Xander spoke up. “We don’t know how many men he has, we’ve never known. But I don’t think it’s a small number if he took the castle.”

  “So it’s more important we get people out then try to take the Citadel back,” Roxie agreed.

  “How did he even get in?” Seraphina practically glittered with anger. I had always held a fair amount of doubts for that girl, but it was moments like this when she seemed as dedicated to this cause as any of us.

  “The tunnel?” Xavier guessed.

  We sat in silence because none of us could answer her question.

  “How are we going to get in?” Roxie asked the more important question.

  “The same way we always do,” I answered, grinning. At least I knew that we couldn’t be stopped. Breaking into and out of the Citadel was basically like breathing for all of us.

  Terletov had no idea what he was up against.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Olivia

  That horrified screaming sound… that couldn’t be me, could it?

  Could it?

  But then my lungs felt the ungodly burning and fissures of pain pierced and stabbed at every nerve ending. As consciousness slowly seeped back into my addled brain, I realized my body convulsed on the ground like an out-of-water fish and my mouth was wrenched open to allow for the deafening shrieks that were falling out of me.

  The pain lessoned just a smidge and I forced my body into submission.

  It was one thing to be tortured.

  Another thing entirely to act like a total wuss about it.

  I would not scream again. I wouldn’t.

  That resolve lasted for all of two seconds before the sword cut into my side again.

  “Stop!” Eden screamed over me. “Stop hurting her!”

  Over the last few weeks I’d seen the damage one of these Immortal swords could do to someone. With even a small prick, their Immortal bodies were helpless against the damage. Lilly was a perfect example of how one small cut could mean life or death.

  Except when it came to me.

  The special bonding that Terletov had forced on me confirmed all my doubts that the Magic was reversible. And he kept slicing me open just to prove his freaking point.

  I was getting sick and tired of it.

  The blade slowly slid out of my kidneys- maybe… kidney-ish area- and my hands flew to the rapidly healing wound. My blood vehemently rejected the idea that Magic would leave my body and decided to punish me for the effort.

  “Do you see now?” Terletov’s malicious voice called out over me. I rolled to my back with my hands still pressed against my agonized flesh so I could see his face hover above me. A droplet of sweat rolled down his forehead to the tip of his nose before jumping off to splat in the crevice of my neck.

  Ick.

  “What a gigantic douche you are?” I wheezed. “Yes, we all see.”

  He kicked me in my wounded side and I gritted my teeth so hard I expected them to all crack down the center.

  But I did not scream.

  “Do you see now what I will do if you do not comply?” he snarled at Eden. “Give me my Magic back so that I can stop this.”

  “No!” I shouted, determined to be the biggest pain in the ass I could be.

  We’d been here for hours. The Castle had been divided into those Terletov wanted to manipulate and those he needed to control. All of Jericho’s friends stood against a wall, facing me. They were held at sword point, beaten to some degree and looking a little bit nervous.

  The tension in the room had broken just a little bit after Terletov initially stabbed me with the sword. I thought they all assumed I would die. Eden’s blue smoke had immediately surrounded me until I was both choking on the heaviness and sucking it in for comfort.

  After repeated target practice on all my major organs though, the room had relaxed… a little. I wouldn’t die, so that was good. But I would be forced to suffer unending pain in front of them.r />
  I hadn’t been his first choice, but it seemed the rest of the group was more than willing to die for their cause- although most of them couldn’t die either.

  Kiran, Eden, Amelia and Avalon all shared some unbreakable Magic that was just as strong as mine. Lilly was worthless to Terletov and seemed already on the brink of death. Talbott had eagerly expressed that if Lilly were to die, he would be more than happy to follow her. Angelica and Titus were more than willing to volunteer as martyrs. And Sylvia and Ophelia had been held back as a last resort. Terletov’s evil stare had flickered to my sister a few times, but I had a feeling he would use me to my full potential before he started in on my sister.

  Plus, I think over the last week, I’d pissed him off the most.

  I wanted to explain to him that these people didn’t really know me and could probably care less, but Eden’s agonized scream made me second guess that statement.

  Besides, I wasn’t exactly in a place where I could speak at the moment- you know, with the constant gasping for breath and whimpering going on.

  “I can’t give you your Magic back!” Eden screamed at him. “That’s not how it works!”

  “Eden,” Kiran bit out. “Enough.”

  Terletov stepped over me, hardly acknowledging my presence prostrate before him. His shiny, polished shoes took careful steps to Eden. As soon as he was close enough, he placed a hand around her throat. She didn’t flinch and she didn’t react, she just left her hands at her side and shot Kiran a warning glance.

  “How does it work then?” Terletov’s voice was grating fingernails against a chalkboard, sharp as razors.

  “Let them go, and I will give it to you.”

  “I’m not letting them go,” Terletov laughed. “Do you see what I’ve done? Do you see how easily I’ve taken your precious Citadel?” He looked around while maintaining his grip on Eden’s delicate neck. “Do you know that we’ve needed a permanent place for a while? Your hunting parties seem very adept at finding us just minutes too late. We had to stop risking that, being found while we were in the middle of our… experiments. We need a stable place to set up our research facilities. And this will do quite nicely.” I could see his mouth tip up into a satisfied smirk from my position on the floor. “So no, your people will not be going anywhere. In fifteen minutes, in fact, you will prepare a statement to your Kingdom and advise them of the change in leadership.”