The Thief of Souls was never Death’s rightful heir.
“Surely you know this land sits right on Death’s doorway,” Galleghar says. “I marched my forces in, took the palace by force, and let him do the rest.”
Even here, in the Otherworld, the laws of life and death are fairly rigid. To take the living into the land of the dead, then defeat the dead …
And now the Thief of Souls was a king. Not just a puppeteer filling the body of a dead or dying ruler, but one in his own right.
“You gave him freedom and a kingdom and some of your power, and then you let him put you to sleep, hoping he would wake you up.”
“He did wake me up.”
That might be the most surprising piece of this whole thing—that the Thief actually followed through on his end of the deal. The Thief of Souls needs Galleghar no more than I do.
I nearly laugh. “You actually trust him,” I say, amazed.
My father was always a doomed man. No one can have that sort of ego without consequences.
I shake my head. “Surely you know you cannot control something like that,” I say. Something that was older than us, stronger and more malicious than us.
Callie will have to face that creature.
The dread thickens.
“I don’t need to,” Galleghar replies haughtily. “I just need to co-exist with him.”
Now I do let out a cruel laugh. “You think he’ll just let you be? You think he owes you any loyalty?”
“I freed him from his eternal bonds.”
It is a staggering feat. Other kings wouldn’t have dared. But it means nothing to a being like the Thief.
“He’ll keep you around so long as you please him.”
And the Thief’s pleasure is a fleeting thing.
Galleghar’s face twists. His age-old ego, borne from centuries of pitiless ruling, now shows itself. He believes too much in his own self-importance to see the truth clearly.
My father gives no warning. His form flickers, one moment several feet from me, the next at my back.
I sense rather than see his sword arching towards me. In an instant I’m gone, and then we’re back to trading blows. For several minutes, he and I are all that exists.
He and I and Callie—always Callie. I can’t not notice her every movement. Her power sings to me even now, that siren in her calling to me, always beckoning me back to her side. It’s only time and practice that keep me focused on the battle at hand.
I nick Galleghar’s arm, and he grazes my thigh. On and on it goes, blow after blow, one close hit followed by another. Never have I fought a more difficult foe—and never have I enjoyed the challenge so much.
My father is right. There’s brutality in our blood. I’ve always been aware of it, but it’s times like this where I feel the carnage calling to me.
I can hear our labored breaths, and smell the sweat and blood and magic dripping from our skin. The whole room is thickening with it …
Around me, the shadows have fallen quiet. So very, very quiet.
I feel him then. The Thief.
I parry a blow from my father and let my eyes sweep the room.
How had I not noticed?
All of that vile, unnatural magic I’m choking on doesn’t belong to Galleghar or any one of the sleeping soldiers. It’s the Thief’s.
I can feel his life force all around me. He’s not simply an undead king, or a banished leviathan—
I hadn’t realized until now the true nature of darkness. It closes in on me from all sides, one with the magic.
… We’re sorry …
… So sorry …
Cold, bleak certainty washes over me.
My eyes move to Callie just in time to meet her horrified gaze.
I love you, I want to say. More than worlds can hold or words can convey. You are everything that has ever mattered to me. Have faith and strength. You’ll be alright.
The darkness closes in on me, descending on my flesh just as I’d seen it do to so many of my enemies.
I try to speak the words, to give Callie something, but the shadows sink into me, carrying dark magic with them. It feels like fire beneath my flesh, an inferno in my veins.
I’m sorry, cherub. My beautiful nightmare. You will have to save us all yourself.
Chapter 35
I watch, frozen, as Des’s shadows close in on him.
His back arches and his entire body tenses, his muscles straining against his skin.
This is what the Thief wanted me to see.
I clutch my heart. I can feel his pain like a battering ram, slamming into me over and over again. I nearly choke on his agony. If I’m feeling that through our connection, then what must he be experiencing?
And then the blackness swallows him up.
When it clears, he’s gone.
Immediately, the pain in my chest cuts off. At first, I feel a relief; Des is in no more pain.
But then, panic. Panic like I’ve never known.
I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe I can’t breathe I can’t breathe.
My eyes scour every corner of the room. Where did Des go?
My fingers, still cradling the skin over my heart, now dig in.
The Night King’s magic, though it still dances through my veins, now feels like a shadow of its former self. And with every exhalation, it dims and dims until I only hold a memory of it inside myself.
I grasp at the last tendrils of his power as they slide down our magical connection. Down and away from me. All the while, my gaze searches the room.
What just happened? Where did Des go?
And why can’t I feel him down our bond?
In the distance, someone calls out to me.
I still can’t get enough air.
Why?
Why why why?
My fingers begin to tingle like they’ve been kissed by ice. The sensation spreads, numbing me as it goes. Putting my hands to my head, I bow over myself.
So confused …
Suddenly I feel a presence at my back. Someone grabs a clump of my hair and jerks my head back, placing a blade to my throat. I hear Temper shout.
“Time to join your mate,” Galleghar hisses against my ear.
