by Amy Sumida
“Well done, Dark Star. I knew you wouldn't fail us,” Viper declared triumphantly.
“Yes, well done,” Odin snarled as he appeared directly in front of me and grabbed me around the waist.
I had a moment to gape at my furious ex-husband before he traced me away.
Chapter Thirty-Six
As soon as Odin and I reformed in Pride Palace, he dragged me out of the tracing room, and we were surrounded by all of my ex-lovers. They held me down as I gaped at them; especially at Re. The God Squad stood around us, looking on anxiously.
“You're not dead,” I whispered as a strange relief washed through me. “I didn't kill you.”
“No, Lala,” Re said gently. “You sent everyone here. Even in your darkest hour, you couldn't hurt us.”
Then I saw Arach.
“Arach?” I gasped.
“Hurry! We don't have much time!” Arach shouted.
The men grabbed my face and pried open my jaw as I struggled against their hold. Arach moved between them and poured something into my mouth. Something thick and cloying. I gagged and swallowed. Blood; he was forcing me to drink blood. Why? My wide eyes sought Arach's dragon gaze as he grimly dumped the entire contents of a slim pitcher into my mouth. Odin massaged my throat and pinched my nose as the other men held me still, especially my head. I swallowed and swallowed until, finally, went limp.
The men pulled back warily as I laid there in shock, eyes unfocused. Blood coated my lips and trickled down my chin, but I couldn't bring myself to wipe it away. The blood had belonged to my lovers. All of them had contributed to the concoction; Arach, Trevor, Kirill, Azrael, Odin, Re, and Toby. I could taste them all in my mouth. Feel them in my mind.
As if from a distance, I heard them talking.
“Did it work? Is she seeing our memories?” Trevor asked anxiously.
“Just give it a moment. A dragon doesn't usually take blood from more than one lover at a time. It may overwhelm her,” Arach murmured.
“But it von't hurt her, right?” Kirill sounded frantic.
“Anything is better than what she is now,” Odin said wearily.
“Dead is not better!” Azrael snapped.
“Shut up, all of you!” Re shouted. “It's done. All we can do now is wait.”
“Vervain?” Toby bent over me, the sapphire of his irises shining brightly amid their dark chocolate rings. “Say something, sweetheart.”
I looked into those eyes and the blue spread. It bled over the dark rings and across Toby's face until all I saw was blue. Blue sky, blue water, blue mood. Everything was blue. Then the memories lifted out of that ocean, and I began to scream.
Then even my screams faded away as I became Arach.
I stood staring across the Forgetful Forest, holding myself still and quiet as unbearable pain lanced through my chest. If I moved, it got worse so I would just stand here and wait. Predators know to be still and wait even when there is no prey in sight. Something would happen. A sign. A revelation. We couldn't end like this. Not after what we'd been through. From enemies to lovers. She had plummeted through the Aether and into my life then she changed everything. Stubborn, sexy, strong, and sometimes just silly, the woman had aggravated me until I fell in love with her. There is no one like her. Not in all the Realms. No one who could love me as she does. No one who could challenge me and ground me while she simultaneously soars beside me. She had torn through the wards of Faerie, taunted me into taking her, and then stopped my world. So, that's what I will do; I'll stop. Just stand here and wait for her to fall back into my arms. I'll have faith in her. My Dragon Queen has never failed me.
“Father.”
I turned to see Brevyn standing in the doorway, staring somberly at me.
“Son, are you well?” I could barely choke the words past the pain constricting my throat.
No; I wouldn't fall apart. This time, I would be strong for our children. I wouldn't fail Vervain. I wouldn't fail my family. I pushed the pain down and focused on our son.
“Mommy will come back,” Brevyn said firmly. “But you have to help her.”
“What do you mean?” I got on my knees to pull him close. “Do you know how I can find Mommy?”
Brevyn turned and pointed at the mirror over Vervain's dressing table. It started to mist as I watched and then it began to chime.
“You'll know what to do when the time comes, Father,” Brevyn said confidently. “You'll know how to help her.”
I hurried to the mirror and brushed my hand across its surface. Trevor appeared in the glass. He looked hurt and haunted; dark circles beneath his eyes and hair wild. Pain speared me again, but I ignored it because now, among the brutal burn—a burn that even a dragon couldn't enjoy—there was hope.
“Tell me,” I growled.
“We know a way to reach her, and Odin has a spell to cleanse her soul, but we'll need time for him to cast it. We need something to keep her restrained, Arach,” Trevor said. “The last spell Odin attempted took too long to cast and that damn star of hers interrupted it. We need more time, and we need your help to get it.”
I looked down at Brevyn and smiled.
A new memory rushed up, washing away Arach, but with it, I felt the rush of movement and heard several people shouting. I struggled against a grip that seemed to be everywhere.
