by Elle Cross
It wouldn't matter now.
I rolled a bit of blood into the earth and breathed magic into it. The small ball of earth became something else, a spell twisting and changing as I threw it toward a Shrike-pair. The spell landed squarely between them, strands of magic clinging to them like sticky spider webs. The magic crystallized, turning blue, before collapsing the Shrike-pair together and into a massive flesh ball, before finally inverting into nothing.
I was breathing heavily, gasping for air as sweat poured from my pores. It mingled with the blood on my arm, bathing the glyph on my wrist. The blessed power in my belly coiled and squirmed, waiting to be called upon.
The interlocking triangles of the tattoo glowed. My muddled mind was trying to remember why it was important. I pushed it with my thumb as darkness clouded my eyes. Searing pain exploded in my wrist as the spell burnt up, and I felt myself pitch forward toward the ground. My last thoughts were a mad scramble to reach out to someone, anyone to catch me.
A low rumble ripped through the air, vibrating against my eardrums. It wasn't so much noise but a pressure that I felt more than heard. With all the strength I could muster, I pushed against the darkness and made my eyes work open.
Undulating waves of blue fire rippled above me in a surge of heat and power. I tilted my groggy head, the world upside down as I followed the path of the fire storm.
Two pairs of Shrikes melted into blackened goo.
I looked to the source of the fire, but something dropped on the figure, blotting him from view. Before I could strangle out a noise to help, the Shrike was already disintegrating in the middle of a contained Coriolis field.
I knew those winds. I followed the path of the deadly winds to the lithe figure of another kind of hunter.
West.
His long silver hair was unbound, rippling and flowing around him and his armor-clad body despite the still air. He moved with the same grace as the wind for which he was named and could control with ease.
Dormant memories now rushed into my mind. He hated his given name—Zephyr—and I knew better than to address him by it. He preferred his nickname, West as in the West Wind, something I had called him a lifetime ago when were both still children, and it had stuck.
“West?” My voice was barely a croak.
Instead of answering, he raked his gaze over my body as I pushed myself up to a sitting position.
The other figure, the source of the fire storm, knelt beside me. Black hair whipped around a face made for war: high cheekbones, grim mouth, piercing ebon-black eyes with no hint of blue searching my face. I blinked at him as he looked at me expectantly.
"Enver?" My head throbbed and I had to close my eyes from the nausea that threaten to rise.
He cupped my head and dropped a chaste kiss on my forehead. "My queen." The relief that dripped from his words was liquid sunshine. He captured my lips ever so softly, pressing just a nibble's worth of power against them that I licked up on reflex.
Heat rushed to my face, then warming the rest of me from the inside out. Just one tiny press of power. "There will be more soon, my queen. We need you safe first."
I felt the world tilt, and I saw I was in West's arms. "Well, hello there," I greeted him with a jaunty salute.
He chuckled, the silver in his eyes swirling like a maelstrom. "Hello, my darling queen." He, too, laid a soft kiss on my lips, minus the power. "Where is your house? I felt it nearby, but could not pinpoint it."
I grinned like a fool up at him. Am I drunk? I sure felt drunk.
"Here, this will help,” I slurred, raising a bloodied finger to his lips.
He didn't just let me touch it to his lips, he sucked at the fingertip a little. It was like a pulse of intense pleasure pinpointed right between my legs.
He groaned.
I pouted. "Did it not work?"
He crushed me to his body, licking his lips like he searched for every last bit of blood. "It worked, my queen."
"What’s wrong?" Enver asked, looking back and forth between us.
"I saw her house, all right, but also felt her thoughts and memories, and got an extra kickback of power and sex. I feel like I can kill all day and fuck all night."
Amusement flashed in Enver's eyes. "Really?" He hovered there, waiting for permission, and I grinned, offering him my wrist. He kissed then licked a bit of my blood that had clung to my tattoo. It was like he licked right between my legs, and I swallowed my gasp.
His bright blue eyes bled into ebon black once more. A growl rose in the back of his throat.
"Told you so," West quipped.
Enver's response was a hot look over my body as he licked his lips clean. "You need to get her back to her house. I'll regroup with the others and make our way back to you."
The others. The others in my Inner Circle. They came. They all came.
He brushed my hair back from my face. "We'll always come for you. Even in death."
I fought to stay conscious, blinking back the darkness as West carried me the half a block to my townhouse. Each blink felt like an eternity and yet, five blinks later, he ran up my stairs and we were through the front door.
He took me to the couch in front of the television and laid me down. "Rest now, my queen."
Enver
MY QUEEN LIVED. I had known it all along, felt it with every fiber of my being. Deep down these past three years, I had known. I had ignored what could be possible and was wrong. How long had she suffered? Had she cried out for help before, only to be met with silence and fear?
Never again.
I soaked in the memory of Karina's scent and taste, letting it permeate every bit of me. She filled me once more, and I would do everything in my power to stay at her side.