No sooner are the words out, than another burst of that sickening magic blows him back.
“I told you not to touch her,” a soldier says, their voice echoing off the walls.
A second wave of magic follows the first, this one from Temper. It blasts from her palm, hitting Galleghar in the head and knocking him out.
“Eat shit, motherfucker,” she says.
Everything happening around me barely registers. All I can focus on is the thump of my heart and the sick certainty that something is wrong—that I am wrong.
Where is my mate?
Temper’s footfalls echo through the room as she comes towards me, her eyes burning. “You’ve got about a minute to start explaining yourself,” she commands a sleeping soldier, “and then I begin to fuck shit up.”
“There’s only one human whose words I’ll listen to,” the soldier replies smoothly, “and they aren’t yours.”
This is a dream. Of course. A dream.
Dropping my hands, I straighten.
“Enough with the games.” I’m surprised my words come out as even as they do.
I search the room for the Thief. When I don’t see his dark features, I settle on a sleeping soldier. “Where is my mate?” Glamour coats the words like syrup.
Around me, the entire room is poised, the air thick with promised violence and the Thief’s dark magic.
The female soldier I stare at replies, “He’s in my kingdom now.”
Small death. The Thief rules over small death. That’s how this nightmare is all possible. I’m asleep, and the Thief is screwing with me.
“Wake me up,” I demand.
The look the Thief gives me … if I didn’t know him better, I’d almost say it’s pity. But he’s enjoying this.
“This
is no dream, enchantress. If it were, I would stand before you as myself—just as I always have.”
I glance around, at all the frozen faces. Malaki and Janus are sprawled on the ground, their forms unnaturally still, Galleghar hasn’t moved from where Temper knocked him out, and the rest of the Thief’s minions seem content to stay where they are.
The only other person who seems truly alive is Temper. My gaze falls to her just as she closes in on me.
Dear Temper, my best friend. A tear slips from her burning eyes.
I’ve only ever seen her cry twice.
She shakes her head. “Babe, this isn’t a dream.”
This … isn’t a dream?
But of course it is. No one is as they seem and nothing feels as it should.
My heart spasms, and that cold numbness, it’s reached my bond to Des.
I stumble then fall to my knees.
Realization is always described as an instant of enlightenment, but that’s not how it happens this time. The truth comes in slow, icy increments.
I wasn’t dropped into some dream. I can remember the last minute and the minute before that. I can remember coming here, and I can remember every logical thing but that last, final one.
Des disappearing. Des leaving me.
Gasping out a breath, I clutch at my heart.
The darkness will betray you, the seer said.
I heave out a breath.
This is no dream.
It feels … it feels like I’ve fallen into an icy lake and the cold water is seizing up my lungs.
Another breath comes shuddering out.
If it isn’t a dream, that means that Des … Des …
My throat spasms as a cry works its way up.
I’m shaking my head.
No. No, no, no, no.
The cry is building at the back of my throat.
He can’t be—can’t be dead.
I scream, my siren rising within me. My wings flare wide and my scales ripple across my forearms, my skin burning bright, so terribly bright. My fingers throb where my claws have extended.
I don’t feel human, I don’t feel fae. I’m losing myself, my heart and head trying fruitlessly to slip down the bond I share with Des, chasing after the last echoes of his power.
But it’s gone. It’s gone and I don’t know if it’s ever coming back.
We will get it back—or else.
I’m screaming and screaming and screaming, and the whole world is falling. My pain is darkening, deepening like the night until I don’t know where the agony ends and the anger begins.
We’ll kill and kill and kill and kill and—
“Callypso.”
I turn at the echoing sound of Temper’s voice. Her eyes burn with her power. At her feet is Malaki, his body lying prone. Not too far away Janus lays, his form similarly stupefied. Victims of the Thief’s dark magic.
“We’re leaving,” Temper says.
The sorceress’s gaze, her fiery gaze, is focused on Galleghar’s still form.
Her vengeance matches ours …
The former Night King lies sprawled on the ground, unconscious from her last hit.
Temper raises her hand, her palm outstretched.
She means to kill him.
“No,” I say, my voice vibrating with my power. “His death is mine to claim.”
Temper’s eyes narrow on Galleghar, even as her lips curve up just the slightest. The smile is nothing but cruel. “Fine.”
She turns her attention to a sleeping soldier. “You fucked with the wrong humans,” she says, her voice resonating with her own magic.
From her feet, fire flares to life. It races out along the ground in a dozen different directions, heading for the sleeping soldiers. First one alights, then another and another. One by one, the Thief’s minions get swept up by flame.
They shriek as their bodies blacken and burn, and I feel nothing at all.
The fires rage for only a few minutes, and when it’s extinguished, all that remains of the soldiers are blackened bones and ash.
The only people left in the room are me, Temper, Malaki, and Janus—the last two of whom are still unmoving, the Thief’s magic clinging to their skin. And then there’s Galleghar Nyx.
The root of all my suffering.
I rise from the ground, my wings fanning wide behind me. Slowly, I pace to him.