“Easy, Vervain. I've got you,” Star said. “You're home now. You're safe.”
I tried to open my eyes but they were already open. I was blind to the real world; taken by the blood. I knew the memories had me, but I couldn't fight them. Not even Star could stop the tide once it had washed in.
“What's wrong with her?” Viper's panicked voice came a moment before his arms closed around me. “Why is there blood on her lips?”
I felt myself lifted and then laid on something soft. Viper surrounded me, wiping my face clean before kissing me and stroking my hair. I tried to reassure him, but I couldn't speak. I reached for his hand, and he clutched mine tightly.
“Those bastards fed her their blood,” Star snarled. “She's seeing their recent past; experiencing their memories as if she were them.”
“Well, stop it!” Viper snapped.
“I can't,” Star said sadly, and I felt her cool touch on my brow. “She has to ride it out.”
“We just have to ride it out,” Fenrir said. “Vervain has been through worse, Son. She'll pull through this. You need to be strong for her and your family. This is what alpha wolves do; we hold the pack together.”
“Go away,” I growled at him.
“Trevor, she will come home,” Emma said gently as she bounced Vero in her arms.
“Go away!” I roared at them and ran out of Pride Palace.
I ran and ran and ran but the fear and agony stayed right there with me. When I could barely breathe, I stopped and bent over, to retch in the grass. The pain in my body was nothing to that in my mind. In my heart.
“Damn you, Vervain!” I shouted at the sky. “Die, and I will follow you, but you cannot leave me living in this hell!”
I collapsed beside my vomit and covered my face as I sobbed. Inside me, the Wolf raged, tearing at my chest, desperate to get out and take control. But I hated him, and I wouldn't let him out. He had driven her away. I trusted him, and he had spoken to her as if she were a stranger. As if she were an enemy.
“You fucking bastard,” I hissed at the beast inside me. “You betrayed me. You betrayed her. Our mate needed us, and you turned on her.”
The claws came again. It felt as if I were being shredded from the inside out. But I welcomed the pain. Give me blood. Rend me to pieces. Drown my mind in torment and maybe I can forget her for one second.
I sobbed. Tears seeping through my fingers. It wouldn't work. No amount of pain could make me forget my mate. Bound by blood and love and the Moon. She is everything, and without her, I had nothing.
“Minn Elska,” I whispered, “come home and save me again. That's what you do, baby. Don't fail me this time.”
Lesya was finally asleep. She had cried for two hours straight; begging for her mommy. What do I say to that? What could I say to my daughter after her mother had left us? Her heartache crushed me even more than my own. I had held her and told her that Mommy would come home soon, but she didn't believe me. Lesya can feel the darkness on the other end of her connection to Vervain. She knows as well as I that her mother is gone. A black hole has replaced her heart. A dark star with only cold light to shine.
I laid Lesya in her bed and crept out of the room before the screaming that had been threatening to rise all day shot out of my throat. My life had been a series of tragedies. Taken from my family by a cruel goddess. Given a new family but then forced to hurt them, even kill them. I remembered the darkness vividly; the insanity I had sunk into. Love had betrayed me and madness had been my only release. The horrors I've experienced are vast. It took death to cleanse me of their burden, but that was after Vervain had saved me.
My life turned on her axis. Vervain tore me from the grip of my broken mind and broken heart. She pulled me out of my darkness and shone her light on me. She healed me. Gave me love. Safety. Family. She gave them all to me without conditions. She fought for me. Treasured me. Bore me a child. And then her light went dark.
Born under a dark star, now I pinned all of my hopes on one.
“I don't care if you're dark, my love,” I whispered to the Moon, praying that it would carry my words to her, our goddess. “I vill dive into darkness again for you. I vill hold you and make a home for us zere. Madness can have me if I can have you. Just come back to me. I don't know how to live vithout you.”
I surfaced from the memory sobbing and fought the hands that tried to hold me. “No more. No more,” I moaned.
“Make love to her!” Star shouted. “All of you. You need to complete the Trinity Star. You are the eight points to her ninth. Pull her together!”
“I can't,” I cried. “I'm sorry, Kirill.”
“Do it now!” Star screeched.
Hands stroked my hot skin. Lips pressed against mine. I turned toward their comfort, seeking solace in my pain. Cool air hit my body as my clothes were removed. Kneading fingers on flesh, strong limbs sliding against mine. I knew this place. I knew this pleasure. Yes, it was safe here. I was strong here. I held a head against my breast and moaned with pleasure instead of pain.
“This isn't right,” Viper hissed. “Get off her!”
“She needs all of you,” Star reasoned with him. “You must share her, Viper. This is her life; this is her magic.”
“I know, and I've accepted that, but not like this,” he growled. “Not with her unaware of what she's doing.”
“You will obey me!” Star shouted.
Viper went silent but a new voice rose in my head. The voice of the Devil.