A shadow moved behind me, and in a wink of light, Havoc appeared. The short black spikes of his hair lay flat as if drenched, and I couldn't see the living tattoos that blessed his skin.
Odd. He didn't usually wear his armor, not even in the heights of battle. That was the privilege of a Lord of War.
As I approached him, I realized that he wasn't wearing armor or additional clothing. Gore covered his body, thick and full. The only place I could even see the dusky ash of his skin was on his face, and even then, not much. His eyes were his only recognizable trait. They were a distinctive golden-amber hue that brought to mind Karina’s skin.
He stretched his neck from side to side as if he just finished up a training session.
"Good meet, Prince." He nodded at what I held in my hand. I looked down, and realized that my fingers convulsed over a Wraith Lord's neck. It was pleading to me or something. I hadn’t even noticed it clawing at my hand.
I gestured to Havoc, offering the kill and subsequent power rush.
He took in the carnage around me. "Nah, Prince, you go on. Looks like you need it more'n me right now."
At his comment, I surveyed my surrounds with new eyes. Mounds of discarded body parts littered the ground around me. It was an impressive Killing Circle of sorts. The release of power in their death knell had barely registered in me.
So when had Hell Hounds appeared?
An hour? Damn, I needed to be more in control. I couldn’t fuck up especially now that we found Karina again.
And I was done holding myself back from her. I always thought there would be more time to be with her, to give her the fire and heat she needed to banish the cold she had always felt in the Fold.
But then she died.
A thump broke my reverie. The Wraith Lord's head had dropped to the ground. The rest of his body slumped down in a heap on top of it. So much for my temper.
"Is Taran with you?" I barely recognized the garbled mess of my voice.
Havoc toed around the carnage, absorbing the power that lingered from the newly dead Wraith Lord to burn the gore off his skin. "Nah. I sent him off the other way. Give him a head start to plow ahead through any roadblocks he might find."
I
questioned the need, but when Havoc had an idea, it was best to let his strategies reign. My very skin ached to find Karina again, to touch her as West was surely doing right now.
A hum of a growing rockslide rumbled through our threads. It was Taran, Lord of Thunder and Earthquakes. And he was calling power.
My heart lurched. He never worried, and his words were laced with it. Havoc rushed to me, grabbing my arm as he whisked us away toward Taran's location.
West
I stepped into the meager house that my queen called hers. It was small, and at first I was livid to see her in such a place. But then I realized that the things that were in this house, the woods, the smells, the warmth, this was all hers, all set to her own specifications. That made me feel more at ease.
And the scent. It was almost intoxicating.
I laid my queen down on the nearest soft thing I could find. I didn't want to let her go, but with the Shrikes out, there was no telling how many of them had been loosed into the Shadow Realms.
I pulled gauze and sterile wraps from my field kit to clean the cuts and scrapes on her arm, placing a light kiss on the deeper puncture wound she had used to create the wards that protected her in that alley. The blessing on her failsafe tattoo was tapped out. The tattoo was still there, but it was a muted black until it could be blessed again by the Oracles.
A rumble vibrated through our shared threads, and I drew my sword in answer.
Enver growled back.
He showed me the scene. At least they looked okay for now, just pissed that some of the Hunters slipped past them.
I placed my hand against the walls. They shone with bright magic and blessings. She always had a flair for spell casting, and the carefully wrought sigils that lit up the walls with wards were more intricate than I could follow in the moment.
We were safe. She was safe. And it pained me a little bit to know that she had been on her own, and needed to protect herself.
Enver thought he could hide his emotions behind his shields even while in our shared thread. How could he hide that raw savagery when his very thread thrummed with it constantly? It was part of his nature. It made me grateful we were on the same team.
Without needing to be asked, I double-checked the locks she had placed on her door, opening my senses to the spells cast into it. Enver needed to know that his queen—our queen—was safe. He didn't need to be distracted with thoughts of her safety when he needed to focus on slaying would-be threats to Karina.
I moved to the front room where her sleeping form rested on the couch. This was the room she spent the most time in, I wagered. The books and remains of a snack littered a small table. The air held a sigh of comfort to it, and I was happy to see that it accepted my presence, too. I knelt beside her, brushing her long, black hair from her face.
Leaning close to the secret curve of her neck, I inhaled deeply. The scents of berries and jasmine mingled seductively, her unique fragrance calling to me. My mouth watered as I breathed her in and swallowed down her scent.
My queen.
I stroked her hair, the heavy silk falling in sheets around her like a living thing. Petting it had always soothed Enver, and I poured every bit of sensation that I captured into our shared threads.
The response back was the closest thing to a sigh that could be translated over the threads. And then, he closed himself off.
Good. The Prince was in his right mind, and would be off a-hunting.