I feel so cold. Even my rage burns like ice. The only things left inside me are pain and vengeance.
Des’s father is beginning to stir, moaning a little.
Temper steps up to him, laughing low in her throat. “You’re going to wish you were dead.” Her voice is inhuman, possessed by her wicked nature. For once, I wholly embrace it.
This is why no one crosses us. We are fearsomely wrought.
I close in on Galleghar, pulling out the iron shackles from my back pocket. I ignore the way the metal sizzles against my skin as I grab the former king’s wrists. Dragging them behind his back, I slap on one cuff, then the other, pinning his arms behind him.
Slit his throat. Rip his heart out and make him eat it. Disembowel him and dance on his innards.
I want it all.
Make him pay for what he did to our mate.
Galleghar’s moans get louder and his eyes begin to flutter.
Crouching next to him, I whisper a single promise—
“Your will is mine.”
All those years I’d been under the yoke of my conscience I’d been running from this single, sobering truth: I can do more than bend others to my will; I can utterly enslave them to it.
All this time I’d hidden from my true nature.
I’ll hide from it no more.
Chapter 36
I can’t feel a thing.
I didn’t feel Temper’s touch when she held me in her arms, her skin like fire to my ice. I didn’t feel the bite of pain or gratitude when several Night fae collected us from that cavern. And I didn’t feel the lashing wind against my cheeks during the long journey back to Somnia.
It’s only once I’m deposited in my chambers and I take a shuddering breath, that I feel something.
Agony like no other. It weakens my knees and chokes the breath out of me.
I squeeze my eyes shut. This is worse, so much worse, than feeling nothing. This pain is like a wound that’s bleeding me out.
Temper is still at my side, her fingers threaded through mine. I slip my hand out of hers.
“Leave me,” I say.
There’s no way she’d ever leave me if circumstances were normal. But my skin is still glowing and my glamour is still riding my words. My siren hasn’t left me since the battle, and even a sorceress as powerful as Temper can’t fight my magic.
“This is bullshit,” Temper mutters as her feet carry her out of the room. She grabs the door handle and opens the door. “Soon as your glamour wears off, I’m coming back for you.”
The door clicks shut behind her, and her voice gives way to silence.
My eyes sweep over the suite. Des’s wedding present to me.
A sob slips out, and my chest heaves with empty, silent cries. I wander to the infinity pool with its glowing water.
Step by step I slip into the pool, clothes and all. Beneath the surface my head slips.
This can’t be real. Pain like this doesn’t exist, and surely one can’t survive this sort of suffering.
I sink to the bottom of the pool and stare up through the water. From here I can hear the water rushing between my ears, and I can see the suite’s lamps glimmering far above me.
I could stay right here, forever, and I’d be fine with that. I don’t think a siren is capable of drowning, but I’m always willing to test that theory.
If I died, I’d be in the Kingdom of Death and Deep Earth. Then I’d be back with Desmond, once and for all.
My throat tightens. He’s gone.
But I could join him. I could join him in the land of the dead—
That’s what the Thief wants.
I let out a moan, the sound warped beneath the water.
There’s no relief from this agony; not even death will be the end of it. If I died, I would fall under the Thief’s reign. Then the monster could wholly control me, and I doubt reuniting me with my mate is a part of his plan.
So I’m stuck here, in the land of the living, all while Des—
Des is dead.
Dead.
A sob slips out then, a burst of bubbles forming with the cry. But once I start weeping, I can’t seem to stop. My sirenic voice turns the sound into music, and it’s horrible that pain can sound lovely.
He’s gone, and I don’t know what to do.
That motherfucking Thief and his sick, twisted game. I’d played right into his hand the moment I decided to go after Galleghar. When I set foot into that cavern, the teeth of his trap had snapped shut around me.
Des is gone; Malaki and Janus are catatonic, victims of the same dark magic that compromised the sleeping soldiers.
And I am broken.
All my fault. If I hadn’t made the call to go after Galleghar, Des would be here still.
I close my eyes, my tears slipping into the water.
I don’t know how long I linger down at the bottom of the pool. Longer than a human could withstand. Eventually, someone leaps into the pool and scoops me up, dragging me out of the water.
I cough a little, my lungs heaving in a breath.
“Your Majesty!”
I blink at the fae soldier, the water dripping down my glowing skin.
He looks panicked. “I know it’s hard, but you can’t die. Our kingdom needs you.”
I’m not going to die.
I’m already dead.
What is death?
Do the dead ever truly die?
My breath catches on that last thought.
Do they?
Is Des still out there?
My gaze sharpens on the soldier. Behind him, the door hangs open. Temper must’ve tipped him off that I was not in a good place.
“We need you,” the Night soldier repeats, shaking me a little.
His words finally register.
Our kingdom needs you.
I work my throat. He wants me to be a queen. To step up and rule now that my mate cannot.
The last decision I made killed my mate.
But there’s no one else left to make decisions. Every other ruler is dead or incapacitated.
Dark Harmony (The Bargainer Book 3) Page 27