“I'm sorry, Son, but I don't know any spells to help her,” Luke said to me. “But this is Vervain; she's stronger than her magic. Have faith in her.”
“Faith?” I gaped at him. “You're Satan, and you're telling me to have faith?”
“Azrael,” my mom chided. “We love you, and we love Vervain. If there was anything we could do to help her, we would.”
“You have the power of Hell at your fingertips,” I snarled at my father. “Use it!”
“I don't know how to use it to help her,” Luke said gently.
“She saved you!” I roared at him. “She saved the Demons. She saved us all, and you can't help her? You can't even try to free Vervain from evil? You're the King of Evil, there must be something you can do!”
“Azrael!” My mother shouted.
“I'm so sorry, Azrael,” my father whispered and hung his head.
“Fuck you, Dad!”
“Azrael, you come back here!” Mom screamed.
“Let him go,” I heard my father say as I stormed out of the manor.
Hell surrounded me and it seemed an appropriate backdrop for my mood. I spread my wings and shot into the scorched sky. Gasping in the brittle air, I let the wind steal the tears from my eyes. My wife was lost to an evil that I couldn't fight. The only woman I had ever loved was dying, and I couldn't even touch her. I had held her soul once; touched her more intimately than anyone else. But not now. Now, her soul was as lost to me as the rest of her. And I was lost with it.
Without Vervain, my future would crumble. No love, no laughter, no children. I had to get her back! There must be a way. I wouldn't give up. Not ever. She would never give up on me, and I wouldn't give up on her, even if it was her who I had to fight. I knew she was still in there. Beyond the evil and that sinister star, my beloved waited for me. She was the one with the faith. Vervain would be counting on me to save her, and I wouldn't let her down.
“Not now. Not ever, Carus,” I declared as I sped across Hell. “I'm coming for you; just hold on a little longer.”
“Azrael,” I murmured as I surfaced into ecstasy.
Someone's mouth was on my throat, kissing the vibration of my words, and hands stroked my sex, gently easing my thighs apart. Where was I? Was I was with my husband? My ex-husband? Did I leave Azrael? No. Never. I... I was drowning under the light of my star.
“No!” I screamed and pushed the hands away.
I couldn't see them, but I felt them pull back. Watching. Waiting.
“Don't stop now. Your goddess needs you!” Star shouted.
“She said no!” Viper roared.
I felt strong arms lift me and cradle me against a broad chest.
“Put her down right now, Viper!” Star screeched.
“I don't obey you. I am hers, not yours,” Viper growled. “And I won't let you hurt her. Don't listen to Star, Brothers. First, she said to let Vervain ride this out but now, she wants you to have sex with her? It's madness. Listen to your heart; the heart that Vervain gave you. You know this is wrong. You know she doesn't want you like this. Don't hurt the woman we love.”
“I made your hearts!” Star screamed. “I am the magic. I am the power your goddess wields.”
“And yet you stand there doing nothing,” Viper murmured thoughtfully. “All of your power is crippled without her to wield it. You are nothing but power, and power is nothing but a concept, a mere thought if it has no hand to direct it.”
The voices faded into another memory.
“There must be something,” I growled to myself as I flipped through page after page.
Spellbooks littered the floor around me, discarded after being searched. All of my knowledge, all of my magic, and I was useless. My wife was dying all over again.
“Fuck!” I shouted as I threw the book.
I looked down at my shaking hands and clenched them into fists to stop the movement. I wouldn't go back again. It was torture to watch her. I wouldn't do it.
But I started moving without thought, without giving my body permission. My legs shuffled me forward, out of my bedroom, down the stairs and to yet another stairwell. This one led straight up to a tower room. Circular, with stone arches forming the walls and a round couch in the center. I strode up to one of the arches and stared into the empty haze that filled it.
“Show her to me,” I demanded. “Show me my wife.”
The haze cleared and my chest constricted as a bedroom formed before me. I knew that room. I had stood in it recently when I tried to cast a spell on Vervain. And I knew that man. Viper, she had called him. A snake; how perfect. He had slithered his way into my wife's heart and now, he was in her bed, slithering her. Driving his evil dick into her. And she purred as she once had for me. She held him close and whispered words of love in his ear as if he were her husband.
I fell to my knees on a sob, hand extended toward my beloved, fingers str
oking her beautiful face. Would I ever hold her again? Once, I had told her that it was enough to know that she lived. That I didn't need to make love to her to love her. I would be content with her being in the world, alive again. But I couldn't be content with this. Her soul darkened by evil, her body used by a man born of that evil. No, better her be dead than trapped in this blasphemy.
“Vervain,” I choked out the word. “He doesn't love you as I do. He doesn't know you, sweetheart. I am your husband. I have always been your husband.” I took a deep, strengthening breath and stood. “And I will save you from this. I failed you once, but not this time, my love. Not this time.”