I trailed my finger, ever so lightly, over her forehead, her temple. The tunic she wore had cut out panels that exposed tantalizing peeks of her shoulder and I wanted to bite it, sink my teeth into her soft flesh and mark it.
It was golden and glowed. My hand, in its moonlit paleness, was stark in comparison. Cold. Even now, she shivered under my touch. And not in the way I wanted her to.
It brought back memories of her in the Fold. Memories that I was cursed to remember and reflect on, yet couldn’t change. I pulled a soft blanket over her body. It was perfect for her. Only the softest fleece for her skin.
I tucked her in. Maybe a little more than I needed to, but if I couldn't touch her without making her cold, this would be the closest thing. I hadn't had the privilege of touching her during the Blessed Moon revels, and was too reserved by far, hoping that she would choose to claim me, waiting for her to make her move. I held myself back, offering her my friendship and support.
And then she died.
I never believed it was a true death. Her spark still called to us. To me.
So when the Oracles called to us, her guard, that she had been released from the Fold so that she may live in the Shadow Realms, we sought to tear through the veils between worlds to get to her.
Then, her failsafe flared inside of us, boiling our blood.
Enver had been beyond reason. A fair layer of his skin had charred off trying to burn his way through the barriers that separated the Fold from the Shadow Realms before he realized that he couldn't get through.
But, the quiet presence of the Queen of Nightmares and Death, with the combined strength of her Inner Circle, her court, and damn near the entire Fold, had allowed a bridge to form into the Shadow Realms, to hell with the consequences. "I will deal with the gods of this world about their precious veils. Find my daughter. Kill whatever seeks her. And remind her of who she is."
We had nearly been too late. Bloody and bowed in a dirty alley, the image will never leave me, as memorable as seeing her fall in her duel with Lord Iden.
Destroying House Renard and leaving its lands as a blackened, desolate field was an absolute pleasure that I would do again.
With one last caress, I moved back to my lookout point in the front of her house, guarding against any who might escape the Prince's wrath.
Karina
MY HEAD POUNDED AND I woke to the feel of cotton in my head and ringing in my ears. The television was silent, and Una just stood there, watching me. A silent sentinel who stared at me.
I opened my mouth to let her know that she was creeping me out when I started coughing. Of course, she disappeared.
Something moved out of the corner of my eye, and I jumped from my swaddled place on the couch, and grabbed the closest thing on hand. I was ready to face my attacker with a television remote.
Dammit, I am going to die.
"My queen. You should lay back down." That voice.
"West?"
West came into view, stepping away from the shadowed alcove by my front door, his hair flowing around his body. I blinked. Then it all flooded back to me.
The alley.
The Shrikes.
And more.
It wasn’t a crazed nightmare.
He inched over to me, a bottle of water as an offering. "You were coughing."
This is real. He is here. In the Shadow Realm. In my house.
A lashing pain arced liked lightning in my head and shot down my spine. It was worse than any migraine I had ever experienced. I pushed the heels of my hands against my temples to keep my skull from splitting in two.
He came to me then, and pressed my face against his chest.
Damn if that didn’t work immediately to soothe the throbbing pain.
He worked his hand into the base of my skull, the gentle waves of power sinking into my skin as he massaged it gently until my breathing calmed.
“My queen. You should drink this.” He pressed the bottle of water into my shaky hand.
H
e nodded his chin to the remote I still held. “A weapon I should know about, my queen?” He wasn’t worried that I might have held a potentially dangerous weapon in my hand, nor that I would use it against him, only wondered what it was.
Of course, if we ever dueled, I’d let him disarm me.
He cocked his head to the side. "I don’t mind disarming you, my queen.” His voice was a thrilling touch against my skin. “But we wouldn’t need to duel for that.”
I needed to guard my mind better. I gulped loudly, backing away from this version of West, one I’d never seen before. His every step toward me mirrored in a step back. I kept backing away until I reached the living room wall and had nowhere else to go.
I raised my hand, inadvertently throwing up my shields. They were weak and barely projected inches off my body. They would not be enough to protect me from a feather let alone from the cataclysm that roiled off him.
But the message was clear, even if the result couldn’t keep him away from me.
He didn’t stop until he was literally touching my shield. His power thrummed against it, telling me that he could dissipate my measly defenses with a breath. He just chose not to.
I couldn't meet his gaze. I could feel it boring into the top of my head as he loomed above me, demanding to be answered. His barely contained anger rolling against my shields as he planted his hands on either side of my body, caging me in.
“Did it hurt you, Karina?” his voice was a lethal whisper purring against my shields. His use of my name made me look up and into his eyes, which was his intention all along. He smiled at winning his little game.
I shook my head.
"But it scared you, made you cut into yourself." He brushed a light finger along the bandage that I now realized was wrapped around my arm. The gauze was secure, not overly tight. He had wrapped it with care.
I startled. He spoke in my mind, faint, but there. How?
